• The Solara is the two-door version of the Toyota Camry, but its styling makes it look much more like a bigger version of the Lexus SC430 than a sedan with two fewer doors.
• Our test drive of the 2004 Toyota Solara coincided with the Copperstate 1000 vintage road rally, so we were able to exercise the coupe in wonderful company on a thousand-mile tour of Arizona.
• Wheels, tires, lowered suspension and modified exhaust from Toyota Racing Development enhanced the appearance and performance of our Solara.

The directions in the route book for the 2004 Copperstate 1000 rally were clear and concise: "Turn right onto SR-260 and enjoy the 31 miles to Camp Verde."

We did just as we were instructed, and that 31-mile drive to Camp Verde was one of the most memorable we've ever experienced.

The road descends out of Arizona's Mogollon Plateau and winds down through the Buckskin Hills before dropping steeply into the Verde Valley, where the red rock formations surrounding Sedona appear on the horizon. It's one glorious view after another as you motor down the two-lane road, but our view was enhanced by the company we were keeping. We were traveling in a pack of Copperstate 1000 participants.

Harry and Cris Mathews were setting the pace in their ruby-colored 1971 Ferrari Daytona Coupe. Keeping up very smartly with the fast Ferrari were Bob Law and Joan Dohrmann in Bob's 1958 Chrysler 300D, the last of the original Hemis, and this one riding on racing shocks and Pirelli tires and handling like no big-finned fifties' car we'd ever seen.

Next in line were Dana and Kelly Woudenberg in their 1968 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500, one of only 402 convertible versions ever built.

Directly in front of my car, and sending back an amazing sound track to accompany the visual display, were Michael Hammer and John Reaves in Hammer's motorcycle-fendered 1927 Bentley Gibbs Pancheri 4.5-liter World Traveler racer.

Through long, sweeping curves, I could see all four cars ahead of me, and when I glanced in my rear view mirror there was the gorgeous grille and finely featured front end of Dave and Chris Buecker's 1960 Jaguar XK150 fixed-head coupe, chrome gleaming against the car's bright red hood and fenders.

The Copperstate 1000 vintage car rally coincided with my weeklong test drive in a 2004 Toyota Solara SE. But this was not just any Solara SE. Wearing such bright paint that Toyota terms it Absolutely Red, this Solara's performance was absolutely amazing, thanks to some bolt-on equipment courtesy of Toyota Racing Development.

The Solara SE normally rides on 17-inch wheels and 215/55-aspect tires, and what Toyota calls "sport tuned" suspension. Buyers can chose between a hard top coupe and convertible roof.

This Solara had the hard top, plus an optional power tilt/slide moonroof, but it also had 18-inch TRD alloys wrapped with 225/45 Michelin Pilot Sport tires, and its stance and center of gravity were further enhanced by a set of TRD lowering springs.

While the 3.3-liter, 24-valve V6 engine hadn't been tweaked, its 225 horsepower and 240 pound-feet of torque flowed more freely, thanks to a TRD sport muffler that let the car sound, well, not quite like the Bentley, but a lot better than your standard issue Camry-based coupe.

The Solara SE coupe carries a base price of $22,945. The moonroof adds $900 and the one I tested also had nearly $200 in optional floor and trunk mats. Add in the TRD enhancements -- $2,869 for the wheels and tires, $411 for the muffler and $247 for the springs - and the bottom line is still only $26,473.31, including delivery fees.

The 2004 Solara will never achieve the collector status of the cars in the Copperstate 1000 vintage rally - after all, Hammer's Bentley or Michael and Katharina Leventhal's 1953 Ferrari 340 MM Comp Le Mans Spyder or David Duthu's 1952 Jaguar XK 120 SE racer are hardly mass-produced vehicles - but you might be hard pressed to recognize the Solara as what it really is: a Camry coupe.

With its high waistline and a hot-rod style chopped top, the Solara looks less like a Camry sedan with two fewer doors and more like a larger version of the Lexus SC430. As it just so happened, former Indy and Le Mans racer Lyn St. James drove a SC430 as grand marshal of the Copperstate 1000, which was sponsored by Bell Lexus, a Phoenix dealership, is presented by Premier Financial Services, benefits the Phoenix Art Museum and also contributes to state police charities.

Some of the Solara's design details are very artistic, such as the almost sculptural aspect of the rocket-shaped rear amber lights.

While the interior is nicely trimmed in silver and carbon colors, the switchgear is presented in an manner that makes its use intuitive, though it takes a while to get used to the three-eyed - and eye-browed - appearance presented by the trip computer, clock and exterior temperature readouts and sit top center on the dashboard.

While we would have liked a manual gearbox for better control on the tight curves up in the mountains of eastern Arizona, we had no complaints about the standard, manually adjusted and cloth-covered seats that were bolstered well enough to hold us in place as we hustled through those curves.

We also discovered that while the five-speed automatic transmission was fine for the open road, it was hesitant to accept manual downshifts unless we first made a quick, brief stab on the brake pedal.

Speaking of brakes, the Solara SE V6 comes standard with four-wheel discs, with anti-lock technology and they worked very well as we set the car for turns.

Front-wheel drive cars tend toward understeer, but the lowered and tweaked suspension, rack-and-pinion steering gear and the Michelin tires kept the car nicely balanced throughout the thousand-mile tour.

The Solara's 3.3-liter V6 is rated not only at 225 horsepower and 240 pound-feet of torque, but at 20 miles per gallon in town and 29 on the open road. But those EPA figures are devised while testing a fairly conservative speed ranges. We often were free to run at substantial yet safe speeds for prolonged periods, but still averaged 25.4, 26.8, 27.6 and 29.4 mpg for the four tanks of fuel we burned as we pushed the car much harder than the typical Toyota owner.

The event over, we turned back to town, to more routine traffic. But we came home with wonderful memories, and with a new appreciation for our tweaked Toyota coupe.