Over the years certain brands of cars have become inexorably associated with colors. Regardless of what is sprayed on in the paint shop, a Ferrari is always a deep scarlet red at heart. Anything built on the north side of the English Channel should be a dark green. High performance cars wearing a three-pointed star or four rings are silver arrows. The Toyota Camry? Beige through and through.
Beige is not an offensive hue. Quite the opposite in fact, it may well be the best camouflage color in the known universe. Instead of garish swirlies that are guaranteed to attract attention, automakers should just paint all their prototypes beige and spy photographers would never even see them.
This is why the Camry has become associated with beige. Since the early 1990s, there has been nothing inherently wrong with the Camry, quite the opposite, it does exactly what customers expect it to do for years on end. That is, it provides reliable, affordable, efficient transportation without complaint or excitement. You climb in, start it, go from point A to point B and park it. Rinse, repeat and occasionally put gas in the tank.
You buy a Camry so you don’t have to think about. You don’t look at it and wonder to yourself “what was I thinking?” Chances are you don’t think about it at all. That’s precisely what most Americans seem to want and they have made Camry the best selling car in the country since 1997.
For 2015, Toyota wanted more. Ever since Akio Toyoda took the reigns of the automaker started by his great-grandfather, he has pushed to transform the company’s products with the aim of having customers be more passionate about them. If not necessarily always exciting to drive, they are now at least more interesting to look at.
The Camry got a complete redesign that debuted in 2011 as a 2012 model and now three years later it has received a surprisingly comprehensive mid-cycle update. Every piece of visible bodywork has been reshaped while retaining the hardware underneath. The result is a midsize sedan that is no longer a shrinking violet that simply disappears into the surrounding landscape.
The massive new grille combines with the vertical LED running lamps in the corners to create somewhat of family resemblance to the upcoming Mirai fuel cell sedan. While the Mirai needs its enormous front air intakes to cool the fuel cell stack and electronics, most of the Camry’s fascia is actually blanked off. The result is certainly less bland, but frankly a bit overwrought. Fortunately, the rest of the refresh is generally more successful. New character creases near the rocker panels and below the belt lines, make the car appear less slab-sided.
The door frames and side glass are carried over from the 2014 edition, but a strip of black plastic and chrome trim in the C-pillar creates the visual effect of more glass and slimmer pillars. As with every time that designers try this trick, the effect works better at a distance than it does up close, but even the latter scenario looks much better than what Chrysler did on the 2008-2013 200 and Dodge Avenger.
In the cabin, the high-end XSE model receives leather trim with ultrasuede inserts and red contrasting stitching that creates a very premium impact. The seats are comfortable and offer reasonable support for the way a Camry owner is likely to use their car. For what is supposed to be the sportiest model in the Camry lineup, the XSE could use some more aggressive side bolstering in the seats.
The thick-rimmed, leather wrapped steering wheel features paddles that enable the driver to tap-shift the six-speed automatic transmission without removing their hands from the wheel. Like other recent Toyotas, the Camry features the Entune infotainment system which requires a custom Toyota app running on a connected smartphone to use features such as Bing search, Pandora, Open Table and Yelp. The system works reasonably well, but I’d still rather just have Android Auto and hopefully, Toyota will join most other automakers in supporting that standardized interface along with Apple CarPlay.
In the meantime, having access to Bing search through Entune, means you can search for virtually any point of interest and then send the address to the navigation system rather than relying on the far more limited POI database that is embedded. One nice feature on the upper trim levels is a Qi-compatible wireless charging mat that is built into the storage bin at the base of the center console. If you have a compatible smartphone, just drop it on the mat and it will start charging. If like me, your phone doesn’t have Qi charging support, Toyota also provides a USB port in the bin to grab some extra electrons.
The XSE is available with either the base 2.5-liter four-cylinder or Toyota’s long-running 3.5-liter V6 cranking out 268-horsepower and 248-lb.-ft. of torque with the standard six-speed automatic. As always, the engine is smooth-running and provides more than adequate thrust. During my week of driving, the Camry averaged 19.5 mpg in mixed driving, a bit shy of the EPA rating of 21 mpg city and 31 mpg highway, but not unexpected in winter driving conditions.
Toyota has improved the feel of the electrically assisted power steering over the years, although it still doesn’t have a lot of feedback. Ride and handling have also gotten better with a nice balance of steady body control and reasonably firm damping without making it too aggressively harsh.
The one downer about the driving dynamics of this particular Camry was the brakes. The first time I pulled out of the driveway, I realized it seemed to take a lot more pressure than usual on the pedal to generate deceleration. The pedal itself felt firm and didn’t have any excess travel, it just took more pressure. Taking a look through the spokes of the 18-inch alloy wheels, it appeared as though whichever publication had this particular tester previously had been doing some hard brake testing that overheated the brakes, glazing the pads and rotors. This is not a normal scenario for such a car unless you do a lot of downhill mountain driving and easily fixable by machining the rotor surfaces and replacing the pads.
Overall, if I was in the market for a sporting midsize sedan with the emphasis on sporting, the Camry XSE probably wouldn’t be at the top of my shopping list. However, all of the attributes that have made the Camry a top seller for the past two decades remain in place on this newest edition. Those same characteristics are joined by bolder design and generally improved driving dynamics. From an entry-level price of $24,460 including the Entune system and delivery, the loaded XSE I drove had a bottom-line price of $35,768. For those that like the sporty look of the XSE and want the same handling upgrades, the four-cylinder version provides a more fuel-efficient and affordable alternative starting at just $27,660.
