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Comments: 1-15, 16-17
Way too much. Rattle in dash took 3 trips to dealer to fix. Very harsh 1-2 and 2-3 upshift took 2 trips to the dealer and resulted in two weeks in the shop. Engine light kept coming on. ANOTHER trip to the dealer. Now the transmission is shifting harsh again. Two other trips to the dealer due to intermittent stalling. Was NOT fixed on first trip.
I bought the car based on what I had heard about Toyota quality. I am VERY disappointed. In the test drive I knew the car had less power than our Taurus, but only after driving it on the road some did I fully realize how puny it was. Merging into traffic or passing a big truck was really scary. It is incredibly weak for a 3.0 V-6.
Dealer service has been a nightmare. I thought Ford was bad, but Toyota service is much worse. It has taken repeated trips and been a real hassle getting ANYTHING done about the many problems we've had.
The gas mileage is good, and the car rides well and is comfortable. The fit and finish are as good or better than Ford. However in 97,000 miles I never had as much trouble with my Taurus as I had with this Toyota in the FIRST MONTH of driving it.
I will have to keep this very disappointing car until I have more equity in it to trade it, but I will not be enjoying the experience. Looking back, I know I made a very unwise decision. This is my first Toyota, and it will definitely be my last one. I'm going back and buy a new Fusion or 500 just as soon as I can afford to trade or sell this car.
Sorry you fell for the hype, and thanks for being honest. I'm not sure about the 500, but I know the Fusion is now ranked way ahead of Camry in reliability and build quality. I'd go for the Fusion as soon as you can dump the lemon.
I just looked at the supposed recalls on this car for 2006 and it said there was a recall on 4400 of these cars for a missing label. I even checked out the 2007 Camry and found that the only recall for airbags amounted to only 133 cars. What is going on here? I have been on this site for 2 years now and now that I have actually researched for myself the recalls I feel that the domestic owners fighting on here were out of their element to exagerate the problems and now I really feel mislead. Just to tell you domestic buyers of Ford Fusions, and Chevrolet Malibu's I will never buy another domestic car since I feel you guys have mislead hundreds if not thousands of people with your recall shenanigans. I will enjoy my Japanese car thank you very much...
I think he should go with the award winning Fusion. OK I never drove one, but they look good!
Original reviewer here. I did "go for the Fusion". I fuond someone willing to take over the balance on my Camry, and though it meant losing almost $8000 all together, I was tired of having to take it to the dealers every week for another problem. My wife was accusing me of having an affair with the service manager. I bought a beautiful new Fusion V-6 and it is everything the Camry wasn't. I love it. It is much faster, handles much better and there is no way it could be any less reliable than my piece of junk Camry. I'll never buy another Toyota.
Congrats on the Fusion. However I would like to point out that you will probably have more woes about the resale value on your Fusion than you did on the Camry by a long shot.
Toyota is commanding a high price for their vehicles simply because people are willing to pay more for a Toyota than a Ford. It's not because the Toyota is more expensive to build (Toyota has lower labor rates, got land for free down in the south when they set up manufacturing, got tax benefits when they set up, have less pension obligations than the 'big three', etc).
That's just how a market economy works. And Toyota is seeing this in their quarterly results, Toyota is in the black by a large margin while US manufacturers are in the red (loosing billions last year). Anyone asked themselves how this is possible?
There are many reasons, but one important is that Toyota can sell a car at full retail price while GM/Ford/DC must rebate their cars even after massive advertising. Of course, excess capacity and owing billions in pensions does not help either, but the main problem is that US consumers are not willing to pay top dollar for US cars, but top dollars for Toyotas.
And it's no mystery either. The big three is paying for old sins. Remember the junk the 'big three' spewed out 10-20 years ago? No wonder US consumers are a little scared. First you produce junk that you offload on the customers. Then you run as a bat out of h*** when the customers complain. That's what the 'big three' did years back and that's what's back to haunt them.
But with the excellent cars the 'big three' are making now, this is going to change. I just hope it's not to late.
Because new Toyotas are not especially well made. I'll buy a new Buick over a Toyota any day. And I've got statistics to back this up. As an example, go to jdpower. com and compare a LeSabre to a Camry or more or less any Buick to any Toyota. You'll see what I mean.
In the current market I can't understand why paying $5,000 extra for a Camry is such a deal?
I know several people owning a Camry and these cars seem crude, noisy and slow especially the base Camry without the v6 that I never would have considered buying. Even the v6 lacks real oomph.
I'm in no way impressed by these cars.
