My Car
I can make some sense of my car when I think about where it comes from - Japan. The Japanese hate standing out in a crowd. They are the ultimate conformists. And that is how they like their cars. You struggle to tell one Japanese model from another. Is it a Honda or a Toyota? Worse still, if you paid a fortune for an upmarket model like a Camry, you wonder if you ended up with the right car. At a hundred yards, it is almost indistinguishable from the cheaper Corolla.
Sat on my drive, my white Camry Estate looks like a refugee from the household appliance department at Comet. If you want practicality and reliability, this car will do the job. A bit like a fridge is certain to keep food cold. In fact it looks a bit like a fridge-freezer too. This is most definitely not an escapee from an Italian design studio.
Worse than that, it could easily have looked less awkward if the designer of the estate had resisted an inexplicable and very non-Japanese urge to be original. We should be grateful that he managed to contain himself after he’d designed the rear end. Styling like every other Japanese car would have been fine. But someone in design had their once in a lifetime spark of creativity. This was not to be extinguished lightly. Pointing it at the rear end of a Camry Estate seemed like the safest option for the future stability of Japanese society.
And what did this all amount to? A new look for the rear windows. They were put in upside down. Which made the rear wheels essential to show you when the car is the right way up. Without them you’d be tempted to tip the car on its roof to make it look right. Which is a shame because Renault and Honda have pulled off this trick since but the Camry suffered the fate of being first and just not getting it right.
And if you think I’m being unkind to Japanese designers, reflect that the first truly different and original looking car from Toyota - the new Celica - was designed in California.
So why do I keep it? Well, inside you can’t see the rear windows, just a well laid out dash and comfortable leather interior. The V6 engine is super smooth and the 180 bhp just right for the front wheel drive. Amazingly it handles better than many sports cars I’ve driven and is nimble on country lanes. This would seem impossible from looking at its size. It is a cavernous estate on a par with a Volvo. It even has two extra seats to make it a seven seater. But these face backwards and are guaranteed to have the kids chucking up after the first few S bends. I now know why all of the seats in people movers face front!
But the best bit of all is what I call the ‘Beadle outlet’ at the bottom of the steering column. Turn on the air con and I’d like to say it directs chilled air to the stomach. But it doesn’t reach that far up. At first it seems like an extra left over from a Japanese endurance style game show. But it’s not quite eye-watering enough to qualify. Jeremy Beadle once told how he only became a Dad when two essential pieces of his kit were placed in an ice cold bowl of water every day. Must have made commuting to work awkward although if you’ve watched any of his programmes, you might thing he was getting off lightly. Why the Japanese need this sort of help in their cars is a puzzle. Tokyo is already one of the most crowded cities on earth. Perhaps that’s why Japanese people are small.
But small is not the word for the car’s performance. Its 3 litres will leave most repmobiles in its wake and 29 mpg is achievable on the motorway. It’s also pretty unique if you don’t mistake it for a Corolla. Which brings us back to the looks. These do sell cars which may explain why Toyota imported only about a thousand to the UK and stopped. So you’ve probably never seen one. I’ve only ever seen two and I know what I’m looking for. Which proves that the Brits do have taste when it comes to style. Unlike our cousins across the pond where it is the best selling station wagon in the whole of the good ol’ US of A.
Think about it. It takes the second largest industrial nation in the world to come up with a car that is so good and reliable that it outsells everything else in its class. That is in the largest industrial nation in the world where they can’t see how boring it is. For the rest of us, we can always aspire to own an Italian sports car. Who needs reliability from a work of art that leaves you sighing with longing?
And that’s why you won’t see my car if you pop up my road to spot this rarity. It’s not because the neighbours might get jealous. They think it’s a Corolla. I just can’t bear to look at it on my drive. So I keep it in the garage. Next to the freezer.