They're siblings from different mothers, but is the premium commanded by the Lexus ES300h justified against its twin-under-the-skin, the Toyota Camry SL hybrid?
If this were the United States, a comparison of the Honda Accord against the Toyota Camry would be a Battle Royale of top-sellers. Things are different here, though. The Camry absolutely dominates the remnants of a mainstream mid-sized car segment that has halved in overall market share over the past decade...
Could this be the family car battle of head versus heart? The Toyota Camry SL V6 and Mazda 6 GT turbo both stick to a well-worn medium sedan formula, although manage to avoid looking like carbon copies of each other – both aesthetically and mechanically...
Comparing a Holden Commodore/Calais and Toyota Camry would have been incongruous until this year, when both entered new lives as imports. Now it seems perfectly natural to pit this front-drive pair against one another, despite a few differences in design and execution. It's the German-made Calais hatchback with turbocharged petrol engine versus the Japanese Camry sedan with petrol-electric hybrid drivetrain...
While the car industry seems intent on reinventing and cross-pollinating shapes, sizes and themes to create a different family vehicle, equally families who buy and use such vehicles can be incredibly diverse in terms of needs and wants...
Hybrid cars are not exactly a big ticket item in Australia, especially when you compare our market to somewhere such as Japan or the US. Nevertheless, there are options from Toyota, Honda and Lexus for those with green-tinged glasses. Out of the 260,000-odd passenger cars registered to fleets and private buyers alike over the first half of 2015, fewer than 5000 were petrol-electric hybrids...
Medium cars are struggling in the face of an SUV uprising. Quite literally, the raising-up of body height and seating position has allowed the sport utility vehicle to act both like a magician entrancing customers, and a grim reaper destroying traditional sedan and wagons. There are massive upsides for those buyers who are determined to fly in the face of fashion, however...
Medium is the new large. By 2017 when the large car segment will have been thrown into further disarray with the loss of the Ford Falcon and question marks surrounding imported replacements for the Holden Commodore and Toyota Aurion, it really has to be. The mass exodus from large six-cylinder family sedans that has happened in recent years, however, hasn’t been the expected boon for medium cars...
Toyota launches an all-new Camry, Mazda launches an all-new 6. The two top selling medium sized cars battle two of the best...
