Toyota Won’t Rest on Laurels with Camry

Over the decades, we’ve seen vehicles that hit a pinnacle and faded away quickly. The Chevrolet Camaro was hot all the way into the 90s before falling quickly and getting discontinued (only to be reborn better than ever, but that’s a different story). The Ford Taurus reined supreme in the 80s before taking a disastrous turn with a poor design choice that made it eventually disappear.

Toyota doesn’t want to make the same mistake. The best selling car in America, the Toyota Camry, isn’t waiting for the competitors to find their way into market share. Instead, they’re doing everything they can to continue improvements to the midsized sedan without allowing ambition to force them into taking unnecessary risks. Keep on doing what’s working, improve on what’s not – that seems to be the mindset driving innovations with the Camry.

This year’s model was the latest makeover that found them replacing pretty much everything other than the roof, chassis, and drive-train. It was enough to qualify as a new generation, but they insist that it was a mid-cycle course correction rather than a complete redesign. It worked. If there was one thing that people didn’t like about the car, it was “boring” aesthetics. Everyone knows that the car is extremely reliability, a leader in safety, and one of the most comfortable rides within the price range, but few would say that it was a beautiful car until now.

Today’s variation is very clearly a beautiful car if you take the ratings and opinion pieces into account. Consumers seem to agree and are keeping it on pace to top the segment in sales yet again.

Rumors are already flying about the next generation. Some say that it will have a turbo four-cylinder engine as its power piece rather than the standard V6. Automotive News confirmed that it will be pushing hard for lightweight aluminum under the hood for better economy. No matter what the next generation brings, we’re pretty secure in believing that Toyota will continue to improve rather than regress like so many of its competitors have when they were on top.