Camry muscles up

By ALASTAIR SLOANE

All that Toyota talk about targeting younger buyers is marketing mumbo-jumbo, huh? Its cars are still too plain-Jane? Don't have flat stomachs, don't show off any flesh? Don't have a hustling, hip image?

Okay, so the new Camry doesn't exactly break the traditional Toyota mould.

It looks 40-ish and conservative, a middle-class parent greying around the temples. But it will - when it gets here later this year - be comfortable, roomy, reliable and even, when persuaded to leave its easy chair, fun to drive.

But the all-new Camry isn't aimed at the young. They will get a different range of Toyota wheels altogether, a switched-on line-up about to go on sale in America under the global brand name Scion (as in descendant or heir).

Just how serious Toyota is about its youth-oriented range became obvious when it bypassed its long-time advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, to appoint a company founded by two British punk-rockers to handle the Scion account.

The creative hotshop is called Attik. It made its name creating street-savvy campaigns for Nike, Sony, Levi's, Virgin, Warner Bros and Columbia TriStar.

It will be charged with pitching the Scion range at a global youth market looking for sharper, more innovative and ecologically friendly designs.

Part of the strategy is to move Scion into a dedicated shop with its own brand environment and sales staff within an existing Toyota dealership. The belief is younger customers will be more comfortable away from forecourts.

This is the first time Toyota has broken with loyal ally Saatchi, which will handle all other business. When Toyota launched its last worldwide brand, Lexus, Saatchi managed to avoid a Scion-like split by setting up a dedicated Lexus agency called Team One.

The Attik appointment is seen as an acceptance by corporate giants, such as Toyota, of communications companies with specialist age-group skills to get closer to target markets.

Meanwhile, Toyota New Zealand has borrowed from the new Ford Falcon campaign book and is drip-feeding details of the Camry, being built by Toyota Australia.

The new model is longer, wider, taller and more spacious than the current Camry.

Product manager Spencer Morris said the Australians had adopted suspension tuning objectives similar to those used by Chris Amon and Toyota New Zealand's engineering team.

This had resulted in a suspension set-up that former Formula One driver Amon endorsed after he tested the cars on New Zealand roads and at the Manfeild race circuit, said Morris.

Eight variants of Camry will be available with either a new high-tech, all-alloy, 2.4-litre twin-cam four-cylinder engine with VVT-i, or a quad-cam, 24-valve V6 engine.

But what Morris isn't talking about just yet is the power output of both engines.

The Camry's four-cylinder engine, which is a reworked version of the 2.4-litre unit driving the people-mover Previa, is expected to deliver 112kW at 5600rpm and 218Nm of torque at 4000rpm, most of the torque available between 1500rpm and 5400rpm. This is 21 per cent more power and 15 per cent more torque than the current Camry's 2.2-litre engine.

The 3-litre V6 will likely be available with different power outputs.

The standard engine will deliver 141kW/279Nm, while the sportier version, with its freer-flowing exhaust system, will produce 145kW at 5200rpm and 284Nm at 4400rpm.