Bright, sunny day, soft Japanese music, some good food along the way, and a very comfortable bus ride up the smooth roads set amidst leafy green mountains of Kamitsue, near Kumamoto. Soon, we are at the 4.67km Autopolis circuit, where I’ll be driving a bunch of new Toyotas today. We have the Camry (in three different engine / transmission combos…), a Lexus SC430, a Landcruiser Prado, and even a slightly outlandish Estima, which is a petrol-engine/ electric motor hybrid! Can’t wait to get going, but first a small briefing session by the cautious Japanese, who want to make sure that I’ll still be alive after the tests. Can’t blame them, so bring on the legal disclaimers, and let’s get on with it then…
Here, I shall only talk about the Camry. This is Toyota’s big seller worldwide, and has been the best-selling ‘family sedan’ in the US for the last half-decade! Has to be worth something, no? Here, on the Autopolis circuit, we had two cars that had 4-
cylinder engines, and one that was equipped with a V6. Though I drove the automatic 4-pot Camry first, what really got my attention was the Manual. Now that was some car! Fitted with a 2.4litre DOHC in-line four, producing 159 horses at 5600revs, the Manual Camry smoked its tyres from the word go, and went like a bat out of hell! It’s Automatic cousin, which I had driven just an hour prior to this one, hadn’t made any huge impression on me – a big, comfortable, Japanese luxury sedan, and that was about it – but the manual gearbox seemed to change the character of the car completely!
The Camry does come off as a bit bland when looked at from the outside, but the interiors are quite up to scratch. Well-finished, well-equipped, and comfortable enough for five adults. The 4-speed Auto was efficient, but it was the precise and notch-free 5-speed Manual that was the star of the show. With 16-inch wheels, adequate rubber, and moderately firm suspension – MacPherson struts at the front,
and coil springs at the rear – the Camry could be thrown around with abandon. The Autopolis was a fairly ‘technical track’, and it would have taken time and lots of laps to learn the circuit really well, but given the limited time and limited number of laps, getting up to reasonable speeds in the Camry still wasn’t a problem.
At the limit, the car would gently drift all four wheels across corners, but refused to misbehave. Twice, the rear came around in high speed third-gear corners, but a whiff of opposite lock, and things were back in shape – no worries. The steering could have been a bit more precise, but maybe it was the fact that we were on a no-holds-barred racing circuit, which in turn also meant that the car was being pushed harder than it ever would be, on the street, which makes me say that. On the supersmooth surface of the circuit, the Camry handled well, and was comfy enough, but how the ride-comfort/handling equation would be on the street, especially our roads, I can’t say. Wait till I get to spend more time with the car…!
The VVT-i (Variable Valve Timing – intelligent) engine was a gem – very freerevving, smooth, and tractable throughout the rev-range. Some engines with Variable Valve Timing in some avatar or the other (Honda’s VTEC, for example…) can be just a tad ‘peaky’, but this was not the case with the
Camry engine – the 159 horses were spread out nicely all over the rev range. If anything, you could, if you were so inclined, prompt the engine to overpower the running gear. In lower gears, the Camry can be made to dance whichever way you like, and you can make the tail step out at will! Yes, the Manual Camry was boatloads of fun! As for noise, well, the four-cylinder engine is surprisingly quiet! You
can feel some vibes inside the cabin, but you have to really be on a fault-finding mission for that. Yes, the larger 3.0litre V6 was certainly smoother and more in keeping with the demands of a relaxed luxury cruiser, but in spite of that engine producing about 190 horses, which is a fair bit more than what the 4-pot engine was producing, I still preferred the latter!
I can’t say this enough, the 4-pot Manual Camry scored the highest in the fun-to-drive stakes! And if the fun got out of hand, you could rest assured that the ABS (standard
fitment) and EBD (which distributes braking forces optimally, between the front and rear wheels…) combo would bail you out. Then there is also the usual brace of SRS airbags front and rear, so you are quite safe really…
If the Camry comes here, what are its chances of success? Fair, I would say. The car itself is quite competent, and the Toyota name has a lot going for it in this country. In the looks department, the Camry’s styling is a bit bland – no getting away from it – but the interiors are well-appointed, and the level of fit and finish seemed to be quite good!
Still, it would help even more if Toyota had been more adventurous with the styling. The Honda Accord, for example, has a much better engine than the Hyundai Sonata, but most people I talk to, prefer the Sonata, just because it looks the way it does. V6 or inline-4? At the price which Toyota would have to sell this car (to stay competitive with Honda, Hyundai, Skoda, and Ford etc…), I don’t think the V6 would be a realistic option, but the four is quite adequate really. Overall, the Camry is a very
good package – bring it on!