I got my new car!!! Camry Hybrid gray/ash, fully loaded. I was on the waiting lists at several dealers, and got an unexpected call tonight with the news that a surgeon who had been waiting three months could not take delivery of his car, equipped exactly as I had ordered it. Just got it home, and I'm feeling stunned, since this was the last news I expected to get today.

So, the purchase experience was good, and I paid MSRP.

The car is amazing. It's eerily quiet and tight. You get a sense that it's a solid, well-built car when you drive it. I took it for a loop around four freeways, for a total of 18 miles, averaging about 65 miles per hour, with the AC running. It returned 40 to 55+ MPG at all times, except on one long, steep incline. Temperature was mid-60s, with no apparent wind. (My trip experiment took me in all four compass directions of nearly equal distance.) The PDI staff said the tires were set to 32 PSI. I'll go set them to 45 and retest after finishing this post.

I could see that the MPGs were highly suceptible to sensitive changes in gas pedal pressure, seemingly more so than in my Insight.

The moral? If you're on a waiting list, you may be surprised sooner than you think. And yes, by my first impressions, the Camry seems to meet and exceed the expectations we've been hoping for.

Steve Villatoro
www.stevenvillatoro.com
“An enlightened guide to small business mastery.”