Great mileage without the "show off" factor of a Prius

Does anyone know that the Camry comes in a hybrid? Yes, they do! However, it is not as trendy or hyped as the Prius so you can actually find these things on the lots - but not many so if you want one, hurry.

I'm not a car dealer so I know how crazy "hurry" sounds but have a look around. Your hybrid options are pretty limited, especially if you want a Toyota, the only car company with a longish history of selling hybrids.

Nicely, most Toyota dealers have pretty standard websites and when you search inventory, they usually search the surrounding dealerships as well. A search today in Austin, TX, showed me no Prius and just 5 Camry hybrids in a city with well over a million people. A search of Houston showed none of either car. Southern California had a promising 106 hybrid Camrys and 12 Prius.

As you can see, these cars are scarce.

Prius or Camry? For me, Camry. Prius is small. It qualifies as a midsize but that criteria must be pretty flexible as the back seat is cramped and it feels and drives like a Sentra or (non-hybrid) Civic.

The Camry is going to be nearly identical to an Accord, Maxima, Mazda 6, and maybe several other common, very standard, and very nice quality Japanese cars. Any of these will last forever, drive well, and retain value.

Of these competitors, however, only the Camry is available in hybrid. You pay $5-7K extra for this. That's a lot of gas. However, if gas continues to increase in price, you'll save more and more with this car and your resale value will be higher in the long run because of the scarcity of these cars.

Driving this car vs. the gas model, I find no difference. The 4 cylinder engine is powerful and never leaves you hanging. The electric engine, frankly, isn't all that powerful. In fact, it can hardly move the car, much less accelerate it.

If you ramrod this car and drive it hard, you'll still save, but not much. You might get about 30mpg. Hardly something to write home about.

However, the car constantly shows you what mpg you're getting and you quickly learn to drive the car more efficiently. Ease up on the gas pedal and let it cruise and you can get more mpg than the car itself is prepared to tell you.

It is designed to get about 35-40 mpg. The computer tells you what mpg you get up to about 40mpg and if you exceed that, it just shows 40+.

Based on my calculations, I can get up to 55 mpg by accelerating slowly, cruising, and "touching" the gas pedal which seems to tell the car to exert more power without revving the gas engine.

From what I can tell, the car is meant to "hide" the electric engine so you don't lose performance. If you drive that way, you'll be on target to get that 30-35 mpg most of the time.

On short trips, the car shows little to no mpg gain over the gas model because the car revs the gas engine to warm it up.

When backing out of the driveway, for example, you might get zero mpg as the electric engine, even though it can handle such minimal use alone, engages the gas engine, just to warm it up.

If you drive more, once the gas engine is warmed up, you are set to get some excellent mileage, particularly for city driving.

Short hops around the city initially eat gas. If you do 3 or more trips in short succession, especially in slow driving conditions, you might not even use gas for the third and subsequent trips.

I've been averaging about 38mpg with mixed highway and city trips, with most of that being city.

One of the things I like about the car most is that it is essentially no different from driving a gas model. It is not showy and looks like every other car out there.

Inside you have a lot of features that make this car expensive. A base model gas version is around $22K or so. A base model hybrid is at least $5K more.

For that $5K you usually get lots of steering wheel controls, bluetooth for your phone, an upgraded stereo system, dual climate control, and a bunch of other trivialities that I probably have but don't know I have. For example, I think the mirrors are heated.

Annoyingly, you can't opt out of many of these options. And more annoying still, you often do not find leather interiors. The cloth is fine but for as much as this car costs, they ought to put that in there. Instead, you have to pay extra for it on the after market to the tune of another grand or so.

Side moldings are often extra as well. They don't cost much ($200) but it's such an important thing to avoid dings that you wonder why you get those dumb heated mirrors but not the side moldings.

You might even get dinged for floor mats.

Safety features are all standard and excellent. Anti-lock brakes, side curtain airbags, knee airbags, etc., all standard.

Trunk space is extremely poor. The batteries for the electric engine take up a lot of room. The fold-down seats are useless since there's a nothing more than a big pinhole to fit things through.

Interior storage is OK, but not great. Side pockets are smallish. The center console has a deep hole but it's not as big as it could be (and there is room to expand this space if Toyota so chooses.)

Backseat room is great. 4 (not 5 as they like to tell you) adults can be comfortable.

Handling is great. It corners well. It accelerates like a much larger engine. Braking is great. Visibility is good, though you still need to look around as there are the standard blind spots.

I am annoyed by the exterior mirrors. For what this car costs, they should fold. Instead, they're fixed and if one should be broken off, it's an easy grand or more to replace.

I'm also a bit annoyed by the gas engine that turns on even if you don't need it. This particular function is designed to give you performance so you can accelerate fast. If you don't need that, the car still revs that engine to get it warm, wasting gas.

That being said, this car is not designed to give you maximum mpg. Instead, it is designed to perform. And that it does. It drives like an American 6 cylinder. Excellent pickup and, once warmed, you can often exceed the maximum mpg that the car thinks it should get.

So... should you buy it? If gas prices stay above $3.50, you're going to save a lot of money and recoup your cost in about 5 years. If not, you can kiss the resale goodbye.

At this point in time, this car is the only car that you can find on the lots with proven hybrid technology and you probably can negotiate a lower price than the sticker.

Your other choice is the Prius and that is selling so fast that you would be lucky to get the sticker price.

Some "hidden" discounts you might look for are recent college grad, end-of-the-months "sales" might get you another $1K off. Accepting a "lesser" hybrid (no moon roof, no leather, no nav, etc.) might get you another few hundred off, but, by and large, if you want the hybrid, you will not find many, if any, incentives.

With good credit, you might get 4.9 financing and then shop that around at your local credit unions to see what you can get. I got 3.95 for 4 years that way. You might also charge a good sum of the car to your cash-back credit card and re-fi that to a 0% card for about $80.

You are not going to get this car cheap, given the demand. However, it is not so outrageously expensive so as to put it into the "luxury" brand price bracket. In fact, it ought to cost you, well equipped, maybe 2 grand more than a similarly equipped Prius. And it's a much nicer car.

Finally, there is a green factor associated with this car. If that's your world, you'll like this car. It is a near-zero pollution car according to the sticker.

I could not care less. I simply do not want to pay these high gas prices and this car keeps me in my same old plain-Jane car with all the bells and whistles I want. And my gas bill is down by half. Most people will probably find their bills reduced by a minimum of 25%.

The bottom line is pay now for the hybrid or pay later for gas. I'm gambling that the gas is going to stay high and I'll recoup my extra costs on resale or gas savings, depending how long I keep this car.