We hired a non hybrid Camry to drive from Wisconsin to Oregon - it was the only suitable car they had left, we would have preferred something with better mileage though.. Here's what I thought: Good ------ Performance (once you wound it up) Road-holding Noise Mileage (averaged about 30 on the roadtrip, which I thought was ok for a big car) Build quality Bad ----- Seats - painful, literally Handling - steering way too light and imprecise, but that could be all US models of cars... Torq curve - nothing up to 3000rpm, then loads of power but also noise Transmission - big jump between fourth and third Cruise control - the most annoying thing actually; cruising along just fine, get to a hill and it let the speed drop, so the car then rams it into third and floors the pedal to get back up to speed. The human driver could easily avoid this. No fold-down rear seats Still, it was a nice car overall. Made my formerly huge Prius feel small when I got back home again though
No folding seats?? which Camry did you hire and what year? For the latest generation, the SE models don't have folding seats because of their v-brace and the XLE models don't have folding seats because they reclining. I'm fairly sure the rental company didn't buy any of those models but rather the base LE model which does have 60/40 split folding seats.
It was a 2007 apparently, at least according to the guy who changed our oil in North Platte, NE.... According to the handbook, some Camrys have folding seats, ours just had a little hatch behind the arm-rest to allow (limited) access to the boot. Can you believe, Hertz (of Fond du Lac, WI) rented us a car that they KNEW was going to be driving to Oregon and they also should have known needed an oil change in 500 miles... Not only that but they didn't have a clue what to do when we called in saying the oil change light was on. Hmph!
I was given a Camry once as a loaner while they did a recall or TSB on my Prius. I was not impressed. It did put out a lot more heat ('because it was burning a lot more gas!) but I was very glad to get my Prius back. I don't know which model it was.
