DON'T COUNT YOUR CHICKS; A Sportier suspension, bigger engine, new body should appeal to a broader audience.

Byline: MARK VAUGHN

"We don't want it to be a chick car,'' said a Toyota Solara program executive.

Hey, some of our best friends are chicks. They have pretty good credit, too, and they're buying cars all over the place now. In fact, almost 60 percent of Solara sales go to chicks. You could say chicks dig the Solara. It's just that Toyota wants to sell even more Solaras, so the new one has to have a broader appeal.

In the first half of this year Toyota had to add $500 in incentives to move Solaras out the door. The 2004 model you see here, on sale now, is new from the ground up. Toyota wants it to appeal to chicks, dudes and whoever else can pony up the nearly $20,000 entry price.

To do that, the designers made the new Solara sportier than the old model. It inherits all the platform improvements that first appeared under the new Camry, so it starts with a stiffer chassis. To that is added a "performance-tuned suspension,'' which, in this case, is a relative term-even the sportiest Camry is still a Camry. So don't look for a performance coupe. But this is certainly the sportiest Camry ever made.

The starting point was actually the Camry SC. The suspension geometry is the same as the SC, but the Solara has stiffer bushings and optimized springs and shocks. That doesn't mean every suspension component is stiffer, but everything taken together is aimed at a more responsive feel. The standard tag line at the product intro was that every mounting and pivot point between the suspension and the body was repositioned and recalibrated.

In that sporty vein, the entry-level SE model comes standard with 16-inch alloy wheels, replacing the 15-inchers from the previous model. Along with its own sport-tuned suspension, called the SE Sport Grade, 17-inch wheels are available on the SE and SLE V6 for the first time.