A typical Camry kind of guy

I have a colleague at work about whom I've got a pretty low opinion. He's a small, twerpy kind of guy, in his mid-30s, who shows up between 9:30 and 10:30 every day, and usually leaves by three in the afternoon to "beat traffic". He says he's working from home, but he's never in the office when I call his cell phone, and the small amount of work he actually gets done backs up the idea that he isn't actually working. He's the kind of guy who is much better at making excuses than making progress. He lives in east Vancouver rather than in Portland. All of that being said, you can totally picture the kind of under-achieving guy I'm talking about.

He and his wife recently got rid of their minivan (they are childless) and bought a new Camry, because his wife didn't l ike driving the minivan. Less than a month after buying the new transportation appliance, she left him, taking his paid-off Pathfinder and leaving him with the Camry and its monthly payment. (She also took his "beloved" cat... while I was listening to this drawn-out sob story I was contemplating a faked dropped-call to get him off of the phone... ) He was telling me this tale of woe, about how she has filed for divorce, asking for $1000/month in alimony, plus education expenses, all while he's paying his $1700 mortgage and the $300/month Camry payment. If he makes an equivalent amount to what I make (which I hope he doesn't, because he does so little work), he'll have about ten cents to rub together at the end of the month.

The thing is, I'd bet it's the Camry purchase that drove her away. The guy is totally an underwhelming underachiever, and the Camry purchase was surely the icing on the cake for his wife. That purchase surely signified to his wife his utter lack of aspiration, and his inability to make good decisions or to make her happy by buying her fancy things. It sounds like he deserves the Camry, it seems to suit the dull, underwhelming person he is.

Clueless

We've all seen it. The Camry driver who is so oblivious to what is going on outside of his or her own little cocoon of blandness that he or she should simply not be driving anymore. Their car should be seized in exchange for a lifetime bus pass. Here is the latest in a long line of clueless Camry operators:

Last weekend I went to a big Saab meet-up in my region. It took place at a now-historic 1950s drive-in/diner which is well-known for hosting car shows and car club gatherings. A secondary parking lot at this drive has signs which read something like "Reserved on Weekends for Car Shows." In other words, don't park in that lot if you aren't in the show. I arrived and backed my Saab into a spot beside another Saab. More Saabs were arriving and backing in. I think we had over 25 Saabs at our gathering. As the Saabs were arriving, so did a tan Camry, piloted by a frumpy middle-aged woman with two grade-school aged children in back. She pulled in and parked between two of the Saabs in our group, then proceeded to waddle over to get a big order of fries and root beer floats.

The primary parking lot of the drive-in was less than half-full, yet she bypassed that lot and then parked her dun-colored appliance in the middle of our shined-up Saabs. Jaws dropped. People stared. And away she waddled, clueless that we were staring, let alone that she had parked in the middle of our gathering. Eventually she and her greasy-fingered offspring returned to their car, haplessly backed out of the spot, and drove away. A late-arriving Saab driver carefully reversed into the spot she had vacated, and all was right in the world. Actually, all was right in the parking lot. All was still not right in the world, because Tan Camry Lady was surely off to cluelessly bungle somebody else's afternoon.

Fast-forward eleven days, to this very afternoon. I got an email from the Anti Camry comment reporter, letting me know that Gary from Car of the Day had commented on my blog. It turns out he shares my views on Camrys and their siblings. I read of his disdain for the hated transportation appliances, and left a comment. He later posted a small piece about this very blog on his site. I've started the stopwatch, as my fifteen minutes of fame havae surely arrived. I'm totally famous on the internet. As my head spins from the excitement, my iPhone beeps a reminder that it's time to go pick up my daughter from daycare. I grabbed the key to the Saab 9-3 Aero convertible I'm testing this week for Autosavant and headed out the door.

On my way across town, a formerly-gold Camry, whose ten-year-old paint resembled the texture brushed fiberglass of a former colleague's failed Fiero-to-DeLorean conversion, darted out of a grocery store parking lot, across three-and-a-half lanes of traffic, and stopped at a red light, straddling two lanes of traffic. As I approached that red light in the road's right lane, I crept up to the light near the sidewalk so that I could be beside the Camry and therefore get ahead of it when the light turned green. As I waited for the light to change, I was thinking that I could write about this car on for the Anti Camry. The car had no wheelcovers, a visibly dirty dashboard, and a broken front-passenger door handle. The driver wore no seatbelt, though the passenger, text messaging on a cell phone, did. The driver glared at me as I looked over his sorry car. When the light turned green, I roared away before he even managed to figure out which pedal he should step on to make the car go. I saw him in my rearview mirror just before I turned off. It looked like he had finally decided to go with the right lane. It had only taken him a half block to make that decision.

