Dark clouds gather over Toyota Camry's unveil

Toyota Australia has pulled the wraps off the new generation Camry, the sedan that has been the medium segment sales champion in this market for the past 17 years.

But as the cover came off the new Camry, Toyota's senior executive director sales and marketing, David Buttner, placed the focus on the future for the Altona-built car — exports.

"Camry is Australia's number one automotive export, both in volume and in value," he told the assembled media.

"Now we're about to open a new chapter in the history of Camry, by unveiling the seventh generation car — a car that does everything better. Built here in Melbourne, the new Camry will be a significant contributor to the Australian economy. Camry will be sold and exported to more than 20 destinations, including Saudi Arabia, other Middle East countries, New Zealand and several Pacific nations.

"It will play a dominant role in our local manufacturing operation, which directly employs 3200 people..."

It's a difficult time to be an exporter, with the Australian dollar so high against the American dollar and the local currencies of the Gulf Countries in the Middle East — the Camry's largest export destination — locked in unison with the greenback.

That is one reason why Toyota is not giving up on the Australian domestic market. Nor is there any need to do so when the Camry is the top-selling medium segment car here; looking unlikely to lose that crown any time soon.

Speaking of crown, that's the meaning of the Hebrew word Atara, the name of a new level of trim being introduced with the Camry.  Styling details and equipment set the Camry Atara apart from the entry-level Camry Altise, and the new variant ('Atara' is also the Japanese word for 'new') is designed to appeal to private buyers and novated-lease buyers of the Camry. In that regard, it's helped by Camry's modernised styling, which is significantly sharper than that of the car it replaces.

Other means of attracting more private buyers to the Camry badge are less obvious. The new car is 70kg lighter than the model it replaces, its 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine — coupled with a new six-speed automatic transmission — will use 10 per cent less fuel than the current Camry, and it occupies roughly the same footprint as the superseded model, but provides 15mm of extra 'couple distance'. The extra length in the cabin is a product of moving the accelerator pedal forward 7mm and the rear passenger hip point back 8mm.

Toyota Australia anticipates the new car will achieve a five-star ANCAP rating, but the Camry is yet to be tested by the local crash testing authority. In fact, the vehicle on display at Toyota's styling studio in Port Melbourne was a pre-production car, the unveiling taking place three months ahead of the production vehicle's launch in this market. As such, details of the new Camry range, including how its interior will look and how the model range will be composed were not revealed today. We'll have to wait for the launch of the production model in November for that information to come to light.

Stay tuned...

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