Toyota Camry 2014 News

Don't hold your breath for a new-car bargain once the last of Australia’s car factories close by the end of 2017. If anything, prices may rise. Toyota, Holden and Ford have been force-feeding locally-made cars onto dealers and fleet buyers at ridiculously discounted prices for years, just to keep their factories running.Late last year Toyota was offering the new Camry for $26,990 drive-away, about $8000 off the full RRP. Early last year, the Cruze became the cheapest locally-made Holden in almost 20 years when its RRP dropped below $20,000.But deals like these will likely evaporate once the Toyota Camry and Holden Cruze -- and the vehicles that will replace the Ford Falcon sedan and Territory SUV -- are fully imported. Toyota, Holden and Ford will be able to simply order the number of cars they think they can comfortably sell without flooding the market.And, of course, it goes without saying that government departments will no longer be forced -- or encouraged, as it is called -- to buy locally-made cars. This preferential treatment has artificially inflated the true demand for Australian-made vehicles for decades. Which is why secret internal forecasts by Toyota, Holden and Ford show demand for the cars that will replace their locally-made models will be slashed.Toyota forecasts demand for the Camry could be cut by more than half. Holden and Ford are similarly pessimistic. How many Falcon buyers will take to the new Mondeo, its likely replacement? Ford sold just 10,000 Falcons last year compared to just 3000 Mondeos.Likewise, how many Holden customers will find a front-drive four-cylinder or V6 sedan appealing, whether or not it has a Commodore badge? If the recent lacklustre response to the Holden Malibu sedan is a guide, not many (1300 deliveries last year compared to the Commodore’s tally of 27,000). Without an oversupply of vehicles or the desperate need to keep a factory to keep running, there will be no need for Toyota, Holden and Ford to discount so dramatically.Instead, they will compete on a relatively even footing as vehicle importers with the other 60 or so brands in Australia. Which is why currency exchange rates, not tariffs, will play a greater role in determining car prices in the future. The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, the peak body that has been all but silent as the industry crumbled over the past eight months, this week called for all import tariffs on motor vehicles to be scrapped now there is no local industry left to protect.“Post-manufacturing, there is no rationale to maintain the 5 per cent tariff on imported motor vehicles,” the chief executive of the FCAI, Tony Weber, said in a media statement. But this posturing by the FCAI is unlikely to have the Federal Government quaking in its boots. Australia is heading down that path anyway. The Federal Government is keen to create the perception that car prices will drop once it pushes ahead with more Free Trade Agreements.We already have FTA deals with North America and Thailand, but Japan and South Korea are set to follow. These four countries alone accounted for almost 75 per cent of all imported vehicles sold in Australia last year. You might expect South Korean giant Hyundai, its sister company Kia, and Holden (it sources most of its passenger cars and SUVs from South Korea) to be delighted about the prospect of a zero tariff. But they’re more worried about currency fluctuations. The chief executive officer of Hyundai in Australia, John Elsworth, a former high-ranking Holden executive, says currency will continue to be a greater factor in vehicle pricing because import tariffs are already so low -- and currencies can swing by more than 5 per cent in a day, let alone across a month or a year. Indeed, there has been a more than 60 per cent fluctuation in the Australian currency over the past decade.In the year 2000 one Australian dollar bought an average of US0.63 cents; last year it bought a peak of US$1.04 and we’ve been tracking mostly above US0.90 cents since. Add to the mix the impact foreign governments can have on exchange rates. Japan, for example, has been accused of artificially devaluing the Yen over the past 12 months to boost exports. It partly explains why the prices of the imported Toyota Corolla and Nissan Pulsar and other Japanese cars are at 20-year lows.Who knows what Australia’s exchange rates will be like four years from now? The car companies -- and the government for that matter -- certainly don’t. “The biggest variable is obviously exchange rate (and) that can fluctuate daily in both directions,” said Mr Elsworth. “Reacting to that and shifting prices wouldn't make sense -- you have to work longer-term in this business.” In other words, car companies ride the currency wave. Some months they make less profit, some months they make more.Sometimes they get caught short, and start discreetly deleting standard equipment from cars hoping customers won’t notice, such as a glovebox light or a vanity mirror. Fitting thinner carpet is another example. But they always try to keep the RRPs relatively stable so they don’t adversely affect customer confidence and, ultimately, the resale value of vehicles. Did you know depreciation is the single biggest cost of car ownership after you’ve bought it?Luxury Car Tax, on the other hand, is something that needs to be dealt with, but, sadly, probably will be left alone. Even the Productivity Commission advised against it in its preliminary report into the car manufacturing industry. “Because it is levied on a narrow base, the LCT is a higher-cost and less efficient method of raising revenue than more broadly-based taxes,” the Productivity Commission report said. “The LCT is also arbitrary in its effect, in that it leads to taxpayers with the same economic means paying different amounts of tax depending on their taste.”Quoting the 2010 Henry Tax Review, the Productivity Commission helpfully added that LCT “falls on people with a preference for relatively expensive cars, but not on those with a preference for diamonds, fur coats or yachts”. For background, the LCT is 33 per cent of the price of a vehicle above $60,316, or above $75,375 on vehicles that use less than 7.0L/100km according to the Australian standard fuel rating label.The concession was introduced several years ago by the then Labor Government in an attempt to appeal to environmental interests. Instead, it favoured buyers of prestige cars. It is a further sign of how backwards this policy is when any government thinks 7.0L/100km is fuel-efficient; most popular German cars now comfortably dip below this, which is why Toyota is now the biggest contributor to LCT by virtue of all the LandCruisers it sells, among other gas-guzzlers.Understandably, Toyota and others have come out swinging against the LCT. In its submission to the Productivity Commission, Toyota said: “The luxury car tax is not a form of protection for local car makers. In fact the market share of locally built cars has dropped significantly since the LCT was introduced. Toyota supports the abolishment of the LCT as it is a punitive and inequitable tax paid by more Toyota customers than anyone else.”But the Coalition Government is unlikely to scrap a tax that brings in an estimated $450 million each year, especially when it has so many financial black holes to fill. Which means, for now, it would seem car prices aren’t likely to change one bit once the Australian car factories close -- unless the dollar reaches new, stratospheric heights.This reporter is on Twitter: @JoshuaDowling Where your car comes from: percentage split of all imported cars in 2013Japan 35 per cent (FTA planned)Thailand 22 per cent (FTA already in place)South Korea 13 per cent (FTA planned)United States 3.5 per cent (FTA already in place)Germany 7.5 per cent (no FTA planned but many cars attract LCT)United Kingdom 3.5 per cent (no FTA planned but many cars attract LCT)Other countries represent 15.5 per cent of imported vehicles, including Spain, Czech Republic, India, China, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, Mexico, Portugal, Belgium, France, Italy, Indonesia, Poland and others.Source: FCAI  

