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.
