Mind you, I'd never get a Camry for myself. But I've known plenty of people who own them and most have had a long trouble free life. You can't argue with dependability.
However, there are some good alternatives. The most notable that comes to mind are GM products from the 90s. Underrated but that 3.8 will just go forever. Other bits might not last, but you'll still have a car that runs.
It's quite a different attitude from a lot of the guys I went to school with growing up. Too many of them deluded themselves into believing they could make it big, especially the guys who played for varsity teams and where halfway decent. Everyone, including their parents placed too much importance on sports. And for nearly all of them it's gone nowhere. Even worse were the ones who thought their fall back career was as a hip hop star. There weren't many of those, but they did exist.
And the police department has nothing better to do than make a public display of indignation because they're often impotent. Cops there put up with stuff that in the States would have gotten someone stunned and eating a mouthful of asphalt.
What does it take to injest this stuff? Do you have to lick the trim or eat it outright?
And how long does it take for this stuff to go away. That new car smell, if it's even connected to these chemicals, goes away fairly quickly. Additionally, not many people are driving around in a hot car without rolling down the windows or running the A/C, meaning that anything in the air is getting circulated out of the cabin fairly quickly.
The best part is that the incidence of harmful chemicals is probably a lot higher in the home.
Haven't studies shown that cancer rates have been declining for decades now? So things can't be that bad. And I'd be curious to know what chemical concentrations were like in cars from the 50s and 60s compared to today.
Instead, around here, an obscene amount of money has been spent on minor improvements to an existing highway. And the best part is how this project started with a repaving. That was then torn up, with newly painted lines scratched off so that the whole roadway could be shifted over 3-4ft. They then proceed to install new wooden guardrails that were selected more for visual appeal than effectiveness. And the final paving was a lumpy, inconsistent mess. There are even stretches where the lines wander around like the driver was drunk or not paying attention. On top of that the money all went into the pockets of a construction company that already gets plenty of business from the state and this work has added nothing whatsoever to the region.
The article has photos of the roadway over the bridge. It's incredible how smooth and neat it looks. I think kind of quality is pretty much unheard of here. That same bridge in the US would cost at least twice as much, take 3 times as long to build and would come out a total mess. They actually managed to build the bridge below cost!
And that bridge doesn't go "nowhere". The Bloomberg article specifically states that the bridge was build to address population growth. Tokyo's suburbs have been seeing massive growth; the 3 fastest growing prefectures are all in the greater Tokyo region, also stated in the article.
These guys basically drive around spewing crap about how great WW2 imperialist Japan, how pure the Japanese people are and how Japan's recession is the fault of foreigners and how they should all leave the country. I've also heard stories of those guys attacking foreigners, but I don't think it's nearly as prevalent as what you'll find in South Korea.
Japanese have a distinct tendency to claim guys like these are not really Japanese merely because it makes them uncomfortable. Kind of like the Japanese minor celebrity who recently attacked a taxi driver in Taiwan who a lot of Japanese are now claiming is not really Japanese.
One time, late at night, I was walking along a rail line through a small patch of farm land outside of Yokohama when I came across one of these vans. I decided it was a safe bet to take the long way home.
I see the shit show continues inside.