This past week I came back from my trip to the NYWC in Atlanta with a friend and we had rented a car to go down there. We ended up getting a Ford Fusion and since I own a Toyota Camry it was like a took the Ford Challenge and swapped my ride. You can read on the Ford website all these testimonies of people who officially took the challenge, but I like the fact that I had my own opportunity to do so.

First off, I was not impressed at all with the comfort of the Ford Fusion. My Camry is much more comfortable. My family took it when we went up north this past summer and it was a much easier to drive, more comfortable, smoother, and a quieter car to drive in than the Fusion was on my trip down to Atlanta. They both have basically the same size space for passengers, but the Camry felt much bigger.

And my Camry, which is a base model, has much more creature comforts on it’s base model then the Fusion did in it’s base model that we had. In fact, the Fusion looked very cheap compared to the Camry.

Secondly, I was not impressed with the gas mileage on the Fusion. It only gets 20 mpg in the city and 28 on the highway and my Camry gets 21 mpg in the city and 31 on the highway, according to their respective websites. And when you are traveling about 800 miles round trip every extra little bit counts.

But the last thing has sold me on the Camry over the Fusion was the fact that while driving down to Atlanta we pretty much drove right by the plant where the Camry is made. If we wanted to go by the plant where the Fusion is made we would have had to go much further south and quite a bit west, Mexico to be exact. So why would I want to invest my money in a supposed American car that supports Mexican jobs, when I could buy the “foreign” car that supports American workers? It really is a simple decision if you ask me.

Sure people will say, “but where do the profits go?” And my response to that is that I do not give a crap where a couple of hundred CEO’s play golf at, but I do care about the sevreal thousand American workers being able to feed their families. Isn’t that more important?

So my result in the Ford Challenge is that you can keep your foreign car and I will gladly drive my American Camry.