Toyota's Cliché-Filled 2018 Camry

Toyota's Camry has been the best-selling standard size sedan in America for quite a few years.  So it's always interesting hereabouts when Camry get a redesign, which happened for the 2018 model year.

By now it is well known that Toyota Motor Corporation president Akio Toyoda has been crusading against previous Toyota styling that had been criticized as being too bland.  But the results seen in newer Toyota and Lexus models sold in the USA are, in my possibly humble opinion, too far on the other extreme.  Cluttered, confusing and overdecorated are descriptions that quickly come to mind.  So does one more: clichéd.

Maybe I'm being unfair.  After all, automobile styling is definitely subject to fashion, especially for brands that sell well.  That's because, to maintain good sales levels, the appearance of a brand's cars needs to be acceptable to a large potential buying public.  Certain design features are accepted as being appropriate, especially when seen on brands from more than one automobile firm.  Styling fashions therefore tend to change slowly, a few details at a time.  (Even large changes such as General Motors' introduction of panoramic windshields for 1954 were previewed by placing such windshields on some high-end 1953 Oldsmobile and Cadillac convertibles.)

What of the new 2018 Camry?  Its styling is whole-hog overdone Toyota.  Sales will probably remain strong if for no other reason than major competitors such as the Chevrolet Impala and Honda Accord are also fairly jazzy -- though not so extreme as Camry.

Gallery

A 2018 Toyota Camry seen in front three-quarter aspect.  The passenger compartment greenhouse is rounded-off and uncluttered.  This is contrasted by the sharp-edged detailing on the frontal clip.  Character lines and features on the sides -- especially the dished-in zone on the lower parts of the doors -- are found on many current brands.

Rear end design includes the usual sorts of V-shapes and contrasting angled creases that are common nowadays, though Toyota stylists worked to use such elements as distinctively as they could manage.  For example, the swelling or bulging of the lower trunk lid differs from the usual sculpting found on other cars.  On the other hand, the V-shape at the car's edge below the tail light assembly is clutter that's marginally related to the rest of the rear design.  It was probably added to try to relate the rear to all those V's seen at the front.

The Camry's frontal styling is edging towards that of Lexus with the pinched grille ensemble.  Flanking the functional radiator air intake are two fake intakes inspired by racing car intakes used for brake cooling.  But the dark areas seen there are simply solid panels with textured surfaces -- well, that's what I see on a '18 Camry parked two cars away from my car's garage slot.  What is the point of such grossly obvious phoniness?

To illustrate my contention regarding clichés, this is the front end of a 2016 Honda Civic hatchback.  Note the pinched grille zone and the flanking fake air intakes.

Another emerging cliché is the faux-transparent roof feature shown on this white Camry.  Functionally, at can be regarded as a two-tone paint job.  Might those be returning?  That's how fashion often works.