Imagine the feeling of looking at an old black and white photo of some hunky-looking dude at the beach and thinking he's kind of a hottie before having the disturbing realization that "Oh my god, that's grandpa!"
So now you know how I felt when I crossed the street to photograph this badass-looking murdered-out sports sedan before the needle scratched across the record as I realized "Oh my god, that's a Toyota Camry!"
The Camry hit our shores in 1983 as Toyota's blandly sensible midsize family bus. Well, it was midsize by Japanese terms; its 102.4" wheelbase slotted it between the Chevy Cavalier and Citation, size-wise.
The original Camry was available as a regular sedan or a five-door fastback, packed a 92 horsepower 2.0L SOHC inline four to push its 2,500 pounds down the road, and made its bones via a reputation for being a sensibly priced sedan that got decent fuel mileage (31 city / 43 highway, according to the EPA ratings) and boasted anvil-like reliability at a time when that wasn't any kind of a given for a new car from Detroit.
Camrys got bigger and plusher with each iteration... the second generation of Camry in the US, the V20, now made in Kentucky, added a 2.5L V-6 as an option ...but never had much rep for sportiness. They were the very definition of the Plain Brown Wrapper Sedan, reliable anonymity on wheels.
So when you fast forward all the way to the launch of the XV70 series of Camry for the 2018 model year, you can see why this gnarly Camry XSE V6 just didn't feel very Camry to me.
Its wheelbase is nine inches longer and it weighs a half ton more than that original Camry. Under the hood, the 92hp four cylinder has been supplanted by a DOHC 24V 3.5L V-6 belting out 301 SAE net horsepower.
Car and Driver tested the 2018 Camry XSE V6 and recorded a 5.8 second zero-to-sixty sprint and a 14.4 second quarter mile at 100mph through the traps. Top speed was governor-limited to 136 miles per hour. It's interesting to note that those numbers are next to thing to identical to those put up by the 1968 Chevelle SS396.
This Midnight Black Metallic one was photographed in February of 2021 using a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II and an EF 28-70mm f/2.8L zoom lens.
No comments:
Post a Comment