I control sub-contracted repair work at the auction i work at. I usually have about 30 cars subbed out to various dealerships and specialty shops in town at any given time. The auction is huge and i dont have direct access to every car that comes through or even a good way to find out what is out there, but when an interesting car comes through for me to sub out i sometimes take it for a lap around one of our massive parking lots and down the ~400 ft 'test track' before parking it in a good spot for my tow driver. So far my most interesting drives have been a Cayman S and an SRT10 Ram, but this week i got to drive a C-Max and a '12 Camry Hybrid.
THOUGHTS: I've been subbing out a lot of ecoboost Escapes for recall work and i got to drive the 1.6 Escape and C-max back to back. I already knew they were extremely closely related (same platform, dash, steering wheel, seats, door handles, etc), but for the first time i had the thought "I wonder why they didn't just keep making the Escape Hybrid instead of repaneling an Escape and creating a new model with no name recognition?" The only thing i can come up with is better aero and a minor weight loss in the C-max. I also thought a C-Max would be pretty cool with a 1.6 ecoboost. I prefer the styling and ride height vs the Escape, but im not a reflection of a mainstream buyer. I do think the c-max drivetrain would be acceptable in a heavier Transit Connect but i doubt buyers would accept the mpg result given the asinine complaints about c-max mpg.
Anyway, as far as driving the C-max, i had heard that it was basically a Ford Prius with the torque and dynamics turned up. That rang true, but not to the extent i expected. It does have more torque then my Prius. However, past the initial launch and rapid throttle tip-in, it doesnt feel as much faster than my Prius as i had expected. I would not call it quick, just normal with occasional short bursts of impressive electric torque followed by mediocre acceleration. I cant do real cornering in the auction lots without getting the wrong kind of attention and i usually cant WOT past 50mph on the short test track so that's all i got. I had a generally good impression of the car.
Camry Hybrid: First off, unlike most people here on GRM, i consider myself a fan of the current Camry design. I think it's a decently cool looking car with a decent interior. I really like the periwinkle-ish color they put on some of them (seriously!). It is common for hybrids to have a strong tip-in rush of torque from the electric motors. Usually, the electric torque transitions smoothly..enough.. to engine torque as the ICE spins up. However, on the Camry Hybrid i noticed that the initial torque rush was followed by a seemingly lower amount of power when the ICE spun up. It seemed like power tapered off even at the same throttle position as it transitioned from mostly-electric to mostly-ICE power. I was curious about the Camry Hybrid because on paper it looks fairly quick: mid 15 1/4 mile at 88-89mph. In person, though, it felt MUCH slower than the last car i had that ran around those numbers. Overall, though, it still seemed like a nice car, and i'd like to put my mother in one if the right deal came up. Everything else about the car besides power delivery was old news, ive driven them before.
Overall, my impressions of both vehicles were good, but they were both slightly different then i had expected from reading about them online. That is beauty of driving real cars in real life, i guess!
