Pop the tailgate of the Mazda 3 Liftback, and after chucking in a 28-inch luggage, the 295-litre boot leaves barely enough room to squeeze in two backpacks. Shut it, walk over to the Corolla, and its 470-litre boot easily swallows a cabin trolley and a full week's worth of grocery runs alongside the exact same suitcase.

Put their price tags side by side, and you would think both carmakers had planned it together. The Honda Civic 1.5 RS Turbo is priced at RM149,900, while the Toyota Corolla GR Sport comes in at RM149,800—a mere RM100 difference. In the Malaysian car market, RM100 is barely enough for a decent car waxing session.

In Malaysia's C-segment sedan market with a budget around RM 150k, local car buyers will invariably cross paths with these two arch-rivals:

Toyota has introduced the 2026 Corolla 60th Anniversary limited editions for the European market, marking six decades since the model’s 1966 debut and underlining Corolla’s status as the world’s best-selling car with more than 57 million units sold globally. The special-series cars are offered in Hatchback, Touring Sports and Sedan body styles and go on sale for order now, with customer deliveries

The Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla are two household names in the C-segment sedan market. They have battled globally for half a century and remain each other's most direct rivals in Malaysia.

As the world's best-selling family car series, the Toyota Corolla has achieved cumulative global sales of over 57 million units since its debut in 1966. To mark this extraordinary milestone, Toyota Japan has officially launched the 60th Anniversary Editions of the Corolla Active Sport and Corolla Touring Active Sport.