Australian Car Advice | News Blog

Many would assume the honor of being crowned Australia’s best-selling locally-produced car would be a photo finish between the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon.

However according to figures released today by Toyota, the best-selling Australian-made car is in fact the humble Camry sedan.

Toyota Camry TRD - 2008 Detroit Auto Show

Toyota Racing & Development has its way with the humble Toyota Camry.

The end result is basically bigger wheels, leather seats and a sunroof with no power increase. A bit of a disappointment for a car with a TRD badge.

On another note Toyota and Microsoft seem to be having a bad partnership to lead the way…

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It seems Toyota has acknowledged consumer demands and produced a rear-wheel drive high performance version of the Camry - with a twist.

Alas this  Camry-sourced drag car, which can reach speeds of up to 354km/h and covers the 0-100km/h sprint in under a second has little in common with the  roadgoing car of the same name.

Reports from the U.S. today suggest the king of reliability - Toyota - is starting to lose some of its thunder.

Consumer Reports, a U.S. based non-profit study into vehicle reliability, today admitted it will no longer practice recommending all new Toyota cars and trucks automatically.

We have complained, we have begged, we have criticised, and Toyota has finally listened. Announcing the news today, Toyota Australia has enabled Vehicle Stability Control (VSC) and Traction Control (TRC) as standard equipment across the entire Camry range.

“Our research quite clearly shows that one of the major purchase triggers in the medium four-cylinder market is safety.” said David Buttner, Toyota Australia’s senior executive director sales and marketing.

This is great news for a car which continues to dominate the medium passenger car segment. Figures from end July show 15,084 new owners have taken a Toyota Camry home this year.

Previously only available on the top of the range Grande variant, all other variants (Altise, Ateva and Sportivo) built from this month will now include the life-saving technology for a small fee. For the Altise the price rises by $490 for both auto/man while the Ateva and Sportivo are hit with a $750 increase.

The VSC system is similar to ESP (ESC, DSC etc) as it stabilises the vehicle during cornering. Traction control on the other hand, will ensure the front wheels do not lose traction on wet surfaces.

“buyers are risk averse, and are expecting technology such as VSC and TRC to be included as standard equipment on an increasing number of models”. Mr Buttner continued.

The latest safety pack comes after many motoring organizations voiced their concerns over the lack of life-saving technology. The Toyota Camry already comes standard with Active Braking with Intelligence (AB-i), which incorporates ABS anti-skid brakes with Brake Assist (BA), and Electronic Brakeforce Distribution (EBD).

To celebrate the news, Toyota have given customers a choice of three new colours - Tungsten, available across the range, Sakana, available on Camry Altise, Ateva and Grande, and Inferno, which will be available on Sportivo models.

Now, when will we see the same technology on the brand new Toyota Corolla, Australia’s number one selling car?

Yesterday GoAuto published an interview with Toyota’s senior executive director of sales and marketing, David Buttner who strongly suggested that a Toyota Camry or Aurion Hybrid are being strongly considered.

Better yet, there is a good chance the Hybrid variant will be built right here in Australia. With Kevin Rudd’s labor promising a $500 million dollar “green fund” to support the production of locally made alternative fuel vehicles (if it wins the next election), Toyota is keen to produce the Hybrids right here in Australia.

“We’ve spoken in the past about the potential of building a hybrid vehicle locally – either a Camry or an Aurion – and we’re still very interested in pursuing that because we believe the momentum is very much there in relation to concerns about the environment and the long-term sustainability of the automotive world if we just rely on straight gasoline-powered engines,” Mr Buttner told GoAuto.

What will a Hybrid Camry/Aurion mean for the Ford Falcon & Holden Commodore? Current GM Holden Boss Denny Mooney recently announced Holden is looking at both Hybrid and Diesel variants for its popular Commodore, meanwhile Ford is looking at Hydrogen for the future.

Read the full interview at GoAuto.

