Review: Thank God It's Only a Rental

Dodge Caliber

So Amy has a Caliber right now while her Civic is being repaired post-theft. Let's just say that I'm really happy we're not paying to drive this thing.

Our Caliber is a mid-grade SXT. Which means the interior shouldn't be cheap but it still is. The car itself has a peaky 2.0 liter engine with a narrow power band located way up in the RPM band. The engine doesn't have any life below about 4500 RPM (peak torque is at 5200, peak horsepower at 6500). And the gearing is too tall because they went for fuel economy. If you stand on the accelerator, you wait several seconds for the car to accelerate to the point that it can actually accelerate. And the car is 3000+ lbs, pretty heavy for a "compact".

But of course the combination of the high beltline, low roofline, and poor window layout means that you can't see out it anyway. So whats the point of having enough power to get out of someone's way if you can't see them in the first place?

My Mazda has an engine the same size, but the gearing is lower and the powerband is wider so it doesn't have these problems. It is also much lighter so I get similar gas mileage. Oh, and I can see out of it.

The Camry

My parents are Toyota fans. Ever since we bought a Camry in the mid 1980s, they switched over to the Japanese and haven't looked back. They currently have a late '90s Camry and a Sienna minivan. I dislike both of their current cars. They are slow and don't turn well, so they drive like Japanese Buicks. I believe my brother concurs.

But the 2007 Camry rental I drove down south last week was pretty nice. It was a four cylinder but was peppy and handled well. The interior looked nice and everything worked, with one exception: the automatic transmission lever was confusing as hell. Unlike most of the standard forward and back affairs, this one was shaped like some sort of strange lightning bolt. You can kind of see it in this picture. You have forward, reverse, neutral, and gear settings for 5 or less, 4 or less, etc. So there are 8 positions on the stick and some of them are next to each other. We drove around for quite a while before we realized we were locked out of overdrive because the stick was too the left instead of the right.

Just make it tip-tronic Toyota, ok? Their higher trim grades have them and it's the same 5-speed in both cars. My Mazda has a similar lightning bolt shifter pattern, but all the "or less" gears are condensed into a "manual" mode that lets you just select what you want within reason. It works well and if you don't want to use the manual mode, it is easy to just ignore it, unlike in the Camry which is just befuddling.