The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
2018 Camry anything but boring
Perennial juggernaut gets aggressive styling for eighth generation.
Neighbors flagged it down in the middle of the street. Friends asked for a ride. The teenager in the parking lot stopped and gaped. “Is that the 2018?” It was not the latest Porsche turning heads — it was the 2018 Toyota Camry.
It’s not the typical head turner, yet America’s best-selling car for the past 15 years has captured garages and parking spots unlike any other vehicle aside from pickup trucks. Enthusiasts and critics deride it as nothing more than an appliance, but those who matter most — the ones buying the cars — prefer the midsize sedan’s accessibility, reliability and overall value.
Its popularity has also contributed to its recent demise, with conservative and almost indiscernible refreshes as other automakers dramatically restyled their midsize sedans to compete not only with the Camry but also to stop the sales slide away from sedans to crossovers.
Through July 2017, Camry has been outsold by the excellent Honda Civic compact, which was aggressively redesigned for 2016, winning North American Car of the Year honors.
Last redesigned in 2012, the eighth-generation Camry was overdue.
“Now I know calling a Camry ‘sexy’ might be overstating it for some,” Toyota President and racer Akio Toyoda announced in January at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. “But I truly do believe our designers hit it out of the park this time.”
The wheelbase is stretched 2 inches, and the height and seating position is lowered an inch to maintain headroom. The lowered hood, combined with the broad grille and wheels pushed to the edges, gives it the low and wide stance attributed to sport sedans.
The XSE, and the reaction it got in our week around town, best embodies Toyota’s intent. First offered in the refreshed 2015 model, the XSE is the most sporting of five trim levels. It’s also the priciest, coming in at $10,000 more than the base model but loaded with everything.
XSE comes with more pronounced rocker panels to emphasize the longer wheelbase, 19-inch blacked-out wheels come standard and the fascia has larger air intakes reminiscent of the new Civic. The
X-wing grille, with a wide mouth on the bottom, is an approximation of the Lexus spindle grille. There’s a lot going on up front, maybe too much, but it’s anything but boring.
The most sporting element in the new Camry XSE is something the new Honda Accord won’t have: a V-6 engine.
The motor kicks out 301 horsepower and 267 pound-feet of torque from the front wheels, increases of 33 horsepower and 19 poundfeet over the old six. It feels more direct and capable than most turbocharged four-cylinders we’ve tested. It’s an interesting play by Toyota, sticking with the V-6 Americans love even as most other automakers — including its chief rival — have ditched it for the more efficient turbo four.
The radical makeover carries over inside, which uses a nice balance of layered soft-touch materials. The dash is defined by what Toyota calls a waterfall element, with the driver’s side and passenger side tapering together in a Y at the center console, where the grab handle is in sports coupes. The focal point is a glossy, glasslike center stack that is bigger on ambition than good use of real estate. Above the sleek climate buttons is Toyota’s familiar 8-inch touch screen flanked by four silver bar buttons on both sides. If drivers using their phones while driving is a bad idea, then drivers using a tablet-sized touchscreen is a worse idea. I don’t like touch screens, especially Toyota’s. The font choice and layout would feel fresh only if you haven’t shopped for a car in a decade. The functionality is limited, the navigation buttons still too narrowly and oddly placed, and aesthetically it’s not as freshly executed as the rest of the interior.
The new 7-inch information display between the cluster alleviates some of the need to use the touch screen, but here too the real estate is wasted on icons for advanced safety features that you can’t do much with other than shut on and off. It’s not a deal breaker, just a plea for Toyota to get with the infotainment times. It’s the kind of system you set everything once and hope you don’t have to bother with it again. And it can’t be overridden with Apple Car Play or Android Auto, which are not offered.
The price might seem steep for the XSE, but that’s about the average price Americans are paying for a new car. And when you consider the safety features that come standard, and the potent V-6 at a time of diminishing engine choices, the new Camry proves its worth inside and out.