Hybrid a halo for Camry range

Times are changing. Once, the car to have was the most powerful in the range, but nowadays it's just as likely to be the most frugal.

Ford's EcoBoost Falcon won't be a poverty-pack powertrain and now Toyota has confirmed that the Camry Hybrid will be aimed at private buyers in a much higher ratio than is the norm for the conventional Camry. So if you had a notion that the petrol/electric Camry would be some cheapy, better set aside that thought.

"We want to use Hybrid Camry to really put a halo across total Camry," said David Buttner, Senior Executive Director Sales and Marketing for Toyota Australia at the company's 'line off' ceremony last week.

"Currently Camry's private share runs at 24 per cent; we'd like to increase that to 40 per cent -- in Hybrid Camry -- and then hopefully that will give us the opportunity to upsell from our current level one (normal Camry, normally-aspirated Camry), to both our level two and level three cars.

"When you look at the segmentation within that medium four market, there's been a huge migration down from the large six -- and that's tended to be in the level two and level three variants of our competitors, whereas 70 per cent of our volume currently sits in level one, around about the 30,000-vehicle mark.

"So we want to use Camry Hybrid to really capture some of those down-sizers and people considering another medium car."

What this says about the Camry Hybrid is that it won't be a 'rubber mats and vinyl' model (the level one spec to which Buttner refers), it will be available in mid-range and high-range grades, as we elicited from our drive of the car back in September. Our guess is that it will be sold in equivalents to Ateva and Grande.

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