This is a guest post by James from Car Throttle - your performance car experts!
A favorite genre of many auto fiends is the “sleeper” - a car that looks like grandma’s Mercury but goes like stink. In this day and age of flashy, showy performance - with all the standard body kits, huge spoilers and obnoxious red badging automakers seem to believe belong on performance cars, the sleeper is a dying breed. The streets used to be littered with them, too. Buick Regal T-Types with Grand National running gear and a freaking landau roof, Galant VR-4’s with turbocharged 4G63’s and 4WD stuffed into an innocuous Galant body, heck - even the Fox-body Mustang LX 5.0 was a sleeper, with the thundering fuel-injected 302ci “5.0″ (actually a 4.9L) V8 but none of the GT’s plastic trashy bodywork.
Still, for those that would rather not have any show with their go, there are still sleepers left to pick from - if you know where to look. Sometimes you have to look in the strangest of places, but you can find burly horsepower under the hood of some unassuming cars these days. Let’s take a look at the top ten.
10) Toyota Camry SE V6
“A Camry? Really?” I know, I know. The Camry is the equivalent of the Antichrist to anyone that actually likes cars. But that makes it the perfect sleeper, at least in SE V6 trim. You see, under the hood is a very modern 3.5L 24v V6, which makes a rather considerable 268 horsepower coupled with a 6-speed auto.
Without a doubt, the rest of the car is mind-numbingly boring - but if you’re after velvety-smooth horsepower and strong mid-range in an utterly unassuming wrapper, the Camry SE V6 has got you covered. Just remember to take a No-Doz on long trips… the Camry might’ve misunderstood what “sleeper” means, and when you’re not smoking tires with your torquey V6, it’s likely to put you to sleep. Fast enough to embarrass a V6 Mustang, and good enough for 10th place. Continue Reading…