The new Toyota Camry undergoes crash testing here in Australia.

The crash test model is the current model in the Australian market.

2007 Toyota Camry Sportivo – Road Test

Test model: Toyota Camry Sportivo with five-speed automatic transmission

Options fitted:

• Leather trim $1500 – It’s nice and supple and at this price you might consider it if you had small kids
• Moonroof $1650 – Again, this is on the low side as far as electric roofs go, and adds another level of luxury to the car

Recommended retail price: $34,500 (without the options above) although you can get the Sportivo with a manual transmission for $33,000

On road price: Around $37,800 but Toyota plays in the volume game with Camry, so it would pay to shop around.

Warranty: Standard Toyota 3 Years, 100,000km. It’s not the industry leader, but with reliability a core brand value of Toyota, you shouldn’t have any worries.

Where the car sits: The new Camry comes in four varieties and the Sportivo sits ahead of the softer riding Altise and Alteva but under the lush, Grande variant.

“Is there a four-cylinder car out there which offers a better overall package in terms of affordability, comfort, driveability, reliability and style than the new Camry Sportivo? NO!”

You’ve got to admit, it’s a good looking car this new Sportivo, from all angles. I thought the superseded Camry Sportivo was a bit of a non-event in terms of sports styling and driveability, but this new model appears to be a quantum leap, and rightly so.

Toyota is a hugely successful car company by any standards and with huge resources, both in technical and head count terms. Back in 1986 they had just clocked up the 50 millionth car produced in Japan and by 1999,Toyota had produced 100 million cars with annual overseas sales exceeding 3 million units. That’s a lot of Yen!

So successful have they been in fact, that the famous Harvard Business School has written a number of papers trying to work out why Toyota is so successful at building cars in comparison to their US counterparts.

Camry has been part of that success for many years, reaching 10 million units in 2005. The model can also boast as the top-selling car in the United States for eight of the last nine years, and that’s no mean feat in the land where ‘made in America’ stands for patriotism.

Success of the Camry four-cylinder continues in Australia with average annual sales of 23,500 cars since 1991. It’s a double barrelled success in Australia as the cars are made here for the both the domestic and export market. The USA is the largest manufacturer of Camry in the world with Australia coming in second ahead of Japan, and that “means a great deal to Australia”.

You’ve got to wonder as to who’s buying large family cars like the Commodore and Falcon these days, given the high cost of automotive ownership usually proportional to size, both body and engine size, that is. Toyota has aimed Camry squarely at the medium segment which in reality is probably the new ‘large’ segment in Australia.

It goes without saying, Toyota seems to have impeccable timing when it comes to launching new models and they’ve hit the jackpot with the new Camry. With recent fuel prices at record highs and a per litre cost steady at $1.10 plus, Toyota releases their new family size Camry as a four-cylinder econo-model only. Touché

I’m sure you’ll agree that we as Australians are pretty careful when it comes to money. I mean, we appreciate value for money, and that’s exactly what you get with Camry. We’ve been getting that deal from Toyota for more than few years now, but what we haven’t been getting from them, is style and good looks which the European car makers provide in spades. Finally, Camry has delivered the gold standard when it comes to affordable family cars. We can probably thank Toyota’s super-premium Lexus division for the some of the design accents on the new model, but with this car, you get the whole box and dice, particularly with the Sportivo.

Whereas previous Camry’s were all fairly conservative, the sixth generation of the model steps outside the square, offering smooth flowing lines and perhaps a hint of BMW styling at the rear end of the car.

There’s no mistaking the Sportivo with its distinct black honeycomb-style grille, aero body kit, 17 inch alloys, tinted headlight covers, rear lip spoiler and chrome exhaust tip. It’s interesting to note though, that in the US, the equivalent Sportivo version (SE) is also lowered by 10mm providing a more serious stance to the car.

Inside, you’ll notice the alloy sports pedals and scuff plates on both front door sills. It really does look the business.

