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2020 Compact Sedan Challenge Video: Honda Civic Vs. Nissan Sentra Vs. Toyota Corolla

A 2020 Toyota Corolla, 2020 Nissan Sentra and 2020 Honda Civic parked in a row Left to right: 2020 Honda Civic, 2020 Nissan Sentra and 2020 Toyota Corolla | Cars.com photo by Christian Lantry

Although not as popular as they historically have been, compact cars remain an important part of the market, especially as consumers shift more attention toward affordability amid the economic disruption of COVID-19.

Related: What’s the Best Compact Sedan?

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2020 Honda Civic EX
29,476 mi.
$25,349 $510 price drop
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2020 Honda Civic LX
14,623 mi.
$22,849 $780 price drop
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So, we took the longtime Cars.com favorite Honda Civic sedan, which has been around for a number of years now in its current incarnation, and compared it to a couple of new 2020 models: the just-redesigned Nissan Sentra as well as the Toyota Corolla sedan, also redesigned.

When we do comparisons like this, we typically have so many models that we just do the high points and low points of each model — but because this is such a nice, tight trio we instead decided to run through the various judging categories and just compare the three, explaining how each car did.

It bears noting first that there are a lot of similarities among these cars. The contest was a pretty close one because these are all, in their own way, strong in the market.

Judging categories included subjective things like powertrain, handling and interior quality as well as objective categories like safety features and driver assist technology. You can find out our thoughts on the three competitors in all 17 categories by watching the video below, and be sure to follow the related link above for the comprehensive results of our compact sedan comparison.

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