highway performance

im a little worried about my car on the highway, i have a 5 speed manual and it goes a little over 3000 rpms at around 70 mph on the highway at cruising speeds, is this normal? my mom's automatic camry only cruises at about 2000 rpms at 70 mph on the highway, so is my car actually working harder to stay at 70 mph?? thanks

Perfectly normal. Is your 5-speed a 4 cylinder and your mom's Camry a V6? You'll, quite often, see smaller engine cars with lower gear ratios. V6s have enough torque to be geared so they can hum along at 70 MPH at 2000 RPMs. Your car is working no harder than your mom's car. So, no need to worry. Your car will last just as long as your mom's Camry if you take care of it.

the only thing is you might be getting lower fuel economy. higher rpm=higher consumption. this is just the gearing of your car. i'd be worried if it was a modern car that was reving at say 4500 or 5000 rpm at 70.

Overdrive transmission, the future is now. But like said above... yeah.

plus gear ratios differ between manual and auto trannys, two big reasons IMHO are manual transmission commonly have one more gear then autos and the added power from the torque converter in an automatic transmission allows higher gear raitos with approxmently the same amount of low speed torque.