Commuter Combat!

Headquartered in Los Angeles, home of the dreaded 405 freeway, the Motor Trend staff has developed a keen understanding of commuting and perhaps the best (some might say worst) appreciation for this combat drill. If you live in a major metropolitan area, you know the routine: You're creeping 30 miles from home to office, mongo java cup of coffee in its well-crafted cupholder long enough to cool to non-scalding temperatures, cell phone in its proper place, favorite morning show on the radio (favorite CD playing on the way home), and if all goes well, you arrive at the office an hour and a half later, roadworn and ready for a full day of work. And what if it's raining? Simply double the time estimate. What's that? Need a low purchase price and good fuel mileage, too? Read on.

We enlisted three popular Japanese-branded, economically priced sedans for this wheel-to-wheel commuter combat mission: the all-new '01 Honda Civic EX, the refreshed '01 Toyota Corolla S, and the new-for-2000 Nissan Sentra SE-all intended to let you keep your sanity as well as more of your hard-earned income. Sure, they all have clean-running and thrifty four-cylinder engines, but you might not know each of these EPA-classified "compact" sedans has an impressive sales history, reliability record, and higher levels of comfort-minded content and safety equipment than you might expect. Which one earned its stripes on the front line of the eternal skirmish we call a daily commute?

Point A to point B transportation tools really have come a long way. While some of the following is standard equipment and some optional, all three have window stickers below $18,000: LEV- (or better) certified 125-hp-plus engines with aluminum blocks and cylinder heads (two with variable valve timing), four-wheel anti-lock brakes, dual front and front- passenger-side airbags, tilt steering wheels, factory in-dash multi-CD players, intermittent wipers, and power windows/door locks/mirrors. Most are no longer just luxury car amenities; the marketplace has come to expect nothing less, commuter car or not.

This trio are all big sellers, too. In '99, the Civic sold a class-leading 318,308; Corolla was good for 249,128; and the Sentra rang in at 53,438-big numbers for little cars. Seven out of every 100 cars sold was one of these three. There's nothing wrong with a little fun, either, so each of our testers represents the sportiest version currently offered.

Editor's note: A local news station traffic helicopter recently captured on video a wrong-way Civic driver on a freeway running head-on into a Camry at a combined closing speed of over 100 mph. Results: three of the five people involved literally walked out of the wreck unhurt, and the other two were hospitalized and later released. Lesson: Anyone doubting the effectiveness of seatbelts and airbags is a fool. All three cars in this comparison offer dual front airbags standard, and optional front occupant side airbags. And remember, they must be used in conjunction with seatbelts-if you hope to be as lucky as these folks were.

Before hitting the freeways (going the right direction, of course), it was off to our test track for some baseline data. While the reason for gathering performance numbers on Vipers, Corvettes, and Ferraris is a no-brainer, there's also value in getting hard numbers on these three more sedate sedans. To gain an objective perspective on their actual performance, and if we translate the instrumented tests to real-world terms correctly, you'll see these tests have real consequences beyond bench-racing bragging rights.

The 145-hp Nissan Sentra SE, with its 18-20-hp advantage over the other two, is indeed the quickest. We backed up our real-world experience of easily entering freeways at (or above!) posted speed limits with a surprisingly quick 7.9-sec 0-60-mph sprint on its way to a 16.0-sec/85.5-mph quarter-mile run.