Just yesterday, after much research online and a few test drives, I purchased a new 2010 Toyota Camry. And no, it does not corner like it’s on rails. But the idea of a car having great high-speed cornering ability, which is what that phrase means, is the subject of this post.
The reason I’ve chosen to discuss high-speed cornering ability is because it’s something that a lot of car reviews seem to hinge upon – with generally better reviews being given to cars with generally better tight-cornering ability. The reason I’m blogging about this particular characteristic of an automobile is because it’s probably one of the least important characteristics under normal (legal) driving conditions, and yet people seem to care about it an awful lot.
First, let me provide some context for why I’ve brought this up at all. In my market research as I looked for the perfect car, two stand-outs came to the fore: the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. I will say off the bat that I like the Accord’s external look far better: it’s just a sleeker-looking car. However, I was not in the market just for looks (although that does matter somewhat, when spending thousands of dollars on a car – it shouldn’t look hideous after all), but I was interested in quality, reliability, comfort, handling, etc. All the reviews seem to agree that the Camry has the smoother, more “comfortable” ride while, in many reviewers’ words, the Accord’s ride is “sportier.”
It takes a good deal of digging to find out just exactly what “sporty” means, and not all writers seem to use it in exactly the same way. However, the general meaning seems to be a greater “tightness” to the steering wheel. Having test-driven both cars, I can agree with the assessment: the Camry’s steering wheel has more “give” to it, meaning that slight movements of the wheel do not instantly translate into noticeable changes in direction, whereas the Accord has less of that “give.” If this is one’s definition of “sporty,” then I’ll agree that the Accord has more of that feel to it. I could also definitely “feel the speed” more in the Honda than in the Toyota; the Camry seems to have been designed to muffle out noise, bumps, and the like to a greater degree than the Accord. As I have never been a “speed demon” as a driver, I was really more interested in comfort than in “feeling the speed,” and I ended up with the Camry. However, I have found myself thinking more and more about the remarkable number of reviews that seem to deplore this sort of “comfortable” ride.
It is fine, of course, if people like the sort of ride that they call “sporty.” But honestly, some of the reviews that have criticized the Camry (and also criticized several of the Hyundai offerings, which also seem to be comfort-based rather than “sporty” in their design) seem to dwell on this “tight cornering” ability too much. For example, Consumer Guide Automotive states in its review of the 2009 Camry that all but the sporty SE models are “spoiled by marked cornering lean from their comfort-biased suspensions” and feel “slightly clumsy in fast turns.” And Edmunds even makes the importance of the car cornering like it’s on rails explicit in their rather politely worded but nevertheless look-down-the-nose-at the-rest-of-us comment near the end of their review: “Toyota knows that the majority of buyers in this market segment are more interested in comfortable, stress-free travel than tearing through corners.”
I think that Edmunds has correctly characterized Toyota, and that Toyota has probably correctly anticipated the needs of the market. I’d like to make one slight edit to it though. Not only are the majority of buyers probably not interested in tearing through corners; the reality is that tearing around corners is usually illegal, at least in the U.S. and Canada (and probably elsewhere, though those are the only two countries in which I’ve done any driving) and most of us tend to drive within the boundaries of the law.
After all, think about the conditions these reviewers are talking about and how frequently they ever come up. They’re specifically complaining that the Camry isn’t good at hurtling around corners at high speed. When does a driver in the U.S. ever, legally, have the opportunity to do this? The answer is: hardly ever. In fact, aside from having to make a sudden turn to avoid a collision from an unexpected event (like a truck jack-knifing right in front of you, or a child running into the street after a soccer ball), I can’t think of any time when it would be legal to tear around tight turns at high velocity. The only roads on which it’s even legal to drive at high speeds at all (50 mph and up) are highways, parkways, turnpikes, freeways, and the like – roads specifically designed with smooth grading and very gradual curves. Highways are built on purpose so that you are going “mostly straight,” even when the road has an ultimate turn to it. Thus, one isn’t exactly going to have the opportunity to do any tight cornering on a highway.
