having tried to this out myself (having a tsport) in a straight line and both in stock format, there was very little difference between them - comes down to driver(gear changes) as opposed to the car itself (ignore parkers performance figures for the corolla they are incorrect, however the type r handles alot better in stock form compared to the t sport (the facelift does handle better as it sits 15mm lower than the prefacelift). As for value for money, the corolla wins hands down in my opinion, for £2500 you can pick up a facelift with 75k on the clock thats been looked after, comapre that to a type r and your looking at a prefacelift with 120k on the clock and been ragged, plus its cheaper to insure the t sport. If you are planning on modifying either car, then theres alot more mods out there and improvements for the civic compared to the corolla.