Catching up with Camry

Toyota’s medium sedan is holding top spot in the segment, but the competition is fierce. Sean Willmot wants to know why more people aren’t falling in love with the ZR Camry hybrid?

I had the chiselled ZR for a week and loved every minute of my drives. Of course, it was a week from Hades in terms of deadlines and I just wanted the car to ‘take me home, Jarvis’ and that’s precisely what the Camry did, no effort, no fuss, but not a lot of playtime…

Can I have it back, now that I’m doing sensible hours again please Mr Toyota?

‘’Playtime” is hardly the raisond’etre of the Camry Hybrid of course. It’s all about economy, efficiency and minimising the extinction risk to polar bears.

With subtle improvements to the hybrid side of things, Toyota has also chipped away at the ICE (infernal combustion engine) and imbued the Camry with its new Direct Force engine tech, giving the 2.5-litre, fourcylinder mill direct and port fuel injection.

Accordingly, with this, the eighth generation of the Camry, Toyota is now claiming a mid-four litres per 100km fuel consumption figure – a step down from the 5.7 l/100 of the last hybrid Camry I drove, and for the polar bears? Well, they’ll be pretty chilled with Camry’s 103gm/km of carbon output.

The seamlessness of switching between hybrid electric and pure petrol is breathtaking, and useful for those times when an occasional ‘enthusiastic’ drive is warranted, or you feel like melting another icecap or two, but really, the need for speed is just not important with this car, despite the sportsinspiring ZR nomenclature.

Piloting this Camry is most rewarding when you consider your driving habits: taking that corner just so and enjoying the intelligent aspects of driving.

Half your brain though, is going to gibber at the plethora of switches and buttons you’ll eventually have to look at.

For all that the switchgear and displays are perfectly intuitive and functional, there is a sense of ‘busi-ness’ in the cockpit, not eased at all by the vaguely organic ‘ tree’ sprouting up from the passenger’s side of the transmission tunnel.

A positive element of the interior design is the eight-inch touchscreen integrated into the dash, rather than the bolted-on versions seen in many other vehicles.

Camry does lack for nothing in terms of gidgets and gazmos however, with a concerted attempt – and success – on Toyota’s part to embed a comprehensive safety suite into the mid-sizer.

This includes the Toyota Safety Sense package of a pre-crash safety system with autonomous emergency braking, all speed dynamic radar cruise control, auto high beam, lane departure alert with steering assist and vehicle sway warning.

This in addition to blind spot monitoring, rear cross traffic alert, traction and vehicle stability control and the usual alphabet soup of safety acronyms you might expect.

I will add that the cockpit is generous in space, which is just as well because I took a perverse delight in finding all 10 ways to adjust the heated and cooled electric seats.

Given the number of Camry’s in service as taxis, I can only surmise that the roomy nature of the cockpit applies to the rear accommodations as well.

And there, your Honour, the Defense rests. Toyota’s Camry Hybrid is quite probably the best qualifying Toyota to become an autonomous vehicle, as it seems to have everything else so neatly in the bag.