NEXT-GENERATION TOYOTA COROLLA LEAKED BY THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT
The 12th generation of the Toyota Corolla has been around for a surprisingly long time. The car was first unveiled back in 2018 and while it has gotten a facelift or two over the years (and a lot more hybrid power), it's still basically the same car. It's due for a replacement, and unfortunately for Toyota, that replacement has just been leaked thanks to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Fortunately for Toyota, the leak only shows the exterior of the car. An exterior that looks exactly like what you're picturing if we asked you to picture the new Corolla.
New Generation, But Very Few Changes
The early images show a car that looks like a Corolla with the front end of a Prius. That fits perfectly with Toyota's last big sedan reveal, which was the Camry with the nose of the Prius. Look across Toyota's lineup and you'll see plenty more of that new face with a variety of shapes behind it. That's fine, it's a good design. It works well with the rest of Toyota's styling.
There are styling changes at the back, not just the front. The taillights have a new shape, they're also now connected by what looks like an LED light strip across the trunk. Though that strip might not be illuminated, because Toyota needs to make sure the Corolla hits certain price points, especially in developing markets.
Much like the latest Camry, this doesn't appear to be a completely new car. Rather, it has the appearance of a very significant refresh. The biggest signs of that are the windshield, which appears identical, and the roofline pillars, which again are identical. Changing those pillars is expensive and complex, so if they're the same, then this is largely the same car structurally as before.
That might not stop Toyota from calling this a brand-new car. The latest Camry got a new chassis code and was labeled the ninth-generation, but most of the sheet metal carried over.
Hybrid And NA Four-Cylinder Power For Now
The Chinese regulatory filings that revealed the exterior of the car also let us know what would be under the hood. Or what will be under the hood in China, at least. There aren't many changes there, with a 1.8-liter hybrid system and a 2.0-liter gas engine to start. The hybrid gets Toyota's newest badging, which trades the old blue T emblem for a much smaller blue circle and HEV badge that sits below the Corolla lettering on the trunk.
We can't see inside this new 'Rolla, but the headrest design suggests that at least the seats will be similar to the current car's.
For now, this only confirms that Toyota is bringing a refreshed Corolla to China. We expect that it will launch a new model for the US as well, and that this is almost certainly it. But we'll need to wait for the official announcement to know for sure. With the current car more than six years old and these images showing that the design is complete, that news will probably come later this year or early in 2026.
2025-09-12T05:54:39ZSource:CarScoops, MIIT