After driving the car for a week and really enjoying its great technology, (especially the keyless entry which somehow senses your hand closing in on the handle and unlocks the door instants before you give it a tug) I was kind of shocked to see the price.
Everyone knows hybrids are significantly more expensive than the internal-combustion-engine models, right? Somewhere in the range of $4,000 to $7,000 more was my vague recollection.
I called Toyota while looking over the spec sheet for the car, and comparing it to the top-of-the-line regular 2009 Camry I reviewed a few weeks ago. That car, a 3.5 liter V-6 with 268 hp and all the bells and whistles you could hope for, minus GPS, totaled $36,260 before taxes. This Camry Hybrid, which did have GPS, was $240 cheaper at $36,020. I had trouble imagining why anyone in this gas gouging day and age would want the V-6.
Nope, said the Toyota spokesperson, there were no special deals on, that was just the price.
But then, as I compared the spec sheets a little closer and thought of my own driving experience, there was one thing that was noticeably different besides the hybrid’s almost unsettling silence when the car was fully stopped (at which time the gas engine shuts down until your foot demands more acceleration than the electric engine can provide). That V-6 had a good amount of pick up and go. It wasn’t a sports car, but the V-6 certainly leapt to attention when you wanted it to and had no problem leaping off the line. That said, with 100 hp less, at 187 hp the hybrid still performed well. I didn’t take the car on any hilly highways so I can’t attest to its passing power on a climb, but I rarely felt underpowered in highway traffic or when starting from a full stop at a light.
The hybrid model had the same trim, decadent leather interior, mildly aggressive styling, adequate handling, and fantastic premium JBL audio system. It also had a fairly intuitive GPS that I figured out after frantic tapping while stopped at about four red lights.
Although the hybrid did have less power, the jump in fuel economy, though not quite as significant as I had hoped, did make it worthwhile. The regular Camry used 28 mpg in a mix of highway and city driving. The hybrid used 37 mpg (nine gallons less). Although not quite as good as the advertised 41 mpg, the difference adds up to 324 gallons less over 12,000 miles, or $972 at $3.00 a gallon. That’s not going to get you a new Jacuzzi, but at almost 25 per cent less, that’s about three months worth of gas for free.
There’s one other thing I also liked about the hybrid, one I am almost embarrassed to mention. It’s that little leafy hybrid logo. I’m a bit of a recycling fanatic, and try to bring my own container to the office cafeteria to avoid the Styrofoam. And I might even pick up some litter on the street from time to time. But those kind of environmental endeavors usually just look odd to the office crew. That little logo is kind of cool though—at least I think so.
