Rental Car Ruckus 2: Electric Boogaloo

[CaptainHenreh]

Seriously, this is the biggest hunk of shit I've ever had the pleasure to drive. I've driven an HHR, and a Chevy Cobalt and a goddam *old school* Ford Taurus but this thing trumps them all for stankitude.

Oh my damn. I think I actually cursed myself.

So, I hit a deer in my IS. Took it to the local body shop (they did a great job) and hooked me up with a rental car for 15 bucks a day. "What is?" I said, excited to get something new to drive around. "A 2011 Toyota Camry!"

OH BOY! The best selling car in America! Must be good, right? I mean, after all...Consumer Reports loves it!

So it's gotta be good! Right? RIGHT?

Oh, how wrong wrong wrong I was. To call this car "vanilla" is a grievous insult to a perfectly serviceable ice cream flavor.

I didn't take any pictures. It didn't deserve it. But it looked exactly like this:


Now, styling wise, the 2011 Camry was pretty bland, but I'm not really going to hold that against it. It's safe, and when you've got a bread and butter like the camry, that's the only way to play it.

Now, if you took the time to watch the consumer reports video, I am going to tell you right now: Everything he says is bullshit, except for when he says it "doesn't engage you". The interior is garbage. A sea of beige utterly uninterrupted. The gauge cluster could have been from any car made in 1992 to 2005. Black, white letters, orange needle. Every watch I've ever owned has had a more interesting and eye-catching cluster. This cluster could only be worse if the letters were in comic sans.

Oh, and it gets better. Where the A-pillar interior trim and the dash meet, apparently there was a problem with a rattle or some other kind of nvh. The fix? A square of felt slapped unceremoniously between the two pieces on both sides of the dash. A square of black felt on the taupe a-pillar. The corner stuck out from underneath the dash like a little pyramid monument to "There I fixed it." Was it even on both sides? No. The passenger side felt stuck out a little less than the driver's side felt. Utterly absurd. I know that TSB's and stuff come out to fix these issues but you couldn't even TRY to match the colors? "nah son, black will do, nobody will notice." The AC controls (no auto climate controls here) felt like toys. No, I take that back, if they'd been made of Lego they'd have felt HIGHER quality, I think. Fisher Price wouldn't put these dials on crib hangers. And the "double glovebox" rattled incessantly. (Hey! Maybe they should go get another piece of felt!)

Creature comforts? Well, it's got power windows, keyless entry, cruise control and bluetooth which I couldn't get to work. I'm sure if I'd read the manual (dogeared and beaten up from residing in the too-small "upper" glovebox) I could have figured it out, but if the engineers don't' give a shit neither do I. The radio itself wasn't too bad. Steering wheel controls are always nice, and the radio preset buttons had the frequency listed above them, which was nice. But Toyota didn't do that, so they get no credit.

The engine?


The transmission (A FUCKING FOUR SPEED!) refused to down shift no matter how much throttle I gave it if it didn't want to. Driving up Port Road, need a little more gas? "Hey car, can I have some revs?" Car:"FUCK YOU, MAN"

And the combination of the two couldn't get me to the highway speed limit before the acceleration lane ran out ON THIS ONRAMP: LOOK AT HOW LONG THIS MF'ER IS! Want to get to 70 before the end? TOUGH SHIT. You can bury your foot like fred flinstone and the engine will scream and wail and cry havoc and loose the ponies of war and you still will be below 70 miles an hour if you had to stop at the light before getting on the ramp.


I don't know what hearing damage the consumer reports guy had, but there's all kind of road and tire noise up in this bitch. Wind noise, highway noise, but not in a way that the car tells you what's going on, oh no! From a "road feel" perspective you are utterly disconnected...you might as well be in a hovercraft as far as actually being able to tell what the road surface is like.

The car is just bad. The 200 was bad also, but at least it tried. It failed, but it tried to at least BE something. I'd call this an appliance, but my toaster has more engagement in its design and execution than this car. This is, officially, The Worst Rental Car I've ever driven. A soulless harpy of a car with a heart of pure beige. It was like a bad girlfriend, boring, unadventurous, and completely and utterly un-fulfilling. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why a single sane person would choose to buy this car of their own free will. I suspect that literally ANY 2011 mid-sized sedan sold in America would be a better car in every aspect.

Dear Toyota,

This car you've made is one of the most (if not the most) abysmal cars I've ever had the displeasure of driving. At no point in my short itinerary in the cabin, were you even close to anything that could be considered a "good" automobile. Everyone in auto motive world is now worse off for you having made it. When a car makes you long for a Chrysler 200, you have well and truly failed. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Love,

Rex