Toyota's decision to shut its Camry factory in 2017 will bring the entire Australian car manufacturing industry to a halt after more than 100 years, and leave up to 50,000 workers in supporting industries out of a job, in addition to the 2500 at Toyota.The world’s biggest car maker -- and the Number One brand in Australia for the past 11 years in a row -- will join Ford and Holden and become solely a vehicle importer for the first time since 1968, when it began building Corollas locally.The Altona plant on the western outskirts of Melbourne is believed to be only the third factory Toyota has closed globally. The company says the decision was made reluctantly because Australia was the first country outside Japan where it assembled cars.The media shy boss of Toyota Australia, Max Yasuda, said he was “devastated” by the news.He blamed the decision on low tariffs, new Free Trade Agreements, the high Australian dollar and above average labour costs, just as Ford and Holden had said months earlier.Privately, however, Mr Yasuda told his peers behind closed doors “If Holden goes, we’ll go”.The die was cast late last year when unions won a Federal Court battle blocking Toyota’s request for a vote on proposed changes to Toyota worker conditions.Mr Yasuda travelled to Japan late last year hoping to have the deal signed, to give the Altona factory a stay of execution from his Japanese hierarchy.When Mr Yasuda turned up empty handed, the fate of Toyota Australia’s factory was sealed. It was only a matter of timing before the announcement was made.“This is devastating news for all of our employees who have dedicated their lives to the company during the past 50 years,” Mr Yasuda said.“While we have been undertaking the enormous task of transforming our business during the past two years, our people have joined us on the same journey, which makes it even more difficult to announce this decision.“We did everything that we could to transform our business, but the reality is that there are too many factors beyond our control that make it unviable to build cars in Australia.”The global boss of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, arrived in Australia on a private jet late on Sunday night so that he could deliver the news in person.Workers were informed at 4:30pm Monday, between the end of the morning shift and the start of the evening shift.Mr Toyoda expressed his condolences when addressing the workers. The great grandson of the company founder said the company had explored “every possible option”.Mr Toyoda was due to fly back to Japan Monday evening, just hours after the announcement and having spent less than 24 hours in Australia.The formal decision to shut Altona came during a board meeting at 1:30pm on Monday Australian time but insiders have known for a fortnight, when the final feasibility study was concluded.It found there were no viable options to keep the factory alive.“We did everything we could,” said Mr Toyoda.Toyota lost an estimated $1.75 billion over the past 10 years -- despite an injection of about $1.2 billion in taxpayer dollars over that period.“Although the company has made profits in the past, our manufacturing operations have continued to be loss making despite our best efforts,” said Mr Yasuda.From 2017, Toyota will instead import the Camry from one of seven other factories that make the same vehicle.This reporter is on Twitter: @JoshuaDowling  