Whilst Toyota has upped the power slightly to 117kW, which is about all they can get out of this tried and proven 2.4-litre powerplant, they have worked even harder on the suspension setup. Springs, shocks and stabilizer bars have been stiffened and there is a rear suspension stabilizing brace behind the rear seats which translates into way better cornering manners than its predecessor.

This car is rock solid over poor roads with absolutely no rattles and a ride quality beyond its price point. Of course, you can’t have everything, and with increased handling capabilities you’ll have to forfeit some practicality and do without the 60:40 split fold rear seats, much like Mitsubishi’s 380. All this added suspension work means the Sportivo tracks well and provides excellent steering feedback and is a vast improvement over the previous model.
There’s even a dose of Toyota Formula One built into the Sportivo. The car’s underbody has been designed with aerodynamics in mind and is relatively flat, providing increased downforce and excellent high-speed stability which is a good thing if you jump on our highways every now and again.

It’s a pity that Toyota chose not to increase the power of the Sportivo over the Altise and Alteva, even slightly, as the chassis is clearly capable of dealing with a few more Kilowatts. It’s not quite ‘all show and no go’ in fact, once underway, the Sportivo has plenty of ‘go’ for general duties, but has to work hard if you need to move quickly from a standing start.

It’s quiet too. Even under load, this car seems well insulated from engine and road noise and at highway speed limits, the car is surprisingly quiet and smooth, given its four-cylinder powerplant.

Multiple-speed auto transmissions are all the rage these days with Lexus taking first prize with its world’s first, eight-speed automatic transmission which it employs in the super-luxury LS460. The Camry Sportivo gets a new five-speed auto transmission which along with the electronic throttle, provides quick shifts and smooth gear changes. The transmission is mated to intelligent control software which allows the driver the option of driving in the ‘D’ mode or manual style using the gated shift.

The “new” Camry styling continues inside and while the interior won’t leave you breathless, you’d have to say its “nice” and highly functional. There’s a generous dose of patterned metal highlights throughout the car, including front stack and doors, which provide an upscale feel. Clearly, there’s been some intelligent thought into the design of even the basic features. I particularly like how the power window controls are angled toward the driver (and passengers) and the fact that the digital clock is mounted high on top of the dash allowing a glance without losing site of the road. It’s also easily read in extreme sunlight.

Overall, the centre stack and general instrument display has a quality feel and look to it, that’s on par with the Honda Euro and Mazda 6. Worth a mention too, are the self-lit Optitron gauges which have been a Lexus feature for a few years and now grace the Camry range.

You won’t need to tick many options boxes on the Sportivo, it comes with all the good stuff! For starters, there’s a six disc in dash CD changer with MP3 capability and six speakers (although an auxiliary jack receptor to plug an iPod into would seem fair play these days). Nonetheless, it’s a clever system, with good quality sound and you’d be excused if you thought a reasonably sized sub-woofer was on board given the strong bass. No subwoofer, just Psychoacoustics, and that alone simulates a decent base sound.

There’s power everything as you expect these days, with the added bonus of power seats for the driver and front passenger. The Sportivo also wins a multi-functional leather sports steering wheel that provides a good grip, as well as leather gear shift knob and park-brake handle. Auto on/off headlights is standard across the Camry range and a tick for that, although for me, the auto wipers-on function which is standard on the Grande, should be part of the same package, given the safety benefit of that particular function.

Sadly, rear parking sensors are not standard on any of the new Camry’s, not even the lush specked out Grande. In fact, they are a $900 plus option! After market parking sensors can be purchased for as little as $150 for four, and require about an hour’s labour to install. So come on Toyota, how about rear sensors with the next facelift to protect that investment.

