Toyota Camry Hybrid: No mountain goat

How many times have you seen the bumper sticker "This car climbed Mount Washington"?

I drove our well-traveled Toyota Camry Hybrid on the eight-mile Mount Washington Auto Road in beautiful Gorham, New Hampshire, to show my wife and two sons the vista from the 6,288-foot peak. The views while driving up were remarkable, but at an average gradient of 12 percent, we knew the ride down was going to be hairy. Throughout the descent, there are many signs warning  drivers to use their car's low gearing to avoid riding and overheating the brakes. And
while the Camry Hybrid's CVT offers a gear position called "B" for engine braking, plunking the transmission selector into that position didn't help much.

According to CR Auto Test's Senior Engineer Rick Small, you shouldn't be surprised not getting much engine braking under these conditions:

"Because of the very slow speeds going down these steep hills, you're not going to get much engine braking unless you have a manual transmission," says Small. "Most modern-day transmissions are geared to save fuel and tend to disengage to be more efficient; that is, they almost seem like they're going into neutral."

The key here is that the automakers don't want the transmission to drag much at all, since that costs fuel economy.

"With CVTs, they have ratios that maximize fuel economy even more. And even though the Camry Hybrid gives you the 'B' for engine braking, it's really more useful when you're driving closer to highway speeds. On a long downgrade on a highway, it will slow you down some," says Small.

Even the Camry's owner's manual states "During high speed driving you may feel that engine braking is less effective than that of [a] conventional vehicle."

We didn't burn up the Camry's brakes going down the mountain by any means, but I certainly wouldn't have minded a bit more resistance from the CVT. Modern brakes don't fade as much as they used to; older cars used to fade noticeably under these conditions. Still, it was worth the trip to see the place described as "Home of the world's worst weather."

--Mike Quincy