As many have put it so well, the Camry is understated. An attribute to be valued.
BHPian V.Narayan recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
Early warning: Loyal Camry user here of 15+ years. In the last 17 odd years we have had the Skoda Superb, Toyota Camry {the first variant that came to India} in circa 2004 or 2005, the ES Lexus in our garage. The Skoda was my wife’s car {chauffeur driven} as is the Lexus ES now and the Camry was the office car used for customers and senior staff.
Over the years I have evaluated the Mercedes E-Class and the BMW 5 for myself and rejected them. Some observations from my side:
- Not every one, which by the way is the majority of the car buying market, is interested in speed, acceleration, cornering and power. Comfort, safety, reliability, hassle free ASS, easy availability of spares are far far higher priorities on most buyers minds. In this the Camry scores. Team BHP members being car geeks and young are skewed towards performance but that is a small segment of buyers only.
- As many have put it so well, the Camry is understated. An attribute to be valued. I’d say by the same token given India’s obsession with the German 3, even the Lexus ES is understated and cheerfully goes unnoticed.
- In rear seat comfort, the Camry beats the BMW 3 and 5 hands down. You can’t even start to compare.
- There is no point comparing the price of any car in USA or Dubai with that in India simply because we live in India and buy here. It is what it is. The Skoda Superbs we see in Germany or Prague as taxis have lower specifications than the model sold here. So saying it is a taxi there but a executive sedan here doesn’t quite cut. I do not know about the trim and specifications of the Camrys in USA/UK. Maybe the same applies to them but I may be wrong. I do believe that the Camry, BMW and Superb what we get here have higher specs than what you get as baseline or mid-trim models in Europe/USA.
- Not everyone wants to buy the most expensive car that he can comfortably afford. At a certain stage and age in life, you want to tone down not tone up.
- Toyota unfortunately have a nasty habit of always pricing up. We may not like it, but it is their sales/profit strategy and often they get away with it because of customers like me.
- With the revised front looks, Toyota has finally managed to make the car look good and not with their usual evil grin designs.
Keyword: Observations on the Toyota Camry by a Skoda Superb owner