Got smoked by a Camry!!! Options

[Zephyr]

I thought I'd get around waiting in line at a red light by gunning it from a stop at an intersection where my lane ended in a quarter of a mile or so. I wasn't trying to race anybody, I haven't done that since I was in highschool. I guess the guy next to me thought I was trying to race and he gunned it as well, and I figured "What the hell, lets see what this thing can do..."

Of course I lost. At least it wasn't by much, he just kept inching ahead of me in his lane. I was giving it all I had, but I just wasn't any match for the Camry Power. My folks had the same kind he was driving when I was younger and I can remember putting Camaros to shame in that thing.

The strange thing is, I thought the Camry and Celica have the same powerplant...

Anyway, I've seen people on this site sort of laugh when people refer to our Celicas as sports cars. I guess it's true, because short of a bunch of modifications, Celicas just look nice. I can remember a buddy of mine teasing me at a red on our way to work from the driver's seat of his Chevy S-10 right before he laid a patch and left me a half mile behind him as I tried to catch up in my 91 GTS, I just figured my 96 might have more pep in it since it has a hundred thousand less miles on it than the older one did. I guess not.

Oh well, I'm not a leadfoot anyway. I much rather prefer going twenty in a 35 so everybody sees how sweet my car looks!

[Zephyr]

I was thinking that he might have had the six cylinder, but my mom had the four and my dad had the six, and having driven both, unless his car was REALLY sick, there's no way it was the six. That thing was a rocket on wheels.

I always tell people about the 89-91 model Camrys we had being the perfect sleeper car. Nobody had any idea you could take them on in that thing, much less leave them behind. We moved on to some later model Camrys after one got wrecked and one was swept away in a flash flood and I don't think the newer ones were such a sporty ride. The curves and bubble shape of the car seemed to make it fat and slow compared to the older, more angular versions. The newer ones don't handle as well as the old ones either. One thing is for sure though, the automatics with the ECT power button hauled much butt.

He probably had an auto with the ECT, and he might have had the overdrive button off, which would have made the car a three speed instead of a four speed so his jump off the line would have had more top end than my first gear.

I thought about getting an automatic Celica remembering how perky that old Camry was, but the gearshifter for an auto looked really out of place in a Celica, and picking out a 6th gen was all about the way it looked...