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Claudia Hommel
Cabaret Singer
Extraordinaire
Cordell Koland
Car Writer
Weekly Reviews
 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid by Cordell Koland Great Taste! Less Filling! The old television commercials for Miller Lite beer might be a good way to characterize the automotive hybrid market right now. Hybrid vehicles are falling into two camps. The Honda Accord and the Lexus GS450h represent the Great Taste school of engineering and design, which give the consumer a delicious boost in power and performance‹and respectable gas mileage. The Less Filling camp is represented by the Ford Escape, Toyota Prius and our test car, the new Camry Hybrid. These fuel sippers exploit hybrid technology to guarantee that the buyer will be doing less filling at the Shell Station. The Camry Hybrid is part of a whole family, which features America's favorite family sedan in new more spacious bodies with a host of mechanical refinements as well. Not only does the new hybrid model serve up an amazing 40 mpg on city driving‹where most of the population probably racks up its major miles, but is also amazingly quiet and comfortable. If you're really green, you'll appreciate the ECO button that limits energy consumption by the air conditioning system that can further improve fuel economy under certain conditions. Special attention was paid to the vehicle underbody with the use of wheel spats and underbelly pans resulting in a low coefficient of aerodynamic drag of 0.27 Cd, which helps increase fuel economy. The new Camry deploys Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive, which means it is a full hybrid. This signifies that either, or both, of its gasoline and electric motors, can provide power. Full hybrid technology shuts the engine down during coasting and at stoplights to save fuel. It also converts the electric motor into a generator during brake application to help recharge the batteries, a process called regenerative braking. In actual operation the hybrid system automatically switches between pure electric power, pure gasoline engine power or a combined operation to maximize efficiency and performance. Most importantly, the system is capable of running on electricity alone in slow-moving city traffic. Stop-and-go traffic is very inefficient for a conventional hydrocarbon-burning engine. Some consumers have expressed concern about the reliability of all of this new-fangled hybrid technology. In answer to this concern, the Camry Hybrid has an eight-year/100,000 mile warranty that covers all the specific hybridrelated components, including the battery . The Camry Hybrid's interior offers 101.4 cubic feet of passenger volume. The trunk is smaller than the standard Camry (10.6 cu. ft.) to accommodate the battery pack. The interior is generous. My son and nephew rode along one day‹both are tall guys at six feet or more in height and there was plenty of room inside. The trunk offered more than enough room for an empty-nest couple, but families with a load of small children, car seats, sports paraphernalia, and other bulky items may find it tight. The Camry Hybrid obviously targets the broad family market, which means the suspension engineering is biased toward a comfortable rather than sporty handling. With a combined net rating (gasoline engine and electric motor) of 187 horsepower, performance is leisurely by contemporary standards. The payoff is at the gas pump. Although hybrid technology does add to the car's manufacturing price, the car's base price of $26,480 including the delivery and handling fee. This includes the continuously variable automatic transmission and alloy wheels. Safety features bracket anti-lock brakes with Brake Assist, side-impact airbags and side-curtain air bags covering front and rear passengers, tire-pressure monitoring system and skid control. The interior adds such amenities as dual-zone climate control, JBL audio with six-disc CD changer, and tilt/telescoping steering wheel. Our test car had the optional $1,200 voice-activated navigation system. Toyota makes one of the best nav systems in the business and at the price it's a bargain. My only problem with the plush interior is a new styling gimmick. At night some of the controls are encapsulated in twin parallel bands of translucent plastic that glows a soft blue color. While the look is aesthetically captivating, I found the captions difficult to read at night. Vehicle:
Toyota Camry Hybrid
Price as tested: $30,867 Engine: Type: 2.4-liter inline 4 Horsepower: 147 @ 6,000 rpm Torque: 138 lbs.-ft. @ 4,400 rpm Electric motor: Type: Permanent magnet synchronous Output: 105 kW/4,500 rpm Torque: 199-ft. lbs. @ 0-1,500 rpm Fuel economy, automatic transmission City 40 mpg Highway 38 mpg Curb Weight: 3,637 lbs. Cordell Koland is an automotive journalist based in California's central coast. He can be reached at cordellkoland@oakparkjournal.com |
