The Toyota Camry could be called one of the most rational vehicles ever
made. It's a relatively affordable midsize sedan that too many consumers
says this car may not turn heads, but it will run and run and run as a
writer for car blog, Jalopnik said in January.
Let's face it, nobody really wants to own a Toyota Camry.
But everyone wishes their automobile was as reliable and trouble free as
one. Indeed, Toyota's reputation for reliability has long been widely
admired and envied throughout the automotive industry, and competitors
have tried to copy its formula for consistently producing practical cars
that just go and don't have a lot of problems.
That Camry is perhaps one of the best examples of how well a formula like
that can work. While Toyota and its passenger cars do have a reputation
for being rather bland, it appears that quite a few people do actually
want to own a Toyota Camry.
In fact, Vae car is one of the top selling sedans of all time.
However, sedans like the Camry seem to be steadily vanishing from roads in
the US and in some other markets around the world.
Some drivers love the Camry.
Others despise it.
But in many drivers, it mostly elicits indifference.
It is a car, a means of transportation, nothing fancy, loud or passionate.
But for millions of buyers, it has been a reliable vehicle purchased over
and over again. But as drivers shift into a whole new kind of family
vehicle, the Camry stands to become another car of the past.
The early history of the camera name is confusing.
The Camry was first introduced in Toyota's home country of Japan in 1980.
It was originally meant to be a Ford or a sibling to the Toyota Celica, a
two door coupe. Then in its second generation, but the Toyota Celica
Camry, as it was then called, didn't have much in common with the Celica.
It took its name from and was instead made from parts of another Toyota
model of the time called the Carina.
The Celica Camry lasted only a couple of years and Toyota rebooted the
Camry brand as a standalone model in March of 1982.
Like its predecessor, it had four doors.
But Toyota turned the car into a front wheel drive vehicle powered by a
transfer's engine.
Up to that point, Toyota sold the Corona as its four door sedan in the
U.S. as well as in many other markets.
Toyota had been selling the Corolla, a compact sedan, since 1968, and that
model was gaining popularity.
But Toyota pulled the larger corona from the states in 1983 and it needed
a midsize substitute.
The Camry was introduced to the U.S.
that same year quickly.
It rode the reputation Japanese cars were getting among American consumers
for being affordable, dependable and practical.
1997 was the first year Toyota Camry earned the title of number one
selling passenger car in America.
Since then, it has mostly held that title joined at the top of passenger
car sales rankings by other Japanese vehicles such as the Honda Civic,
Honda Accord and Toyota Corolla.
Camera's been the top selling car most at most of these years.
It looks like a cord, be it in two thousand and one.
But outside of that, Camry has been the top selling car.
Which is it?
That's a pretty good run. Throughout its history, the car became
incredibly popular in the United States and around the world.
Today it is produced in eight countries and sold in more than 100.
Toyota has sold more than 18 million Camrys throughout the vehicle's
history. Despite this, the camera has been facing a broad and potentially
serious headwind.
Consumers in the U.S.
are increasingly turning away from sedans and toward pickup trucks and
sport utility vehicles.
In 2009, passenger cars made up 53 percent of all new cars sold by 2019.
That number dropped to 29 percent.
Passenger cars are down under 30 percent and still falling.
So everyone wants to know when is that going to end?
And the answer is no one really knows.
But clearly not yet.
So what are people buying instead?
Mostly sport utility vehicles, which grew from just over 27 percent in
2009 to 47 percent in 2019, while the Camry is Toyota's best selling
passenger car, it has now outsold in the U.S.
by the RAV for a midsize crossover sport utility vehicle.
There have been SUV crazes before, but the severity and sheer persistence
of this shift in recent years has startled auto industry experts.
Some companies, especially American ones, have responded to this market
shift by cutting production of their sedans and compact cars almost
entirely and focusing their energies on SUVs and trucks.
Toyota does acknowledge that Camry sales have fallen from 473,108 at its
peak in 2007 to 336,978 in 2019.
But the Japanese manufacturers who dominate passenger car sales in the
U.S. are not pulling out of the segment yet.
And if you need any proof that people are still buying sedans.
Consider this. If you take the Toyota Corolla and the Camry and separated
it from the rest, Detroit and created a new brand, that brand would be the
ninth largest auto manufacturer in the country.
