Why a Camry Made Me A Toyota Man
We have a 93 Camry wagon. It was bought with 140,000kms on it. Before this we had a 98 New Beetle. As you will probably tell from this thread we are not a family of PetrolHeads. About 4 months before the birth of #2, my wife said she was fed up with the VW NB and told me to get a bigger car - we couldn't even get a single umbrella stroller in the boot. She only had one criteria: "sell-high and buy low". We got about SEK 90,000 for the VW NB, so this gave me some leeway on the new purchase. I knew nothing about Wagons and started to look them up on the internet.
Given that we lived in Sweden, logic should have pushed us to a Volvo (plenty in supply, cheap parts and many back street repair outfits). Whilst, I liked the V70, there was no way we could get one for the money my wife had permitted. I didn't like the shape of the previous generation Volvo's so we looked at the Passet Tdi. In Sweden, for reasons that seem to relate more to history than wisdom, diesels are about 4x the annual road levy than petrol. For this reason, they are only driven by taxi drivers who can put in the mileage to amortise these costs. This was disappointing as our VW NB had the same 1.9 Tdi which had plenty of torque, and I had never had problems with VWs.
Now may I be struck down by lightning but I finally narrowed it down to the Camry (Gen 3?) and the Honda Aerodeck. I really wasn't bothered which one. Over the weeks, I just didn't seem to any Hondas on the market so the Toyota was for me. After a little searching and not very much bargaining, I found one for SEK 50,000
I've grown to love this car like no other I've had (3 VW Golfs, 1 Air-Cooled Beetle, 2 TVRs, 1 VW VR6 Corrado - now that was the best car ever to be overlooked by general public). I know, that 999/1000 when my wife drives it, its going to get from A-B. I've read that its build strong so any shortcomings it has in the airbag department are made up with its shear strength. It's not demanding in terms of maintenance. Looking back to the 93 Camry and its generation, I think Toyota understood that be better than the underdog to the big 3, they had to build a car that was going to be powerful but not over-engineered. Moreover, the engine had been well tested by the time they chucked it in my Camry.
2 of my sisters and my parents run Mercedes E Wagons (last generation), and they have nothing but trouble. Sure their cars work most of their time, but they can't get a mechanic out of bed for anything less than USD 1200. Their problems have convinced me, that perhaps today's cars are too engineered, and if they stuck to getting the basics right rather than developing the luxuries, they may hit their tarket audience - look at the iDrive on the new BMW.
My family laugh at the Camry, sure its no oil painting in wagon form (the back looks like someone has taken a ham-slicer to it to make one of those cross-sectional books for kids) but I know underneath its like an old slipper, as smooth as silk, and never wanting. The only person who gives it respect is my father in law, who keeps on asking me with a glint in his eye, "When are you going to change the car?" - everytime he gets the same reply "The damn thing just won't die, I've got money in the bank waiting for that next car".
This will probably be an embarrasment to the young hot heads in youir forum but I turned 40 this year and I've had all sorts of cars - the TVRs could turn in 0-60 in 4.2 sec - but there comes a time in your life when you want to avoid the bright lights in the big city and turn-in every night with a good book or an episode of Inspector Morse - I guess that's how I feel about my Camry.
|
although the vw outhandled the camry(both in stock form) and had a little more bling i am more pleased with the reliability of a camry. also the camry v6(1mz-fe) is 10x smoother(@ idle all the way to redline) than the vr6 and feels like it has more torque.
I guess that's why we are all on this board 
Welcome back Terry. I can't wait to see how this goes.
Linear Mode
