Long-Term Car Updates

This would be our first update on the 2012 Toyota Camry SE Plus long-termer that we picked up from Al Futtaim Motors more than a week ago. When we sat down to figure out what to write about this car, we came to the conclusion that there isn’t much to be said about the Camry. After all, it is a Camry. It’ll sell by the sackful, and there will always be a rabid bunch who’ll keep hating it. So after contemplating for a while, we decided to do the updates for this car differently. From now on, we’ll pitch our Camry against a variety of random cars,

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There are few things in life you can be sure of, at least where we live — Death, Salik, and the dominance of the Toyota Camry on the midsize sales charts, no matter what spiteful names you may call it. If you hate it just for the sake of hating it, you are in the minority. The truth is, the 2012 Toyota Camry is a good car. And we now have one for two months to prove it.

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No matter what one might say about the exterior of our Lexus IS 300C, you can be sure that we’d never give up this car as the one to pick for our daily routine. Because, you see, that interior, it is an awesome place to be in.

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It has been a while since we last posted an update on our Mitsubishi Pajero, simply because there was nothing much to report about it. Apart from some minor repairs, all of which arose as a result of frequent off-roading excursions, absolutely nothing has gone wrong with the vehicle as it clocks over 30,000 km on the odometer.

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Our 2007 Honda S2000 does not have a trip computer. So we have to calculate fuel efficiency the old-fashioned way. That involves filling up the fuel tank completely, reseting the trip meter to zero, driving until it needs refuelling, going “full tank” again and noting down how many litres of petrol went in as well as the trip-meter reading. The random-guy-on-the-street will tell you that a small engine equals better fuel economy. That is not exactly the case.

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In the first week we had our 2012 Lexus IS 300C long-termer, we reset the trip computer to measure fuel economy while the car is in our hands, and not as an average carrying on from previous drivers. But just to test the accuracy of the trip computer, we decided to do some manual calculations as well.

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When you’re asking people for their opinions on a car they do not own, you have to keep in mind that there are three kinds of people you are likely to encounter. First, there would be the car enthusiasts, who prefer cars with a sporting edge to them, and actually own cars with a sporting edge, such as a Dodge Charger or a Honda S2000. Second are the kind of people who you’d find on the street, who spend more time on sports and news websites than on car websites, and they drive regular cars such as a Toyota Prado or a Honda Civic.

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The Volkswagen Passat CC V6 long-termer is no more with us, having gone back to VW Middle East. Unlike any of our previous borrowed long-term cars, this one will actually be missed. It was easily among the best all-round midsize sedans we’ve ever driven, if not the best.

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You might remember this car. It is the white 2012 Lexus IS 300 C convertible we picked up for testing last year on Eid Al-Adha. Back then it only had 20 km on the clock. Now it has 4640 km, properly run in, and it is our new long-termer for the next two months.

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As a last hurrah before our 2012 Volkswagen Passat CC rides off into the sunset, we decided to properly check out what sort of fuel economy numbers it was capable of getting. Being a 300 hp all-wheel-drive midsize sedan had to be a fuel hog, right?

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