Even though I'm not writing regularly here on the Anti Camry, rest assured that fleets of tan Toyotas are still bungling me up. I just haven't got the time to write about them as often. I do still believe that the purchase of a new Toyota should come with free-and-mandatory driver training. They should also come with a sticker on the front window that reads "Keep Right Except To Pass". Not that the drivers would actually notice. Because they are clueless.

Don't Rent a Sports Car from Hertz!

I'm making travel arrangements for a trip to my brother's wedding this summer, and was just online at Hertz to do so. Here is what I found:


Click on the photo and look closely- the fourth car down is the Toyota Camry, which is described as "Full Size, Sports Car, Automatic." Any person, organization, or company who is promoting a Camry as a Sports Car is a company you and I shouldn't be doing business with!

RAM YA!

Erik sent this one to me from his cell phone; he's driving from Madison to Cocoa Beach, and he happened to be behind this appropriately-licensed Camry. From the looks of it he's just leaving Madison. Hopefully this Camry isn't an omen of Camrys to come on his trip.

I wonder whether RAM YA 1-6 were already taken? Perhaps the driver has already gone through those plates on his previous Toyotas that he rammed into things?

Camry Hybrid- for Planet Clueless

As a car enthusiast, I subscribe to a few car magazines, and I watch several auto-themed websites to keep up with car news. I’m used to seeing all types of crazy ads promoting cars, but this one really got under my skin. It is titled “THE CAMRY HYBRID. FOR THE NICHE MARKET CALLED EARTH”

The first paragraph includes the phrase “Engineered to squeeze up to an unheard-of 500 miles from a single tank of gas- practically twice the mileage of a regular mid-sized sedan”. The next paragraph states “It’s a feat that some claim is still years away. And without Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive®, it would be.” Too bad that isn’t true.

My wife and I own a 2001 Saab 9-5 sedan, with 2.3 liter, four-cylinder LPT turbo engine and 5-speed manual transmission. On highway trips in the 9-5, we routinely get 30-32 MPG. We occasionally see results approaching 35 MPG. At just 32 MPG, we can travel almost 600 miles on an 18.5 gallon tank of gas. And that’s without the added complexity of a hybrid powertrain. So that feat of 500 miles- without the hybrid system- isn’t years away. It’s years ago, as in 8 years ago, when the 9-5 was introduced to the US market. Of course, the 9-5 isn’t a regular mid-sized sedan. It’s a phenomenally competent, stylish, comfortable, spacious car, with a well-designed driving environment, none of which really applies to the Camry.

The ad goes on to describe the Camry’s hybrid system, stating that “The technology combines a highly efficient, gasoline-powered engine with a self-charging electric motor.” Umm… what is a self-charging electric motor? I’ve been an electrical engineer for over 10 years now. Motors aren’t charged. They’re powered. Batteries and capacitors are charged. I think they tried to simplify the words used to describe the fact that the motor uses regeneration to charge the BATTERY. Whatever. We all know that the people who operate Camrys don’t have any sort of technical understanding of how vehicles actually work.

Finally, you can see a little drawing in the middle of the page, a line-drawing of the hybrid system within the car. The caption under the drawing reads “Despite its unique technology, the Camry Hybrid drives just like a regular car.” I know that to be untrue. No modern Camry drives like a regular car. It drives like a nine-year-old Buick with a 97 year-old deaf guy behind the wheel, at about 52 MPH in the left lane of I-5 with a dent in the back bumper and a scraped right-rear door.

Learn to drive, jackass!

Dear Dark Green Camry operator-

Thank you for making a right turn onto my street so wide that it forced me onto the shoulder this evening in order to avoid being hit by your crappy, ugly car. Without clueless, inconsiderate, unsafe drivers like you I wouldn't have anything to write about on my blog. I don't really mind drivng through the grass and gravel in my nice, clean Volvo, treating my wife and daughter to an off-road adventure. I needed a good excuse to test out my V70R's razor-sharp steering, as well as a reason to wash the car this weekend.

