Let us tell you how good this inline four-cylinder engine is. Ray drove the car for four days, including a long-distance highway trip. And the whole time, he thought he was driving the V6 Camry. Seriously. It was so smooth and powerful, that he was sure it had two extra cylinders. Toyota says it expects 75 percent of new Camry sales to be with four cylinder engines. It should be 95 percent.

The smoother, more powerful engine is just one of the improvements in the new 2002 Camry. The new Camry is longer, wider, taller, and, believe it or not, cheaper. We drove the LE four-door sedan, which has a cars.com target price of $19,281, $815 less than this year's LE. Faced with new competition from the bigger, redesigned Nissan Altima, and the upcoming redesign of the Honda Accord, Toyota decided to push itself a bit and really improve the best-selling car in the country. And they did it. The Camry--as good as it was--is now better. As odd as it sounds, the Camry is America's car. It's a basic, competent, affordable, reliable four-door family sedan that does everything well. It's just about perfect.

The only rap on the Camry in the past is that it was boring. Horribly boring. They said if you drove a Camry long enough, you'd scream out of boredom, and nobody would hear you because of the excellent sound insulation in your Camry. And for 2002, Toyota set out to lose the "boring" label. Well, this was the only area in which the vaunted Toyota engineers failed, in our humble opinion. It's a little less boring, but we're here to report that it's still a Camry. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Styling is the area in which you most notice the attempted boring-ectomy. The new Camry is definitely swoopier, in addition to being longer and taller. It's gone from inoffensive to, well, stylishly, inoffensive. It's perfectly pleasant looking. In the same way a Buick is perfectly pleasant looking. But it's not going to be a problem to show pictures of this car to heart patients. It doesn't have an innovative or distinctive shape. You wouldn't see a silhouette of this car and say "That can't be anything but a Camry!"

But--news flash--people aren't going to buy Camrys because of their looks. They buy Camrys because they're reliable and competent. And Toyota had to make sure that the new styling wouldn't offend the hundreds of thousands of people who already buy Camrys every year. That's why the styling is still relatively mild. Better, but mild.

Toyota has modified the inline four-cylinder engine in the Camry, by making changes that boost the horsepower about 15 percent to 157 hp--that's a lot of horsepower out of a four-cylinder engine. It's also incredibly smooth. Passing is effortless, and it's easy to find yourself doing 80 mph. Unless you frequently find yourself carrying around large loads (like your mother-in-law), we think there's no reason to get the optional V6. Not only is the inline four-cylinder more than adequate, but maintenance and repair will be less expensive, and your mileage will be slightly better.

The new Camry is not a handling demon. And why should it be? BMW has the handling-demon-market. The Camry is a family car. And in everyday driving, on regular roads and highways, it handles very well. It's steering and cornering are predictable and competent. The handling does feel a little tighter, and the suspension a little sportier than previous Camrys. Again, this is part of the attempted boring-ectomy. Another partial success. But you still won't buy a Camry to hit the curvy mountain roads. You'll buy it to go to work and get your family from place to place. And it'll perform flawlessly for you in that regard.

As usual, Toyota's ergonomics are excellent. Everything is where you would expect it to be. There's nothing cockamamie here. Controls are easy to find and easy to use, and have a quality feel. One amusing discovery: The remote control on the key fob works at considerable distance. We discovered this when Tommy parked the Camry in the underground garage at Boston Common--and immediately forgot where he parked it. After meandering around for 10 minutes, we decided to try the remote control. One hundred yards away, we heard a faint beep of the locks opening.

The Camry's primary competition has been the Ford Taurus and the Honda Accord. Our experience working in the garage has been that the Camrys are less trouble than either of these two vehicles. Toyota has a great reputation for reliability, and the Camry should be pretty much trouble-free for a long time.

If you stick to the inline four-cylinder version of the Camry, you should find it will be easy to service and maintain. The V6, with a significant number of additional engine components and less room in the engine compartment, will be more of a challenge. Overall, however, the new Camry should be a fairly simple car to service, and should require repair less often than other cars.

Will any new customers buy the Camry because of the styling change? We doubt it. But they have plenty of people eager to buy the Camry as it is. If the styling brings in more people than it turns off, it was a good decision. In any case, styling or not, the new Camry is a clear winner. It's taller, wider, longer, and cheaper. And the upgraded four-cylinder engine is terrific. It was a great car and they made it even better. If you need a four-door sedan, and reliability is a key concern, you can't do better than a Toyota Camry.