Dangling Conversations, Dangling Participles - now this...

If you are particularly observant about cars - or if you happened to be in that Mercury Grand Marquis rental car a group of my colleagues and I drove from San Francisco to Monterey for the Ford Mustang Boss 302 press launch a couple of months ago - you’ll recognize this car as a Toyota Camry.

How?

By the exhaust pipe hanging way below the underfloor of the car.

Not to pick on Toyota or anything. The world’s biggest car maker has taken a few shots recently, but overall, they do build very good cars.

But one thing has always intrigued me: Why does Toyota seem incapable of building a sedan with an exhaust system that doesn't dangle several centimetres below the floorpan?

It’s like they were channelling their inner Austin-Healey (a reference for you veterans out there…).

They aren't built this way - they just seem to get this way very soon after delivery.

Typically, it's the centre part of the pipe, between the axles, that gets all droopy. The pipe isn't broken - the cars don't make undue noise, so the owner (who would seldom drive behind his own car and can't see it otherwise) wouldn't even know.

I first started noticing this with the 1992-1996 generation Camry which, by any other standard, was probably the best car you will ever be able to buy for anywhere near the price.

That’s because it was also engineered to be the first ‘real’ mid-size Lexus (sold as the ES300; earlier ES models were basically Camrys with more lipstick and rouge).

Subsequent generations of Camry have had bundles of cost taken out of them so the car could remain cost-competitive with the likes of Honda Accord, and the company still make money.

The dangling exhaust system remains.

Lexus quality and reputation notwithstanding, I've also seen this on the Lexus ES300, and on the Toyota Avalon, both of which share the Camry platform.

Now, is this simply a function of normal wear-and-tear as the cars age, and the fact that it seems so prevalent on Camrys is a reflection on how long Toyotas keep running?

There may be a component of that.

But you see lots of older Honda Accords or even Pontiac 6000s and Ford Taurusses, and it's nowhere near as bad on them.

I've also seen it on the current generation Camry, which can't be much more than two or three years old. And just the other day on a current Lexus ES too.

The second-most common car with this concern appears to be the Corolla, which suggests that it's a Toyota thing, not exclusively a Camry thing.

I just spent two weeks in Australia where the Camry is also popular, and I did not notice it there. Is it maybe just a North American Toyota thing?

I once asked a US-based Toyota engineer about this. He sort of sighed - might have been a bit of an eye-roll too - and mumbled a little, as if to indicate that he knew they had an issue, but that they either didn’t have an answer, or it wasn’t high enough on their priority list.

Has anybody out there had this happen to their Camry (or Corolla)?

Anybody got an explanation?

And if you haven’t noticed this before, I bet you’re going to notice it now.

Sorry.

Comments

[Gordon Sleigh]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has been noticing this for years, but I had no idea it wasn't by design. It's so prevalent I just assumed it was poor design from the get go... which I guess it really is, just not the way I'd assumed!

[Emro]

I have noticed this for years... i always thought they were built that way...

[B McInnis]

I have an 8 year old Camry and have seen this on mine and many others. It runs and sounds fine and has never been caught up on speed bumps or anything. My trailer hitch does get hit once in a while as it has to loop around the tail pipe of the Camry.
Seems to me they where made this way because I see it all the time.

[Greg H]

Jim, I have also noticed this on the Camry's starting from the 92-96 generation. I thought the exhaust pipe had an odd downward bend in it right under the rear axle centerline. And this is puzzling, because it looks like there's lots of clearance to any chassis or body parts.

I thought maybe there was something temperature sensitive in that area so they were giving the exhaust a lot of clearance. It's unlikely owners will see this on their own cars anyway, as you pointed out.

Does it have to do with assembly of the car in some way? Required clearance to fit the exhaust into the body, but excess clearance once it's actually installed.

[NS]

I've noticed this on our Corolla 97, I'm pretty sure it was normal once but several years ago it appeared out of nowhere and now it's like the rest of them. Finally someone beings this to light because I though I was the only one.

[lokay5]

I've also noticed this design flaw. Reason being that when I've had custom or stock exhaust systems installed, one of the primary goals of any exhaust installer is to avoid this obvious mistake.
To me it's just an indicator of the integrity, or lack thereof, of the Toyota system's design.

[CGS cat back exhaust]

It would really be dangerous if it stayed that way. But somehow in someway, I have never heard of anything regarding bumping the exhausts on humps, either.