The camera has also gained considerable popularity among a particularly
novel population of customers, ride hailing service drivers.
Many Brian hailing app users who live inside or even outside major cities
in the United States may find themselves sitting inside a Camry.
A report for the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission said that 27,000
of these 72,000 two non-premium AP dispatched vehicles in New York City
are Camrys. The runner up, Honda Accord, accounted for just 8,200.
This is despite the fact that just over 2 percent of all cars on the road
in the US and 2019 were Camrys.
Toyota seems undaunted by the trend away from passenger cars.
The odd thing is that the disappearance of sedans from other manufacturers
appears to have actually caused the camera to grab market share.
Some of the domestic manufacturers dropping their passenger cars.
And that's opening the door for Toyota and some of the other Asian brands
to scoop up some of that share.
Now shift sales are still falling.
Right. It's still.
Cars are dropping, I think, more than 10 percent a year.
But if you look at market share.
Toyota Camry is doing just fine.
The automaker sees further opportunity where others are giving up.
So as other manufacturers withdraw from this market, that just means more
share for us. Right.
The Camry grew from 50 percent market share in 2015 to over 20
percent in 2019 to a five percentage point growth in that five year period
in our market share. So that's that's great.
And Camry is still at, you know, with with volume three hundred thirty
seven thousand units last year.
It's still a very important part of our portfolio and will continue to be
for the foreseeable future, though Toyota has found success with a simple
formula of value and reliability.
The automaker has shown it is willing to play around a bit after taking
the helm of the company. Toyota president Akio Toyoda, descendant of the
automaker's founder, gave his employees an order no more boring cars.
The brand has set about reviving old names such as the Supra to seat
sports car. It has developed a new global line of performance cars under
the Gazoo racing badge named for Toyota's motorsport division.
Toyota redesigned the Camry, producing what many say is a more visually
compelling vehicle. Historically, Toyota has been known as a company that
often prioritizes engineering and production over design.
But Akio Toyota's mandate has given designers more of a seat at the table
than they have had in the past.
Battling the cameras, forgettable practical image.
The automaker's design team made several changes that made the car
sportier and more aggressive, looking with a sleeker profile and a wider
stance. The whole car was lowered to the ground compared with its
predecessor. Designers dropped the hood of the car more than an inch and a
half and lowered the hip points in the front and rear seats by about an
inch. This allowed them to lower the roof without shrinking space in the
cabin. Akio Toyoda even called the car sexy at its debut at the North
American International Auto Show in Detroit in 2017.
I know, right?
They almost make me wonder if I'm at the right press conferences and
between this new XLE and XSE custom, we have two
very distinct comrie's to choose from.
Sexy and really sexy.
Now, I know called country thinkthey may be overstating that.
It has also released special editions and variants of the Camry that have
gone in some eye-popping directions.
The company came out with the Nightshade addition, essentially an
appearance package that adds large black wheels, a black Toyota badge and
other accents that give the car a meaner, sportier look.
The automaker took it one step further in 2018 when it stunned the
automotive press by releasing a version of the Camry with the company's
Toyota racing development or TRD badge on the car.
Toyota makes tardive versions of trucks and SUVs such as the Tacoma.
Tundra and 4Runner, these versions bear special suspension systems, brakes
and other tweaks typically meant for off roading and off road racing.
But the automaker has only rarely made TRD versions of its cars meant for
driving on pavement.
The choice to then fit the badge on a Camry and the equally conservative
larger Avalon sedan was a shocker.
But it did help to show that Toyota is willing to roll the dice, take some
risks and be eccentric qualities that often charm auto enthusiasts.
The only danger in Toyota is no more boring cars.
Philosophy is messing around too much with a formula that has won over so
many buyers throughout the years.
So the Camry has definitely been a meaningful vehicle because the Camry
just represents no hassle, no worries about reliability, something that is
very, very dependable.
And this has been the mantra of Camry for a very long time.
It is quiet, it is comfortable, it is roomy and dependable, and that is
very attractive to many car buyers.
And it's held to that formula.
It has not tried to be something completely different and has not tried to
be super sporty, hasn't tried to be totally technologically the first ones
or whatnot. And in that tried and true formula has worked.
If it works out, Toyota has the opportunity to squeeze more margins out of
the car at a time when volumes are declining and a car that has become a
kind of accidental icon to many drivers may have a better chance of
sticking around just a bit longer.