Toyota's Corolla seems to have been around since Adam was a lad, after all, and the "roomy new" Corolla tag did not exactly fire excitement up to fever pitch.

Yet we did find some pleasant aspects when driving the Corolla Seca Conquest five-door, which only served to reaffirm our belief that Australian-built cars of today can hold their own against the imports for quality and build integrity.

Produced in Toyota's state-of-the-art plant in Altona, Victoria, Seca 5-door acquired the "Conquest" tag only a few months ago and still has that inescapable `family look' which indelibly stamps it as a Toyota, though it is becoming less obvious with each new model.

There is an air of familiarity about the dashboard and controls, Toyota choosing to tread warily when it comes to making any changes that might seem off-putting to buyers who already feel comfortable with things where they are, and the same can be said for its interior trim.

Interior space is not bad at all (this is the "really roomy new" Corolla, after all), with very good legroom front and rear, excellent head and shoulder space, and seating that still faintly surprises me with its efficiency - just a hangover from past Corollas, which once had poor excuses for seats.

Appointments are perhaps a bit on the average side with no delay on the interior light, wind-up windows and toggle-control exterior mirrors, while storage is taken care of by door pockets and a reasonably sized glovebox; the console, however, is so small it barely qualifies to be called one.

And the gas struts on the rear hatch of our test car seemed unsure of their purpose, with a resistance to raising the hatch that made it difficult to open while one arm was loaded with parcels.

Corolla is available with two different twin-cam engines of 1.6 or 1.8 litre capacity, and Seca's 1.8 litre version has enough get-up-and-go to satisfy most needs.

Acceleration can be quite rapid if it is pedalled briskly, the test car's manual gearshift seeming a bit hesitant on occasions and requiring firm guidance, but the lever is perfectly located.

I said earlier there were some surprises; they included the Noise/Vibration/Harshness levels.

Although Corolla is still far from being the quietest car around, it has pleasingly low road-noise even on the coarsest of bitumen, and the exterior mirrors seem to be the only source of wind-noise.

Sounds from the engine bay were not so easily analysed though, as levels varied disproportionately in relation to road speed; the engine sounded rather busy on WA's open road limit of 110kmh, spinning at a fairly high 3500rpm in fifth gear, yet in urban traffic it seemed quietly hushed in comparison.

We certainly had no complaints about fuel economy, obtaining an everage consumption during test of 9.2 L/100km (31mpg), taken over widely varying conditions.

The Corolla nameplate has been a regular sight on Australian roads since the 1960s, when the first examples were of course fully imported, and the models now being produced by the Altona plant make it likely to remain so for some time to come.