Suburban Dad: 2007 Toyota Camry

The Camry was a little like a cool fall morning: It took me a while to warm up to it. There was nothing offensive about it, but there was nothing that made me say, “Wow,” either. Still, the more time I spent with it, the more I liked it.

Maybe it was the overall feel of comfort; the Camry felt cozy during my 90-minute commute home from work, cocooning me from the outside noise. Or maybe it was the iPod hookup, which at first I hated because it was hard to reach, but which I came to admire; Toyota put enough thought into it to lay down a rubber surface for my iPod to sit on, so it wouldn't fly all over the place during every turn.

I sure wasn’t impressed by the sound of the engine when I first drove off, but I came to appreciate its power...after a while. I was even more impressed that it gets an estimated 33 mpg. My own little sedan circa 2002 has about the same zip but gets (at best) about 28 mpg. The Camry can move when it needs to, like on that long drive into work.

Whatever the reason, after a couple days driving this car I fell in love with the Camry's simple sophistication, if not its higher than expected price. The LE I drove starts at $23,040.

I took the family out to dinner at a restaurant by the local mall, and let my wife and kids get a shot at riding in it.

The Wife: “I like it, actually, quite a bit. It’s a sharp-looking car.” She loved the layout of the controls on the dash, especially the climate and stereo controls. Would she buy it for her family? “I’d buy it for you and me,” she said, listening to the kids squabble in the row behind us. “We’d need another row in back, or maybe we could put the kids in the trunk.” I’m fairly sure she was kidding.

The Teen Son: “It’s too small for me,” he initially said, but the stereo won him over as soon as he was able to get his music blaring. “I like the iPod thingy.”

The Tweener Daughter: “It’s a little too cramped for three kids,” she said, but she allowed that it was bigger than my own car, a smaller four-door sedan. She was as impressed as my wife with the stereo/climate controls. Another music fan, she “liked how they had the speakers in the back,” since they were over her head and nice and clear.

The 9-Year-Old Son: He started out complaining about something that bugs me, too. The digital clock is forward at the center of the dash. It’s not where I would look for it, and it took me a while to find it; I think it should be displayed with the stereo readouts. By the end of our trip, though, he’d turned around on it. Now he liked “how, like, you can like, see the time way back here.” The little turncoat. He was also a fan of how the climate/stereo controls lit up in the dark. Unlike his siblings, he enjoyed the backseat space; he found it “small and comfy for me.”

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