It was the winter of discontent of my friend. The unsupported bearing shaft in its five-speed Toyota Matrix had failed. It was a common problem, as the five-speed was a deliberate punishment customer with unexpected consequences from Toyota. The only difference between the five-speed and six-speed of such vehicles is the presence or absence of the actual sixth gear. If you have a five-speed die, you have the tree (instead of the tooth). What did Chris do?
He asked me (and all of you) this question in November, receiving a hundred different answers. What he chose to do in the end was to replace the five-speed failed with a six-speed dump from a Matrix XRS. Then he took him to central Ohio so I can check it.
As fate would have it, I managed to drive both the Matrix before and after transmission swap. Therefore we can split this review into two parts:
Part Zero: What's it like to drive a first Gen matrix
Part One: What it changes? (The transmission swap, of course)
Part Zero : The simplest answer to the question is as follows: not bad, but not great, either . As you may know, is a big Corolla wagon, with about 125 horses to push about 2,0 pounds. Keep in mind that "big" is relative; I'm taller than my five feet nine brother, but shorter than my six feet four and half high school girlfriend. Back in 02, the matrix was considered halfway to a RAV4, but - by modern standards - there's nothing particularly great or CUV-ish about it. Compared to, say, a Honda HR-V, this is just a plain old car. It is simply a Corolla with more seating right and the behavior of the different pedal because your feet are approaching these pedals at a different angle.
The real surprise to anyone who has used the matrix for more than ten minutes at a time ... well, let the detective Alonzo Harris speak his piece
It is amazing ... It is ... you could be there with a fine bitch for a year ... and the funniest story you can come up with to tell me ... is a drunk stop
so, to paraphrase detective Harris. I find it amazing ... it's ... that Toyota would let General Motors build this car, and his successors, for nine years ... and the most efficient compact car that GM could come up with after the sale was Daewoo Lacetti . Because it is a good, decent, honest car, mostly flawless. He stops and goes without drama. Even after the value of over a decade of Canadian winters and potholes of Toronto, he still feels well screwed. You can see out of it, all around. Control efforts are light. It has a ton of space inside for people and equipment, but it is also easy to park and maneuver.
The controls are easy to use. The steering is pretty decent. Most of what you touch feels like it is high quality. Ninety percent of American drivers would be absolutely and completely satisfied by it. It is not fast, but as it comes with the five-speed and haste-enough 1.8-liter four, it can track the traffic. People miles a quarter million of them all the time , even without careful maintenance. It is not very characterful, unless you consider that its ease of use and durability without the fault involves a significant nature and deeply rooted by itself.
There are no major failures in this car. Even the thin veneer of paper sportiness implied by the three-spoke leather-ish steering wheel and the recessed gauge panel manages to work somehow. Toyota and General Motors build leave, leave them all spec and every part and assembly secret, just as they had done with the Nova and the prism before it. it did not occur to anyone at GM that they should simply reverse the car, changing critical dimensions enough to avoid a trial, style it a bit and call it their own?
Look at it this way: in 1980, Beretta pistol closed its manufacturing plant in Brazil and sold to a company called Taurus. The friendly people at Taurus started quickly make copies Beretta. Then they made versions product-improved Beretta pistols incorporating a safety lever three-position / hammer-drop. When Beretta had its own quality Armageddon with its production of "slide-tosser" M9 pistol, Taurus makes sure that there were many products in gun stores to sell the old Beretta unhappy customers. Today the company is flourishing and has the respect of almost all shooters.
In other words, GM is not as smart as a bunch of tools and die-people within the Brazilian rainforest. They had the Matrix and they gave us the Cruze. This is a fine car in its own right, with several commendable features, but it is not Matrix.
Enough of that. What is past is past and, in any event, Toyota is not perfect. It was a transmission "solution engineering," Toyota after all, that landed us in this mess. Then go to Part this test. Well, the first thing you notice in the newly revitalized matrix Chris is that he has a six-speed button. Was he tempted to keep the old five-speeder and wicked people pass by the non-existent speed?
"I think you are the only person who would come up with this idea," was his answer. The six-speed button had less wear, and he was brilliant, so Chris installed with the rest of the transmission. The second thing I noticed was how much faster and more alive Matrix seemed to be with her new transmission. There is a reason for this and it is one of the oldest reasons in the auto pound. Since the Matrix XRS had a revving engine, the final drive on the six-speed is lower.
This is the first speed is the same for both transmissions, and the sixth report in the new box is the same as the fifth gear in the old. The last training is massive difference - 4.529 3.941 against the original - so where you used to spin 4000 rpm on the highway, you're doing 4,0. He agreed with Chris. It does not lead well past 60 mph most of the time, even on the highway. Musicians, you know? The irony is that it is a champion in some sort of international iRacing league, which is how he relaxes after a busy week to earn a substantial living doing creative things.
The combination of line four relatively torquey and high digitally transaxle makes revvy and noisy matrix in use around the city. There was once a factory TRD supercharger kit for the Matrix who hit the engine up to 166 horsepower. Combine the six-speed with the Roots blower and you might - you just could - to face the new generation of compact cars. It would be fun to find out.
There is a minor tragedy so Chris had to go through the transplant of transmission at all, to the extent that the failure was entirely the product of the will of Toyota to create an artificial differentiation between lining levels. There is no reason for the Matrix XR could not come from the factory with a sixth gear and another $ 15 added to the thumbnail. But if the automotive press is arranged as a whole to neglect even more ridiculous Porsche and petty decision to saddle the 987 Cayman generation 2.7 with a five-speed despite this car costs about three times what you pay for a matrix of all band, so I guess we have to leave out with Toyota to make a five-speed in the base Corolla wagon.
final irony, of course, is that very few cars could justify the effort and expense of switching a transmission of more than ten years in their life. If you had an air-cooled 911 which needed a new Getrag, you would possibly get the money, of course ... but could you imagine putting two large in a Chevy Cobalt that time? For Chris, though, the financial end of it does not need to make sense. It is quite successful and he could buy a new car without much hassle. The prospect of abandoning the matrix and get something new, however, hit him as unnecessarily extravagant.
"The car is still good, right?" He said, after our return to my house from a quick drive. "No reason to get something else, right?"
Law .
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