I hope that the next time you do that, another Camry is coming down the street instead of me in my Volvo. Because all of you Camry operators are such poor drivers, it will certainly wreck both of your cars, making our streets safer by getting you and your junky, poorly driven cars off of the roads.

Thanks again-
Mr. Anti-Camry

Hall of Shame

I'm proud to introduce a new feature to Anti-Camry. I'm calling it the Hall of Shame.

Hall of Shame posts will feature what we've come to know as the status quo in Camryland... the junky cars and ones parked "just like a Camry."

Tonight's Hall of Shame is courtesy of my family's walk to the local library. My daughter got to touch all the stuff in the library that every kid in town has already coughed on; while my wife and I got an eyefull of these two prime examples of today's Toyotas:

Exhibit A: Parking... those lines are really just a suggestion, right?

Exhibit B:

There's a whole world of these poorly driven, dented Toyotas, piloted by a legion of cluless idiots. So you're sure to see another Hall of Shame post very soon.

The Storyteller

Let’s just say that you were at a social gathering, and there was a guy telling the entire assembled group a story, about how people think the rules apply to everybody except for themselves. He began to tell some stories about examples of this behavior.

As an example, the storyteller mentions those traffic circles in neighborhood intersections, saying that for a “left turn”, you’re really supposed to go 270° around the circle rather than cutting the corner to the left, but that he figures that rule applies “to everybody else”, that it’s OK for him to cut the corner.

Then he gives another example, one about talking on the cell phone while driving. He says it can be distracting, but he feels that he’s a better driver than most people; it’s OK for him to talk on the phone while driving.

All the while, you’re thinking that this guy is your typical Camry driver. Not so much oblivious to the rules of the road as figuring that because he’s a “good” driver, the rules don’t’ really apply to him. Mister Unremarkable, who feels that it’s just fine to bend the rules a bit. Umm hmm. You might become more and more disenchanted with the story, while gaining insight into the average Camry driver’s mind.

When the story is over, people are mingling, and maybe you go ask Mr. Unremarkable if his stature as a great storyteller grants him the privilege to cut corners and yak while driving. He just laughs and says something like “Yep, perks of the job, I guess.”

After the gathering is over and you’ve eaten all of the host’s very good food, you head out to the parking lot, and as you’re pulling out in your sleek Euro ride, you see the grand storyteller getting into his car. What do you think he drives? As if the stars had foretold this moment, you witness the storyteller climb into his tan Camry with a dented rear bumper and drive away.

Bad driving isn't exclusive to Camrys

Several astute readers have pointed out to me (privately, not in the comments) that bad driving isn't limited to tan colored Toyotas. Surely I know that. However, pretty much every tan Toyota sedan is dented or scraped, and is poorly driven. Look at the next Camry or Corolla that goes by you. I'll bet it's dented or scraped. Seriously.

The fact that tan Toyotas aren't the only poorly driven cars was demonstrated to me a bit earlier today when the driver of a faded red Mazda hatchback sped up in a construction zone to be sure to not let any cars get in front of him. Cool move, I'm sure the flagger who jumped out of your way was thrilled. Jackass.

What are those stripes for?

Yesterday I stopped for lunch at a major regional "one stop shopping" store to get some lunch. It's a big store, they have a big parking lot.

I parked my big, fast car in a parking spot and got out of the car, proceeding to walk toward the store. There were some empty spots head-to-head between me and the store, I was walking through them toward the store.

A brown Camry (really) pulled in but was actually pulling through, too lazy and thoughtless to drive in the striped traffic lane. As she pulled past me, I glared. I actually considered shouting at the middle-aged female driver, to ask her whether she was familiar with what the lines are for that are painted on the ground.

I should have yelled. Now I've got this pent-up Camry rage building inside of me.

Clueless Camry bitch tried to back over ME

I had to go to Walgreen's to get a prescription for my daugter tonight. As I was returning to my car, walking behind the brown Camry parked next to me, the driver started to reverse. The bumper actually touched my leg. I slapped the trunklid with my hand and said "WATCH OUT". The clueless female driver just glared at me and drove away.

Another typical Camry operator. God help us all.