Toyota hasn't offered a wagon body in the Camry line-up for more than a decade -- the last one sold in Australia was in 2002, as the family vehicle buyer continually moved towards SUVs and the wagon market dwindled.But master renderer Theophilus Chin thinks the lines of the current Camry and Aurion sedan models would suit a wagon, and has crafted one of his own. You can see more images at theophiluschin.com to get a look at the rear styling.The last Camry wagon here offered the choice of a 94kW/187Nm 2.2-litre four-cylinder or a 141kW/279Nm 3.0-litre V6 -- both with even-then lacklustre automatic transmissions. But the new Camry is about to hit Australian showrooms next month, with much better technology, and we're sure there are some out there who would love to see it powering a wagon body.This reporter is on Twitter: @KarlaPincott 

We've seen some strange and violent examples of road rage -- and many of them from Russia, the source of this video footage. But this is one of the most bizarre outbursts yet, starting with a Toyota Camry and Mazda MPV -- usually the choices of very sensible citizens -- in a high-speed chase.The two cars continue jousting with each other along the way until Toyota performs a sideswipe that punts the Mazda off the road and into a ditch. And then the action takes a on truly comedic flavour, turning into a slapstick fight with a knife against a shovel.  It looks like we're going to see blood when the Toyota driver appears with the knife, but the shovel-wielding Mazda owner is more than his clumsy match.After Toyota man has a pratfall off the Mazda's roof, there's some more jousting and argy-bargy -- and the whole episode ends thankfully without serious injury to anything but pride.Watch the car crash ends in slap and shovel fight video on our desktop site.This reporter is on Twitter: @KarlaPincott 

Toyota has launched a new addition to the Camry range, with the arrival of the Atara R, which lowers the entry price to the Camry Atara nameplate, but offers a bit more than the base-model Camry Altise that is the Atara R’s starting point. Only around 2500 examples of the Camry Atara R will produced, with the Australian built special edition model coming with more than $3,000 of extras features compared with the $30,490 Altise, but costing just $1400 more. The exterior gets a dress-up with a front sports bumper and grille, sports side skirts, dual exhaust diffuser, 17-inch alloy wheels, front fog lamps and a special-edition badge. The interior isn’t forgotten, with the addition of premium three-spoke steering wheel (with audio controls), 6.1-inch screen display audio and reversing camera with fixed guidelines. The Camry Atara R special edition is priced at $31,820, slotting in under the $33,490 Atara S, $35,990 Atara SX and  $39,990 Atara SL.