Will I ever get back the extra $5,000 spent on this car?
Why not buy the car you really like that at the same time has decent consumer ratings? Many cars fall into that category not only the Camry.
Are not the Camry being over-hyped and my question to the people buying this car is this really the car you want or do you buy this car because you think it is so good?
I live in Minnesota and prices for a five year old Camry are over 11,000 dollars, even for a base CE sedan. Accords cost more here I think. Where do you live? I mean I was looking for a car out of state and I would love to get a good deal on a 5600$ five year old Camry. You cannot be from Detroit because my family lives there and still pays top dollar for their imports... You probably mean a 10 year old Camry is worth 5600-7500$ dollars... I can buy that.
I just looked at a privately owned 2002 Camry LE V-6 that had 81,000 miles and was in good condition. The owner was asking $7500 for it. That's about average for one that old here in the Sunbelt.
I'm the original reviewer who sold this car and bought a 2007 Fusion. The Fusion is twice the car the Camry was and is much faster. I don't know where people are coming up with these 0-60 times for the 2006 V-6 Camry, but they are totally bogus. Mine took nearly 10 seconds to get to 60 and my friend's 2001 4-cylinder Oldsmobile Alero would beat it easily from stoplights. I think most of these people have obviously never owned or driven a Camry or a Fusion. Before posting some of the ridiculous comments I see here, you should at least drive a Camry and Fusion. I've owned both now and I know for a fact the Camry was slower, less reliable and a real headache in the time I was stuck with it. I wish people who have never owned or driven a certain make of car would not make untrue statements. I was misled by this kind of false information and ended up losing a lot of money finding out the truth by actually owning one of the lemon Camrys. I'll never buy another Toyota or believe anything I read about them.
I'm the original reviewer here and reading some of these comments really makes me mad. I owned this piece of crap for over a year, and I ought to know more about it than Edmunds or some car magazine. I know it did 0-60 in over 9 seconds because I have timed it on a couple of occasions. I know my friends 4-cylinder Alero with 100,000 miles on it would outrun it from stop lights. I once rented a Chevrolet Cobalt rental car on a trip and it merged onto freeways faster than my Camry did. I bet the cars given by Toyota to people to test are specially tuned and hopped up. I drove 2 other V-6 Camrys when I bought mine and they all were very slow. The salesman told me it was because they werent broke in yet. That was not true just like many of the comments on here are not true. Listening to people who know nothing about cars cost me a lot of money and a lot of headaches. My old Taurus with 97,000 miles on it was a better car than my Camry. It was never once in the shop for a repair while my Camry was in the shop at least once a month for some problem. People can rant about Toyota all they want to. I'll never own another one. I love my 2007 Fusion and when the salesman who sold it to me called to see how it was doing a few days ago he said that he had sold 7 more Fusions since I bought mine and 3 were Camry tradeins. I'm not surprised. I'm also not surprised that after I bought my Camry no one called to see how I liked the car. After they got my money they could care less.
Its all about the dealership you buy from. Some are great others downright stink. All I can say is good luck with the Fusion. My dealings with Ford have been rather poor, and I would never recommend anything from that company. They might have improved their products, but customer service is poor.
The old Toyota 3.0 is not especially fast and I could outrun it with my old 3.1 Beretta even if the Toyota engine has 20 or so more hp. Don't know why they've managed to make this one so slow since on the paper this car should be able to outrun a 12 year old Beretta. I guess weight is an issue here too. The 4 pot I'm not even considering it's just plain dangerously slow especially with 4 adults in it. Only reason to buy this is good mpg. An old Corolla is faster.
But the new Toyota v6 I've heard is real fast. The new 3.5.
Watch Camry sales take a nosedive as the Ford Fusion and Saturn Aura are discovered by the public. After evaluating my neighbor's Camry my only comment is that Toyota designers may be sipping a bit too much Saki with their Sushi!!!
I think you are the gentleman who added a comment to my Camry review, and I wanted to add that I appreciate your support. People seem to be very emotional over cars on this site. I'm actually amazed that the moderator allows some of the rather rude comments. I tend to agree that most of these fanatical comments must come from either employees of Toyota or some teenage kid who likes to provoke arguments. In looking over all the different cars on here it seems obvious that one of the worst is the Camry. I'd think those people who own these cars ought to know more about them than anyone else, and like you, I have found mine to be very disappointing, especially in the area of performance. Quoting sales brochures and magazine articles may be all well and good for the arm-chair car fan, but it isn't very comforting when you're bending the floorboard on a Camry trying to merge in front of a large and fast-moving truck.