2018 HyCam amateur review and ongoing blog

The noise isn't that bad. I think is is compounded by the fact that the electric is so wonderfully quiet. I consider the Camry a luxury car compared to the Civic and Elantra we are coming from. The noise would be more appropriate for a sports car but even then the growl isn't a "cool" growl. It sounds a bit like when the kid chopped off the muffler on his Ford Focus (edit: I mean the tone, not the volume)...

 

Overall the Camry is quiet. This was never more apparent as the day I drove my wife's car (which had never seemed noisy in the past) after driving mine for a while and her car seemed very noisy by comparison.

 

So the car is on payments because they gave me an extra $1k off to do so. I made the 1st payment and then sent them a voided check to start AutoCheque. Then comes a second bill, like they never set up the AutoCheque. So I call TFS (Toyota Financial) and they say I'll be waiting 17 minutes... 42 minutes later I finish the call with no more information then when we started. A very nice lady is scheduled to call me back when the system is back up.

 

More grumping, the center car seat latch on the Camry sticks straight up and is thick on the top. The thick metal along with the angle makes it very hard to get a car seat to release. My wife couldn't do it at all. Curiously the latch on my wife's car is very similar except the angle is different. On her car the latch is tilted towards the front of the car instead of sticking straight up. The angle evidently makes a big difference because the latch works fine on her car. I might just bend the one on the Camry...

The lower anchors on the Camry are very nice and work well, it is the upper one that we have trouble with.

My truck has an upper latch that is a thick round bar which is only attached on one side. The bar is too thick for a car seat clip so we attach the seat by the webbing . On the truck I don't care for the single sided attachment. The webbing could easily just slide off the side. A thinner round bar attached at both sides would be much better, in the truck and in the Camry.

 

To add some positive balance back in, let me tell you about a feature I just discovered. The wonderful lock and unlock sensors on the driver's door handle are duplicated on the passenger side. So if you have the FOB in your pocket you can lock or unlock the car from either side. Silly me, I was running back to the driver's side just assuming they only had the one to save money.

It has been cold here and it has been so convenient to not need to take off a glove and reach in a pocket to take out a key or a FOB. It took a few days to become accustom to this feature but it is awesome. You just leave the FOB in your pocket and you can lock, unlock, open the trunk or start the car. Very convenient, especially in the cold when you a likely to be wearing gloves.

 

There is a button on the FOB, there is a button on the dash and there is a button on the exterior of the the trunk by the license plate to open the trunk. At first I liked the button on the FOB but now I just leave the FOB in my pocket and use the button by the license plate. This is very nice when you are carrying groceries with gloved hands. I never realized how much trouble it could be to need to get a key or FOB out of your pocket until the need to do so was eliminated.

My old car required a key or you could use a lever on the floor. This was fine but I was jealous of my wife's car because she had a button on her FOB. With the Camry I've got the FOB button but I use the license plate area button the most.

 

I like being able to go straight to the trunk. The button may not be as cool as the foot swipe but it is still a great feature that gets used a lot.