A 3000-km road trip is a great way to clear the air. And it sure did, between the Camry and me. For years, I believed the Camry was the exact opposite of everything I ever wanted in a car. It appeared boring and was uninvolving to drive, sort of like a four-wheeled cure for insomnia, you could say. Therefore, when Yash, our in-house go-to car guy, enthusiastically suggested I drive the Camry for a work assignment to Bengaluru and Chennai last month, I wasn’t entirely convinced.
About 300 km into the drive, I realised the error of my ways. I don’t care much for its hammerhead nose or its ravishing profile — in fact, I somehow always struggle to remember what it looks like — but, man, what a beautiful car it is to drive! It’s creamy, sublime and just extraordinarily calming, and over an 850-km day between Pune and Bengaluru, it felt so refreshing, I cheerfully drove another couple of hours in the city’s tormenting traffic, hunting for accommodation I hadn’t booked in advance.
To say it’s a class above in the way it rides would be an understatement, and while it still offers nothing in the driving department that would make Ayrton Senna weep, it’s just an excellent car to travel in for how effortlessly it swallows distances. I was able to drive roughly 700 km between fuel stops (that’s impressive for a petrol) and, amazingly, it delivered an all-time best of 17.3 kpl on this trip. It’s worst, by the way, was still a rather respectable 15.1 kpl.
The seats are great for long days, the JBL speakers are really quite good, and that boot swallowed luggage for five (even though we were only a two-man team. Go figure) only too easily. Among bits that I struggled to like were the user interface (non-intuitive, especially for ADAS shortcuts) and that it turns heads absolutely everywhere. To conclude, I’m happy to report I’m looking up used Camrys for sale at the moment while plotting where I can go next with ours in the remainder of its short stint with us.
