DRIVER’S JOURNAL
Day 1: Picked up the car. I quite like the design, especially the front-end treatment. Inside, the controls are well laid out, without any clutter. Impressed by how seamless the switch is between running just with the electric motor and having the gas engine join the party. The only real way to tell was by checking the display on the dash. Did the can-I-sit-behind-myself test when I got home; there’s plenty of leg and headroom in the back.
Day 2: Drove to work. Good visibility all around with none of the pillars being obstructive. This car wasn’t equipped with a blind-spot monitor and I wonder why blind-spot mirrors aren’t standard, as they are on my son’s less expensive Ford Fiesta. A minor niggle was the controls for the heated seats are located far back on the central console and are awkward to use. They are also fairly small and might be challenging when wearing gloves.
Day 3: Ran some errands after work. Although the seats are comfortable and would probably be good for long journeys, the front ones don’t have enough side bolstering to hold you in place through the corners, given the degree of body roll. I’m sure Toyota was aiming for sporty rather than making a true sports sedan, but you might be better off with the standard suspension in the LE or XLE over what’s in the SE.
Day 4: How much storage space is there? The Camry’s door bins are fairly short and narrow and not much is going to fit. The front ones each have a spot for a drink bottle and those in the rear have non-movable partitions, presumably also for bottles, which further limits their usability. The glove box is also relatively small, but there is a decent-size cubbyhole under the central armrest. Continue to be impressed by how unobtrusive the hybrid system is and how often it is possible to run on electric power by itself.
Day 5: Drove to Bragg Creek. At 100 kilometres an hour, the Camry was averaging a miserly 5.3 litres of gas per 100 km, according to the dash display, which makes a case for having a hybrid. As well as being a newbie with hybrids, this is also the first time I’ve driven a car with continuously variable transmission and I was interested to see how or if it was different to a normal automatic. No difference in operation with the familiar shift knob, but it is different in feel and sound. There are no gear changes as such, so you don’t get the sensation of the car going up or down through the gears — it just speeds up or slows down.
Day 6: Went to Vulcan to visit some friends. With the cruise control on to maintain a steady speed, the Camry is quiet and comfortable, with only the occasional jolt from the poorly damped suspension to spoil things. There were strong crosswinds on the way back but the car copes with them well and doesn’t need a lot of steering correction to stay on course. It’s perhaps understandable that the SE doesn’t offer as standard high-tech safety features such as dynamic radar cruise control and lane-departure alert, but it is also lacking some more basic features.