In the eyes of a ricer
 

so, i go to see a friend i haven't seen in awhile. i just happen to catch him on his lunch 1/2 hour. so we go out to check out his ride... it's a white '97 Toyota Camry. so i ask him if i can rev it, he says sure and tosses me his keys. i jump in, the first thing i notice is a can barely move, and i've only got one leg in... anyway, i fire it up... time for the ricer rev :lol: i wind it out to like 6200 (the redline and fuel cutoff) it sounds perfect, if your a rice boy that is... anyway, i try talking him into letting me drive it, no go :cry:... but i do get him to give me a ride, on the way out of the parking-lot i look over and notice that the tach is at 4500, and wondering why (because we aren't really going anywhere at any speed) ask him if it's floored. he says yes, then starts laughing, and finding this all quite amusing i follow suit. we get out onto the main drag and he starts winding out the gears, after a good 15-20 sec. of full fledged farting i look over to find we are doing 55 and accelerating about as fast as my car does in 4th gear in lockup. he was talking all kinds of crap about his car towards the end of my ride and i felt the need to point out an upside to the car he has, after smoking my brain for awhile i come up with an upside... i say, "Hey, look on the bright side. Unlike me, you can drive flat-out just about anywhere you want. 13 or 14 seconds of WOT and i've cleanly broken every speed limit in the state." we laugh again as we pull back into his place of work. in contrast to this, on his ride with me (which came first), his speech was generally limited to the exclamation "Oh Shit!". and he seemed to be looking wide eyed at the speedo even upon even moderate-heavy acceleration (4500 RPM or so)

I know what those Camrys are like. Our family has a 98 Yukon an 88 Nova and a 01 Camry (before the new ugly ones that are much bigger). I just got my Car (see sig) two weeks ago, and i love it. Our Camry has the base 4 banger, and an automatic tranny. It woulda been cheaper to get a v6 and a manual.... Stupid parents. Then the car woulda been fun. But yes it is slow, and i'm 90% sure the 88 nova is faster. Sad isn't it? The yukon is fun to drive being rwd and having a 350 Chevy engine, and then there's my car. The perforance and luxo car of the house. The camry has cloth, but buckets, and the yukon has leather with a bench, and my car has leather with buckets. I have the nicest cd player now, although the one in the nova is just as good in most areas. The camry is fun to fling around corners, since it handles nice, and there isn't anythign loose in it. I never flung the nova around too much cause of the sub box, and the yukon sometimes, but im drifting then...

If the Camry were a V6, you guys might want to watch out - My dad feels more "oomph" in my uncle's '94 V6 than he does in our '91 SSE :wink:

The Camry, depending on the year, has around 130-135hp... 125 for 1994-1996 type models... fuel economy's the name of the game, not performance... the 4-banger is 99% enough for 100% of those who don't need the power ;)

4-banger automatics of your kind get to 60mph in 11-12 seconds, slow indeed... but the new 2.4L Camrys for 2002+ get to 60 in the upper 8 range with a 5-speed, add about a second for 4cyl. I don't think your Camry was available with a manual with the V6... as far as I know, a V6 manual was only offered from 1992-1994... and seeing one with the stick is quite rare, but would probably push 0-60 down into the 7-second range (It's about 8.0 w/ auto)

I think it's prob closer to 10 sec to 60, and its nice off the line, and idles very fast when you release the brake at a full stop, but after about 30 it kinda looses it's speed. Well my parents were looking at used ones as well, and it really sux cause we got it in summer 01 right before everyone offered 0% on cars cause of 9/11.... But that flooded the used car market which was nice for me looking at cars this summer!

Watch out for the new Camry V6's, I raced my dad in my SSEi and he blew the doors off of my car. The new v6's got quite a bit of speed and torque, but for a true test I would like to see a new SSEi go against a 03 Camry SE V6