With comparatively inexpensive family cars like Camry setting the benchmark for automotive creature comforts by providing so much standard equipment, we tend to be a little spoiled. As such, I’m hoping Satellite Navigation might find its way into the next Camry Sportivo. Well why not, when Aldi supermarkets are advertising portable GPS systems with all the bells and whistles for $399!

The leather Sports seats in the test car look no different to some of the premium Recaro seats on the market, although for some strange reason, I couldn’t get quite comfortable in them. I suspect that this was more to do with the lumbar adjustment than seat design.

Head and leg room are more than sufficient in the new Camry which has more front seat adjustability and travel than the previous model. In fact, the new car offers more overall interior space but with similar proportions to the car it replaces. That’s clever packaging, as the worldwide trend away from large cars looks set to continue for some time yet.

Storage nooks and cup holders of various sizes are plenty, front and back, with a couple of useful little pockets large enough for phones etc mounted each side of the centre stack. There’s also heaps of lighting in the car with illuminated glove box and boot along with map reading lights which are all very convenient and help make this car very easy to live with.

Camry has ‘upped the ante’ in the safety department and the Sportivo gets front side and full length curtain SRS airbags, in addition to the driver and front passenger bags found in the Altise. Other Passive safety features include a new body, which is designed to minimise cabin damage in front and side impacts, together with front seats which employ WIL (whiplash-injury lessening).

Best to avoid accidents altogether though, and on board all new Camry’s is “Active Breaking with intelligence (AB-i) which combines Anti-skid Braking System (ABS) with Electronic Brakeforce Distribution (EBD) and Brake Assist (BA). What this all means, is that under emergency braking, this car should stop in the shortest possible distance while at the same time, allowing you to steer away from the object you are heading towards, even with your foot hard on the brakes.

The top-spec Grande also gets Vehicle Stability Control (VSC) and Traction Control (TRC) but these are two systems I’d like to see on the Sportivo given its sports driving DNA.

At 1470 kg with the automatic transmission, the Camry Sportivo is not a heavy car in comparison to the likes of Commodore and Falcon, which weigh considerably more at close to 1700kg. The advantage here of course, is petrol consumption, and the Sportivo will give you back 9.9 L/100km without really giving anything away to the other cars, other than more power through the gears, but you pay for that privilege every time you fill the tank.

Toyota did exhaustive testing of the new Camry in the harshest Australian conditions and perfection in every area was what the boffins required.

My opening statement stands fast!

Click to view the full specifications of the 2007 Toyota Camry

Anthony Crawford

Toyota has announced that the new generation Toyota Camry will be released this coming monday, 7th August 2006.

Below are some serious technical specifications:

ENGINE
Euro IV compliant
Engine type - Petrol
Engine code - 2AZ-FE
Engine displacement - 2362cc
Engine configuration - 4 cylinder in-line
Valve train - Double Over Head Camshaft (DOHC)
with 4 valves per cylinder

VALVE MECHANISM
Variable Valve Timing with intelligence (VVT-i)
Max. power - 117kW/5700rpm
Max. torque - 218Nm/4000rpm

FUEL
Fuel system - Electronic Fuel Injection (EFI)
Fuel type - 91 RON unleaded
Fuel economy - Manual 8.9 L/100km
Fuel economy - Automatic 9.9 L/100km

EXHAUST
Variable back-pressure muffler

TRANSMISSION
Transmission - 5 speed manual (Altise & Sportivo only)/ 5
Speed Automatic with uphill/downhill control and gated shift
gate (Available on all grades)

STEERING
Steering system - Rack and pinion
Power steering - Hydraulic
Turns lock to lock - 3.2
Turning circle at kerb - 11m

BRAKES
Front - Ventilated discs
Rear - Solid discs
Active Braking with intelligence (AB-i) incorporating
Anti-skid Braking System (ABS) with Electronic
Brakeforce Distribution (EBD) and Brake Assist (BA)

