Let me introduce you to a pet peeve of mine: the phrase “race car”. Specifically, this term that people use to describe a gutted, loud machine that most people would’ve happily thrown to the Cash 4 Clunkers program in the hopes that they could still score a brand-new car to replace it with. The conversation is usually triggered when a car NOBODY ON EARTH cares about appears. “Whoa, a 1999 Plymouth Breeze!” Talk about the ultimate snooze-mobile. The lowest-grade form of Chrysler’s “cloud cars”, replete with self-destructing transmission and trendy model names, like Expresso. “You know what will make that thing cool, brah?” Yeah, I do. It becomes cool when I drag it up to that one cliff in Alaska and send it plummeting to it’s death for the enjoyment of the crowd below. “Nah, man…go full racecar with it! Strip it out and make it loud! It’ll be awesome!”
No, it won’t. What is awesome is an actual race car. Safety equipement, performance upgrades, and a purpose-built mentality make it cool. And that’s where one of the most vanilla cars ever sold comes into play. A 1999 Toyota Camry is the automotive equivalent of Ambien and just like a 1990s Chrysler front-driver, has a V6 that will give you trouble if you don’t change the oil on time, every time. So how is this one even here? Cage, a five-speed conversion from a Solara, proper rubber at all four corners, and somehow nobody notices when the car comes up on the revs and starts to sound like the first few notes of a tornado siren.
Could this be as fun as the driver claims, or is it just a Camry gone punk? You tell us.
Last time I saw somebody try that, the V6 had trouble with oil slosh under hard cornering and grenaded itself. Personally, I’d have tried putting a 3S-GTE in there instead.