Facing the big heat

THE residents of Wycliffe Well are used to seeing strange things from far, far away. After all, it is the self-proclaimed UFO centre of Australia, complete with a fluoro-green family of alien statues in front of the petrol station.

But even the locals look twice when they see a fleet of unidentified vehicles travelling fast, 380km north of Alice Springs on the Stuart Highway in searing March heat.

A Camry this far inland, pounding sticky tarmac and baked red dirt more than 2000km from Melbourne, is a rare sight.

But the Toyota engineers are here on a 10,000km mission to make sure the car is as close to perfect as can be when it hits the road.

By the time the car rolls out of the factory, Toyota Australia engineers will have clocked up 650,000km to make sure the Camry can stand up to the meanest Australian conditions.

The basic Camry has been tested extensively in Japan and around the world, but the Australian Camrys have been adapted for local duty.

Much of the local testing was done at the punishing Anglesea Proving Ground, but Toyota knows there is nothing like the real world for testing its cars.

The long evaluation loops, like the one on which I tagged along, are valuable because the cars are driven over so many different surfaces, from flat-top highways to the rutted dirt of outback tracks.

Then there is the temperature.

Toyota engineers have already tested the Camrys in extreme cold. Now it's time to test them in the 35C-plus of the Outback.

Most of the hard testing has already been carried out. This trip is more of a final evaluation, making sure everything works; checking the quality of the plastics, the fittings and dust sealing; listening for rattles; keeping an eye out for problems.

It beats working in the office, but this is no driving holiday.

Every few hundred kilometres, the Toyota team pulls over to the side of the road and goes through the same routine with each car.

They get out, open the boot and shut it, open the boot and shut it, open the boot and shut it . . .

They do the same with the bonnet, then the doors, to make sure they continue to work properly.

We drive the cars in convoy along long flat roads -- most of which have no speed limits -- at highway speeds and slightly above for hours and hours, looking out at the red dirt horizon.

A run on a twisting dirt road offers an example of how well this car handles on slippery surfaces. It sits happily around nasty off-camber corners, and feels nice and solid.

We hit some nasty washouts hard and the suspension bottoms out with a bang.

At the end of the dirt run we find the plastic mud spats, which sit behind the wheels, have come loose. That goes on to Toyota's list of things to fix.

After a hamburger at Wycliffe Well, it is time for an interesting comparison.

The Toyota team has brought along the current Camry model and we take it for a run to compare it with the new car being tested.

You notice how much they have improved the car as soon as you sit inside.

The new Camry's dashboard will win no fashion awards, but it does have some nice lines and shapes. The old model's dashboard is dead flat, devoid of style.

On the road, the old model reveals how much the Toyota team has improved the handling of the new Camry.

Lane changes at high speed are the most dramatic way to measure this. The new Camry stays quite flat and feels stable as it shifts lanes; the old model lurches with a lot more body roll and feels less sure-footed.

Then there is the level of refinement. I sit in the back of each Camry at highway speed and again the contrast is stark.

The new Camry is so much quieter as it barrels over the hot tarmac of the highway, and it is easy to chat to the driver from the back.

Try that in the old Camry, travelling at the same speed, and you really will need to raise your voice to out-do the tyre roar and wind noise that penetrates the cockpit.

That is the sort of thing that really affects comfort levels, especially at highway speed.

As the aliens who cross galaxies to visit the folk at Wycliffe Well are aware: comfort is important when you're covering a lot of kilometres.