Camry Not So Wide Of Marque

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday February 19, 1993

ALAN KENNEDY

THE central theory of propaganda is that if you say something often enough then people will come to see it as truth.

So Toyota thinks that if you say "wide body" often enough then you will start to believe that the new Toyota Camry has a wide body. Well, it does when compared with the old one but not when compared with the Magna, Commodore or Falcon.

It remains a goodish-sized medium car and although Toyota feels it will invade the traditional big family six market, I can't see it.

But then, I used to think that Toyota would never be No 1 in this country and I was wrong about that, too.

The Falcon and Commodore are big cars and you can feel it as soon as you climb in. By comparison, the Camry is a smaller car and I can't see too many private buyers of family sixes having their heads turned.

Fleet buyers may react differently, especially knowing about the good resale of Camrys in the second-hand market.

What we have in the Camry is a well-crafted car that will be a huge market success in the medium sector.

The Camry design originated in Japan but Toyota now has a policy of letting the local market contribute in many ways.

So the Camry suspension has been modified and adapted for Australia to cope with the wide range of driving conditions.

Even the steering has had a lot of Australian input. Australian drivers apparently prefer heavier steering than their counterparts in Japan and America, so the Australian Camry meets this need.

The responsive, nicely weighted steering is one of the best features. The 2.2-litre twin-cam, four-cylinder engine is a little noisy when pushed hard although in manual form it is very lively. The automatic tends to muffle some of its power. But it is putting out only 93kW whereas the V-6 pumps out 139kW

The V-6, being slightly heavier than the four, seems to balance the car better and, while the four drives well, I preferred the six when hunting along country roads in Tasmania last week.

Suspension for the wagon is fully independent, making it the only Australian-made wagon with this configuration.

The wagon has good carrying space although styling is controversial with some finding it rather odd, especially from side-on. Even from the back it is unusual. Toyota may have problems getting people to love the wagon no matter how many times they say it looks good.

Most of the package I liked; the only worry is why Toyota felt it necessary to add drum brakes to the bottom-of-the-range Executive model.

This was done to reduce the price of the car but I feel that drum brakes are best left off vehicles when discs are clearly available.

Models available are Camrys which have the 2.2-litre twin-cam motor and the Vienta which signifies the 3-litre V-6 is under the bonnet.

ABS is standard on the top-of-the-range Ultima models which also have air conditioning as standard.

The anti-lock braking can be added to any model for $1,500 and air costs just over $2,000. The Camry range has a new powerassisted rack-and-pinion steering system for improved steering response and feel.

The new Camry has 2.79 turns lock to lock, compared with 3.0 turns on the old model.

On-centre steering feel has been significantly improved.

The steering system features an Australian developed rack-and-pinion steering combined with a new constant-flow-rate, power-assist pump which supersedes an engine-speed sensitive-type steering pump. Steering effort has been slightly increased to suit Australian driver "taste" and provide improved feedback through the steering wheel. All new Camrys have power-assisted steering.

Vienta V-6's steering pump is connected in tandem with the pump for the V-6 engine's hydraulic cooling fan.

Toyota claims the Vienta V-6 automatic wagon betters its traditional in-line six-cylinder, rivalling city and highway cycle fuel economy. The Vienta V-6 wagon has fuel economy of 7.6 litres/100km highway cycle and 12.0 litres/100km city cycle.

The Camry 2.2-litre manual and automatic wagons have city-cycle fuel economy of 10.5 litres/100km. Highway cycle fuel economy is 6.8 litres/100km with manual transmission and 7.0 litres/100km with automatic.