There are, of course, three other situations that frequently require one to make what might be called a tight turn:
- Many on- and off-ramps are very tight indeed, often forcing nearly 360 degrees of turn in a very tight space. However, those same ramps have very low posted speed limits – usually 35 mph or lower. I’m not sure I could call taking an off-ramp at 25 mph “tearing” around a curve. One could, of course, drive faster than this, but then one would be breaking the law, and you aren’t supposed to drive that way on exit/entrance ramps.
- Turning onto a cross street in a city or suburb usually requires one to make a sharp, right-angle turn. If one were to take these turns at high velocity, tight cornering would certainly be required. Here again, however, one would not legally have occasion to do this. The posted speed limit in most cities is not what I’d call “high speed” – usually 25-45 mph depending on where you are and on how wide the street happens to be. Even if one were to take these corners while going at the posted speed limit, I couldn’t see calling this a “high speed turn.” In addition, it’s illegal to take corners at full speed under most conditions. For example, North Carolina’s driving manual instructs drivers to “reduce the vehicle’s speed before making the turn”. New Jersey’s driving manual instructs drivers to “slow down before reaching an intersection.” This means that legally, you are required in these states (and most others have similarly worded rules) to reduce your speed below the posted speed limit as you make your turn. In other words, if the speed limit is 35 mph, you’re not supposed to be going around the turn at 35 mph, and you could be given a ticket if you did so, since you’re supposed to slow down when you make a turn on a city street.
- Winding country or mountain roads offer many opportunities to practice your ability to make tight turns, frequently switching from left to right to left again. Here, an improved cornering ability would certainly help you “tear through” these turns, but again, the law doesn’t generally permit it. Winding roads are potentially dangerous at high speeds, and as the government’s job is to help stop us from (accidentally, or on purpose) driving dangerously, the posted speed limit on these winding country roads is usually fairly low – rarely even 50 mph, and frequently as low as 25 mph. Here again, we have a situation where hurtling around curves might be easier to do in a “sporty” car, but it would be illegal regardless of what car you’re driving.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and state that I don’t think it’s fair to “knock” Toyota for not having engineered the Camry to perform well when being driven illegally. I’m sure the Honda Accord or an even sportier car like a Mazda RX-8 would handle all of the above turns better at high speed than the Camry. They’d be better at whipping down an off-ramp at 70 mph, or at taking a city intersection at 45 mph, or at hurtling down a winding country road at 65 mph. But it would also be illegal to do any of those things anyway.
Again, if you like the “sporty” feel – if you like “feeling your speed” – then that’s certainly up to you, and I’m not going to suggest that’s a bad option for people. I happen to prefer the smoother more comfort-based ride, but that’s simply a matter of taste. But it just strikes me as a little crazy that so many reviews out there complain about the inability of comfort-based cars to “corner like they’re on rails” when, in most cases, that kind of driving is illegal. It’d be like complaining that a car’s top speed is only 120 mph instead of 140 mph. You’ll never be allowed to drive the car over 75 mph legally anyway, so what’s the difference? Or are we just assuming here that nobody drives legally anyway? (Which maybe is not a terrible assumption based on a lot of the driving I see every day.) Maybe we’re being given an insight here into just why there are so many accidents….
In the end, I think too many people worry about the theoretical abilities of their cars rather than taking practical concerns into account. The reality for most of us is that we’re going to do most of our driving near home – driving to and from work, or driving home from the store with shopping packages, or taking the kids to school, or what have you. In the case of almost all of your driving, cornering like the car is on rails is just a non-issue, as is the car’s top speed once you start talking about speeds in the triple digits. In fact, most cars are made to handle well enough in the types of driving conditions that usually come up. As a consumer you really don’t have to worry all that much about “performance.” As long as the car can drive well up to the legal speed limit (which tops out at 75 mph in even the most permissive states), brakes well, and handles well in typical conditions such as rainy weather, city roads, highways, and the like, then the rest of what it could “theoretically” do really doesn’t matter to most of us. In the end you should buy the car you like… a car with a ride you like, that is comfortable, and of course, one that fits your budget. Those things are what you should worry about, and not whether the car “corners like it’s on rails.”
And to the reviewers out there, I think some of you need to stop dwelling on how well the car could handle for us if we ever happened to get it onto a race track alongside Danica Patrick, and place more emphasis in your reviews on how well the car handles under normal, legal conditions – because those are the only conditions 99.9% of us will ever have occasion to face.
