Toyota Camry 2002 review: road test

Building a new car isn't easy. Just ask the team behind the new Camry. Every single part of the car must be of the highest standard because one bad part could ruin the whole car.

More than two dozen engineers and test drivers have been flat out on everything from the car body to the radio aerial to get it right. They have designed, developed, tested, tuned, tweaked and approved everything that makes their Camry, codenamed 380N, unique to Australia.

Paul Diamandis is a test engineer who worked long and hard on the Camry chassis and suspension tuning. The former go-kart racer is Toyota's top-gun driver and does the torture testing at the company's Anglesea track and is happy about a Camry that has a much sportier feel. "It's the kind of car I'd want to drive," he says.

Diamandis says suspension tuning means the 380N brakes, turns and grips better than the current car. The team achieved its goals of increasing cornering power with a flat ride and quick response to steering.

The new Camry has more front-end grip and less kickback at the wheels. It comes from a stiffer chassis, including an engine-bay strut brace for the touring model, modified suspension, local springs and dampers with special Dunlop tyres - the first in Australia with added silica.

While a great handling car is good, it's not much use if it won't stop. That's where Brett Evans steps in. Evans' engineering team has made sure the all-Aussie braking system on the new Camry is more powerful than on the old, putting the brakes through some punishing tests.

"We destroyed a number of cars going through the mud traps, but not the brakes," Evans says. The meanest work included building up red-hot discs with repeated stops, then plunging into deep water to look for signs of fractures from heat shock.

The surface of the brake disc covered by the pads is up by about 20 per cent for improved stopping and Evans says the new pads will also last about twice as long and create less black dust on the front wheels. The new Camry also is better to drive at night thanks to new headlights, which were optimised for Australian conditions.

Jacquie Fox was a member of the headlight design team which worked with headlight manufacturer Hella to come up with the system which has twin bulbs with multi-facet reflectors. It also uses a hard-coated polycarbonate lens instead of glass. "It's durable and damage-resistant and avoids any extra expense to the customer," Fox says.

The shape of the light pattern on both low and high beams is tuned for Australian conditions. "City streets are pretty well lit, so when you're using standard beam you don't need a lot of penetration. We determined that a greater spread or width of light was a key feature," Fox says.

The seats also needed to be designed for Aussie rumps and engineer Greg Weir says there are two types of seat for the 380N - standard and sporty - but each has new foam construction and a higher back. The Sport bucket is all-new and exclusive to Australia.

The seats also sit 40mm higher, partly to make it easier to get in and out of the car.

"The reasons are for visibility, but the height also increases legroom. It's a more natural seating position," Weir says.

"To me the seating has transformed the way the car felt. The holding was the major factor. I think it is the most important part as far as customer satisfaction goes."