I have a GR Corolla and it's great in the mountains! It's tiny light and fun and fits a car seat (barely).
I wouldn't consider a loud GRC w/ catback a "sleeper" though - it's quite the opposite??
When my wife was pregnant, our garage had an ND Miata (mine), a BRZ (hers) and an Elise (also hers). We pretty quickly decided that we were going to need some kind of car that we could reasonably put a car seat in, and while the BRZ nominally had a back seat, neither of us were interested in trying to fit a car seat and child into it.
We actually did consider a GR corolla, but ended up getting a used evo x that's been pretty fun instead.
Agreed. I switched to an aftermarket catback (sxth single exit, lol) over the past year and while I really enjoyed the difference in tone, the increased volume level was just barely intolerable. So I'm back on the OEM one.