2018 Toyota Camry gets a redesign, still turning heads
Craig and Deanne Conover
With the 2018 model year, Toyota has chosen to completely redesign their best-selling model, the Camry. Not only has it been a Toyota best-seller, it has been the best-selling sedan in America almost every year for the past 20 years.
Having the best-selling car for so long is really quite a feat and Toyota would love to keep that statistic in their corner as they regularly move more than 400,000 units a year. To put a punctuation mark on that number, they’re making American-made cars, right in Georgetown, Kentucky. The new Camry is, in our opinion, one of the best redesigns to come out in the past few years.
This new design was a must for Toyota since, over the years, there are so many Camrys on the road that they have become rote for all of us drivers out there. A design that was so different and compelling was essential when they went back to the drawing board. Not only did the Camry have to turn heads, it was crucial it was an engaging drive, equipped with all the technology and safety features Toyota could offer.
After a week with the Camry it is easy to say, “Way to go, Toyota.”
They have hit one out of the ballpark with the new eighth generation Camry. This being said, they should continue to move out of dealer’s inventories at the same torrid pace as in past years. However, Toyota has become their own worst enemy, as their RAV4 actually outsold the Camry last year as many boomers and millennials are turning to compact SUVs.
From the new, aggressive front end to the rear dual tailpipe design on the XLE, the new design has looks that will keep turning heads wherever the new Camry is headed. The new front has an aggressive look that includes a new two-part grill and embedded Toyota emblem.
The XLE comes complete with LED lights all around. The headlights are self-leveling and bend or move into the curve with the vehicle. We never would have expected something like that on a Camry!
The hood has creases that keep the aggressive theme going, and the rest of the sheet metal has been put together to continue the eye-pleasing experience as the vehicle passes.
18-inch wheels are standard on the top trim level hybrid and are designed to keep the Camry rolling as well as possible to eek out every extra mpg possible. The Camry can be had with a V6 if wanted, but most will opt for the 2.5-liter 4-cylinder engine that comes in the hybrid version. The hybrid is also equipped with an electric motor that can power the vehicle up to 25 mph in electric only mode and gives added horsepower when needed over that speed.
The Camry hybrid gets 176 horsepower from the gas engine and an additional 118 horsepower form the electric motor. The Camry should get 44 mpg in the city and 47 mpg on the highway, we averaged right near 44 mpg after attempting to run the 13 gallons of fuel out during the week. This included a trip to Salt Lake City, a Sunday drive to Salt Lake City, up Parley’s Canyon, on to Heber and home to Springville, along with all our normal driving for the week. We traveled almost 400 miles and there was still ¼ tank left when we exchanged for a new vehicle.
Inside, the Camry continued to impress us with the new, completely redesigned dashboard that was more a work of art than a normal view from the front seat. It now curves and bends from each side of the car, winding its way to a point on just right of center on the passenger side, ending at kind of a triangle point. This accented the placement of the upgraded 8-inch touch screen that came in the Hybrid and was surrounded in a high gloss black plastic.
There were manual controls that were easy to understand, to navigate through different screens and also to control volume and climate in the front. Dual climate was standard with the XLE package. The only thing missing is Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from the new Camry.
Also standard on the XLE package was a 10-inch heads-up display in full color that projected all kinds of information onto the front windshield. We looked back a few years ago when we drove our first vehicle with a heads-up display in a BMW 6 series that priced north of $70,000, and it was monochrome showing only speed and tachometer. Now that same technology is full color and in a vehicle standard at half the price!
Wanting to make Camry an even quieter ride, Toyota engineers incorporated a variety of new noise, vibration and harshness countermeasures previously found exclusively on luxury models. These include sound absorbing/insulation through the fitment of a hood insulator and upper and lower fender separator. The passenger compartment is further insulated from the engine and road noise, using foam vibration dampening materials throughout the vehicle, along with a thicker dash silencer mat across the entire interior firewall section.
A special vibration-damping coating has been applied over a wider area of the underfloor, joined by noise-proofing material encompassing more surface area of the interior’s ceiling. Wind noise has been suppressed through a newly-designed rain gutter molding and a reduction in the step at the bottom of the windshield. This all added up to make the Camry one of the quietest rides we have experienced at this price.
Even the front seats have been redesigned with ergonomics in mind to make them as comfortable and easy to use as possible. They also match the new athleticism DNA that has been injected into the Camry, and can be had in three different colors on different trim levels. Ours came in a nice light macadamia leather, at our age we liked the color, however, with kids it would be better to choose the black instead. The seats were, of course, were heated for those cold winter days.
The Camry proved to be an easy vehicle to get around in, especially in tight quarters, and on the open road it handled very well. On the trip up Parley’s, the hybrid had no problem staying right at 70 mph without even breaking a sweat.
Standard, of course, was Toyota’s new Safety Sense, which included a backup camera, intelligent cruise control, front crash and pedestrian detection, lane departure warning, lane keep assist and automatic high beam headlamps. Also standard on the XLE were blind spot monitoring and rear cross path detection.
Will the Camry remain at the top spot in sales again this coming year? It’s yet to be seen, and with crossovers all the rage, it will be a hard task to accomplish. But the designers at Toyota have done everything in their power to make it so. If sedans are still something in your wheel house, this new Camry is a fantastic new choice. See them today at Brent Brown Toyota at 1400 South Sandhill Road Orem, (801) 224-1320.
Base Price: $32,250
Price as Driven: $37,255
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