{"id":3969,"date":"2014-03-31T23:26:38","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T10:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/?p=3969"},"modified":"2014-03-31T23:26:38","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T10:26:38","slug":"the-camry-sportswagon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/the-camry-sportswagon\/","title":{"rendered":"The Camry Sportswagon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Sportswagon, circa 2008<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Almost ten years ago, we acquired a second-hand, New Zealand-new stationwagon. The Boy<\/b>, seven at the time, took one look at the Advanti Racing alloy-shod Camry 220 GL and declared it a sports<\/b>wagon. I suppose when you’re seven and you’re a Holden V8 fan with a cap and jacket to prove it, you make do with what you get.<\/p>\n

I grew up with a succession of Ford Falcon stationwagons. A lot of my childhood holiday memories include lying in the rear cargo area, in a cocoon of blankets and luggage, en route to some faraway destination; if I got bored, I played polite games of shoot-’em-up with the driver of the vehicle behind us.<\/p>\n

I never thought I’d end up driving a Toyota as an adult. They’re so ubiquitous that… well, I thought Other People drove the damned things. Not me.<\/p>\n

But the Camry grew on me. The 2.2-litre engine is a good compromise between around-town trips and our annual cross-country holidays. It’s wide enough to give each occupant room to move \u2014 on long trips, the kids would fill up the backseat and footwell with a myriad of items to keep them occupied. The rear cargo area can accommodate: luggage for five; film-making gear; a month’s grocery shopping; or firewood aplenty (with the backseat folded forward). It’s a workhorse, baby, and it can take on any job you throw at it.<\/p>\n

I know that, alloys aside, we’ve got a stock Camry. But there’s something about our ‘wagon that makes it stand out from the rest of the ‘wagons out there.<\/p>\n

And you know what it is? They’re not sportswagons.<\/p>\n

(This post started out as a bit of a love-post in 2007. I thought I’d published it ages ago but obviously haven’t. So why now? The Camry is about to be retired. We added 200,000+kms to the odometer, traversed State Highway 1 innumerable times in it, and it has long been Fortress Mamea’s faithful and reliable war- and work-horse. A farewell ceremony involving fish ‘n’ chips and lipstick is scheduled in the very near future.<\/i>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Almost ten years ago, we acquired a second-hand, New Zealand-new stationwagon. The Boy, seven at the time, took one look at the Advanti Racing alloy-shod Camry 220 GL and declared it a sportswagon. I suppose when you’re seven and you’re a Holden V8 fan with a cap and jacket to prove it, you make do … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Camry Sportswagon”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4,193],"tags":[45,1047,315],"class_list":["post-3969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scriptwriting","category-stuff","tag-camry-sportswagon","tag-fortress-mamea","tag-the-boy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3969"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3982,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969\/revisions\/3982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}