Cars - Toyota Camry

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	Cars - Toyota Camry

The Toyota Camry is a mid-size car manufactured by Toyota in Georgetown, Kentucky, USA, as well as Australia, and Japan. Since 2001 it has been the top selling car in the United States.

The United States is the Camry's largest consumer market, where it mainly competes with the Honda Accord, Mazda Mazda6 and the Nissan Altima. The Camry also sells very well in Australia and a number of Asian markets, in particular Cambodia where the vast majority of cars are Camrys. It has not sold as well in Europe and Japan—many criticize its design as ill-suited for European and Japanese tastes. In Japan and Asia, its main rivals are the Nissan Teana and the Honda Accord.

An upbranded luxury version of the Camry is sold under the Lexus ES nameplate in the United States also known as the Windom in Japan.

The Camry name was first launched in 1980 with the Toyota Celica Camry. The first model line independently named the Toyota Camry was launched in 1982 for the 1983 model year. It is primarily configured as a four-door sedan but at different times has also been available as a five-door hatchback, two-door coupé, and a station wagon. An offshoot of the Camry, the Camry Solara, has been available as a coupe and a convertible.

The Camry underwent major redesigns and upgrades in model years 1987, 1992 (1990 in Japan), 1997, 2002 and an anticipated redesign is planned to be launched in 2006 for model year 2007 in the United States.

Other than the original Celica Camry, the Toyota Camry has always been an FF layout vehicle. This means the engine is transversely mounted to drive the front wheels. Some models have been offered with all-wheel drive.

The second and third-generation Camrys were rebadged to be sold as the Holden Apollo in Australia. The Holden equivalents were not successful even though they came from the same factory as the Camry. Since 2000, Daihatsu has sold a Camry twin named the Altis.

The name comes from the English phonetic of the Japanese word "kan-muri", which means "crown".

Market

The Camry is consistently ranked as one of the most popular vehicles in the North American market. It is Toyota's bread-and-butter vehicle, so its marketing and sales strategy is cautious, aimed squarely at the center of buyer demographics; as most Camry buyers are not car enthusiasts.

The Camry is positioned directly below the Toyota Avalon and the Lexus ES 330 in its two largest markets, europAustralia and North America. It is considered a sub-luxury mid-size sedan. The Camry is rarely optioned above the Avalon or ES 330, but a fully equipped Corolla slightly overlaps with the base-model Camry.

The Camry was less popular in Europe, where the design was considered bland and incompatible with European driving habits. Toyota positioned the Camry as a BMW 5-Series rival, yet it lacked the cachet to compete. Following long-term poor sales, the Camry was withdrawn altogether from Europe in 2004, leaving the smaller, UK-built Avensis as the top-of-the-line sedan. Because there is no station wagon version for the fifth generation Camry, the Camry sedan and the Avensis station wagon are sold side by side in markets like New Zealand.

After the introduction of the fourth-generation Camry, sales in Japan dipped. Prior to the fourth generation, Toyota adapted the Camry's design to suit Japanese tax laws and domestic market requirements. These versions of the Camry are bounded by a certain set of dimensions which would otherwise be unsuitable for export markets. These modified-for-Japan models were called the Vista, which became separate from the Camry in 2000.

For the fourth-generation Camry, Toyota decided to split the Vista from the Camry. Both models still share a large number of components, but the fourth-generation split was the more significant than the previous re-engineered splits. The Vista is sized according to domestic vehicle tax laws, and the Camry (now called the Camry Gracia) are not adapted, sold identical to foreign market cars. This put the Camry at a disadvantage as its size is placed at the lower-end of a higher tax category, which included cars such as the Crown and Aristo, both arguably aimed at the higher-end of the market than the Camry. The introduction of the A32-series Nissan Cefiro in 1994 may have prompted Toyota to change its strategy, despite the poor sales of the Scepter, basically a rest-of-the-world third-generation Camry, which was sold between 1992–1994 (only 4,885 units sold in total). The continued success of the Nissan Cefiro (and afterwards the Nissan Teana) meant that some customers are willing to pay extra taxes for a larger family car, and so this marketing strategy continued.

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Cars - Toyota Camry

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