SUSPENSION
Front - Macpherson strut type
Rear - Dual Link strut type

DIMENSIONS
Overall length: 4815
Overall width: 1820
Overall height: 1480
Wheelbase - 2775
Front and rear track - 1575mm/1565mm
Ground clearance - 129mm

WEIGHTS/CAPACITIES
Seating capacity - 5
Fuel tank capacity (litres) - 70
Tare mass (kg)
Altise manual - 1415
Altise automatic - 1450
Ateva automatic - 1460
Sportivo manual- 1430
Sportivo automatic - 1470
Grande automatic - 1480

TOWING CAPACITY
Without trailer brakes - 500kg
With trailer brakes - 1200kg

As Fuel Prices go higher and higher, more and more people are turning away from the traditional Holden Commodores and Ford Falcons and moving towards the likes of Toyota Camry and the ever popular Toyota Corolla.

Toyota should be proud of the Corolla as it has again topped Australia’s motor vehicle sales charts (second month in a row) giving Toyota awell deserved lead over its nearest competitor (Holden) for the 2006 sales race.

Official VFACTS figures released by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) show that 4711 Corollas were sold in July – almost 700 more than the traditional top-selling car. In total 77,562 cars, trucks and buses were sold in July – down 1079 vehicles on the all-time record for the month set in 2005. Corolla also outsold its nearest competitor in the booming small-car segment by more than two-to-one.

If you want to know what I mean by people loving the Toyota Corolla, lets just say that Toyota sold so many Corolla’s that it’s sales alone exceeded the total sales for each of 5 car companies in the bottom of the top 10 list.

“It’s hugely significant that after many years of large cars being Australia’s biggest sellers, Corolla has now topped the charts three times in the past 11 months,” said Toyota Australia’s senior executive director of sales and marketing, David Buttner.

“Although we expect that large sedan sales will rebound a bit in coming months, it’s clear that the old car-market certainties no longer apply.“

Toyota retained its grip on market leadership with 16,977 sales in July ahead of Holden (11,129) and Ford (9627).

“Toyota traditionally records very strong sales at the end of the financial year, so to continue that momentum with a strong result in July is an exceptional performance,” said Mr Buttner.

“Toyota’s July result augurs well for the success of the new-generation locally built Camry which will soon arrive in dealerships,” he said.

Among the standout performers apart from the Corolla were new-generation Yaris, Prius, RAV4, HiLux and HiAce, which all had record July results.

“The trend is pretty clear: every new model Toyota has launched over the past 18 months has been a huge hit with consumers,” said David Buttner.

HiLux and HiAce helped push Toyota’s light-commercial vehicle sales to a record of 4698 in July, beating the previous mark of 3898 set last year.

Toyota now leads Holden by 36,068 sales and Ford by 51,692 for the year-to-date for 2006. See the full table above for more details and a comparison to 2005.

The next generation Toyota Camry has an improved all-alloy VVT-i four-cylinder engine, which has had power increased by 5kW over the current-generation model, while maintaining the current model’s fuel economy. Camry now delivers 117kW of power at 5700rpm and 218Nm of torque at 4000rpm, with optimum driveability.

Camry’s 2.4-litre 2AZ-FE engine has an electronic throttle for optimum throttle response and low emissions. It has twin counter-rotating balance shafts to minimise noise and vibration. Latest improvements include more efficient fuel injectors, a variable-back-pressure muffler, new engine-management software and revised camshaft profiles.

It offers excellent fuel economy: 8.9 litres/100km for the manual model and 9.9 litres/100km for the automatic.

Camry’s 2.4-litre engine can be matched to a five-speed manual transmission or a new electronically controlled intelligent five-speed automatic transmission with a sporty, gated shift and uphill/downhill shift control.

New Camry is the first Toyota passenger vehicle offered in Australia with a five-speed automatic transmission. The ECT’s control software holds the transmission in gear rather than ‘hunting’ on hills. The transmission holds a lower gear for improved acceleration up hills and more engine braking down hills.