...the Camry Atara R. Based on the Camry Altise, it adds more than $3000 worth of equipment and features, many of which were only previously available in the more expensive Atara models. Obviously aimed at tackling the soon to be released all-new Mazda6, the Camry Atara R has a sportier look than the standard Camry thanks to the use of a front sports bumper and grille, sports side skirts and a dual exhaust diffuser. It has 17-inch alloy wheels in place of the 16-inch, as well as front foglamps. Special-edition badges let others know you’re not in just any Toyota Camry. Inside, the Camry Atara R has a premium three-spoke steering wheel with audio controls, a 6.1-inch screen display audio and reversing camera with fixed guidelines. It features a trip computer and eco indicator, and six-speaker audio including auxiliary and USB input with iPod connectivity. Camry Atara R special edition is offered in a choice of exterior colours: Diamond White, Silver Pearl, Graphite, Eclipse Black, Wildfire, Magnetic Bronze, and Reflex Blue. This Camry is well equipped in the safety field, with seven airbags, vehicle stability control and traction control. All versions of the Toyota Camry were tailored to suit Australian driving conditions and the tastes of Aussie drivers from very early in the design stage. The windscreen pillars have been slimmed down and no longer hinder the front-three-quarter vision to the extent they did before. The front seats are spacious and provide good support. There’s plenty of knee-room and head space is better than average for this class. Seating is set up to provide good width for two occupants in back seats that are semi-individual in their shaping. The area between them is left for occasional use by adults or a child seat. An all-new 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine was developed for the latest Toyota Camry prior to its 2011 introduction. It’s mated to a six-speed automatic transmission for the first time. This powertrain provides strong torque across a wide range and fuel consumption and CO2 emissions have been reduced by around 10 per cent from those of previous models. Toyota Camry is generally smooth and quiet, though rough roads may result in a firmer ride than some owners will like. As always, check for yourself by road testing a car before buying. Camry Atara R special edition is priced at a very reasonable $31,820, plus on-road costs. Toyota Camry has the impressive record of being the number one seller in its segment in Australia for the past 18 years. This latest special edition seems sure to help it continue to remain in front for a long time to come.  

The Atara R is based on the entry level Camry Altise, but throws in $3000 worth of goodies for $1330 more.  Additions include a wheel upgrade from 16-in to 17-in alloys (with a full-sized spare in the boot), front foglights, body kit and special edition badging. The cabin gets a premium three-spoke multifunction steering wheel and a 6.1-in screen for the audio system and reversing camera.  Standard equipment includes seven airbags (including driver's knee airbag), vehicle stability control and traction control, trip computer and eco indicator, and six-speaker audio with auxiliary/USB/iPod connectivity. A twin exhaust system has been fitted to add 2kW extra power, giving it 135kW to go with the 231Nm of torque from the 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine, delivering the outputs to the front wheels via a five-speed automatic gearbox. Toyota will build 2500 of the Atara R, finishing the run at the end of December.  

That's the showroom tag for the Toyota Camry hybrid, which finally hits the road today.  The hybrid is being pitched as the flagship in the Camry range, from the way it looks to a cabin that is claimed to set a new standard for quietness in a locally-made car. The hybrid bottom line is fuel economy of 6 litres/100km, with performance that trims a full second from the petrol-powered Camry's 0-100km/h time.  The $36,990 pricetag compares to $29,990 for a basic Camry Altise, or $39,990 for a Prius hybrid. The basic details of the Camry hybrid have been public since the car was introduced in 2006 in the USA, but there has been a lot of work on 'Australianising' the car, both for production and driving.  "Right from day one we knew that the American version wasn't going to work," says Phil King, who headed local chassis tuning work. The result is a car which is more responsive, as well as packing a full suite of safety gear.  The Camry hybrid picks up the vast majority of its mechanical package from the third-generation Prius, which went on sale last year, although it has a 2.4-litre engine (up from 1.8) and still has a drive belt for the water pump, unlike the Prius. Full details of the pricing, equipment and sales plan will be revealed later today. But Toyota Australia is already trumpeting six airbags, ESP stability control, active steering assistance and a special power cut-off.  But the boot has taken a hit to fit the onboard battery system. "This hybrid can walk, and chew gum," says Peter Evans, technical chief for Toyota's imported cars.  More details later, together with a first driving impression.

Australia's first hybrid, a petrol-electric Camry, is set for production in 2010 and work is nearly finished on the extra assembly stations at Altona. But, before the Camry hybrid, Toyota also has a minor tweak for the Camry and Aurion in the third quarter of this year. It's mostly about improved efficiency and value, but there will be changes to the front and rear bodywork. Toyota Thailand gave a hint on the new direction when it unveiled its version of the Camry hybrid last week, although the headlight and tail lamp treatments are sharper and more edgy than the Australian car. The local Camry will get new-style headlamps, most likely projector beams, and will have a new type of tail lamp cluster produced on an all-new production line at Hella Australia in Mentone. The facelift design work has been done at Toyota Style Australia under the direction of Paul Beranger and should be more acceptable to Australian tastes. But Toyota Australia refuses to make any comment on the upcoming updates, or the exact timing of the hybrid Camry. "Yes, there will be an update to the Camry and Aurion this year. But you will have to wait to see what we have," says Toyota spokesman, Mike Breen.