I am the Generalissimo!

My dad’s got a Camry. It’s a 1997, with 135,000 miles on the odometer its second coat of paint. He had the gas filler door spring replaced and the interior cushioning has gone a little soft. It’s still on its original brakes. The On knob for the radio broke a while back and he hasn’t bothered to replace it.

And it will never die.

Sure, he could wake up tomorrow and decide to drive it into a tree, but barring some kind of catastrophic event, he’ll eventually have to decide which of my brothers to leave it to in his will.

Which brings us to the current model. By all accounts, it’s a better car than Dad’s. Bigger, more powerful, with a well-designed cockpit and the ergonomic efficiency one expects from middle management, i.e., the Camry’s natural environment.
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The Yaris is Toyota’s attempt to get the key “I can’t afford a real car” demographic. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a fun car that will get you from Point A to Point B and do it without annoying you more than absolutely necessary.

Our test vehicle was the three-door hatchback model, but we’d spring for the five-door. The extra grand gets you a second set of doors and makes the rear seats accessible; the increase in trunk space (seats up or down) makes it a legitimate weekend hauler, so long as you’re toting small dogs or a few cases of beer back to your frat house and not, as the Generalissimo is apt to do, lug fifty gallon drums of God-knows-what to his “bunker.”
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