Little Known Secrets of the Gen 3 Toyota Camry

February 13, 2014 at 9:21pm

I would say I am quite obsessed with my 1992 Toyota Camry, which most people, even people who are more knowledgeable with mechanical aspects of cars, find very odd. Why am I so obsessed with a 22 year old Toyota Camry of all cars? Isn't it just an old appliance made to get from point A to point B and nothing more? Isn't it a basic car with nothing revolutionary in its design? The short answer, NO.

I wasn't always this obsessed with my car, but I have always liked it. It wasn't until I randomly stumbled on a book at the FRCC library that revealed some very sensitive information from the automotive industry, something revealed from a single book written about Ford, that was never intended to get released into the general public. Today, this information is still not widely known. I have spent considerable time investigating this and, simply put, I'm shocked by the reality that the 1992 Toyota Camry has played a pivotal role in revolutionizing the entire automotive industry in engineering standards and design. Much of the modern industry is shaped by this single car. I view my car as an icon and symbol, it symbolizes in one model a huge revolution in being the benchmark for all modern cars.

The 1992-1996 Toyota Camry sedan may be seen by many people today as a typical old junker, many of which are seen in rough shape, dented, paint fully oxydized, and rather beat up. However, the automotive engineering industry and experts view this car very differently from the average Joe. Ford motor company worked hard to keep the truth about this vehicle from becoming household knowledge, and today, this car's impact in the industry is largely an industry secret. You might consider it the Yamaha GTS1000 of midsize sedans.

The car was extraordinarily sophisticated for its time, the NVH engineering, dampening, body stamping processes, and non-synchronous transmission were all state of the art in its day. The NVH dampening is even regarded as excellent by modern standards.

The Camry is a tale of decontenting every generation since the 1992-1996. Sheet metal got thinner and thinner, tolerances loosened, features got downgraded, and NVH was significantly reduced.

When I first recieved the car, I thought it was just your typical old sedan. I had no idea what it took to create it. Now, it has gave me a passion and obsession as a representation of the pinnacle of automotive engineering, a car that literally was designed to put engineering far above budget, and the components were made to last as long as possible. In fact, the 1992 Camry was designed WITHOUT planned obsolescence.

The 1992 Toyota Camry sedan was fully 3-D cad designed, the first of any Toyota product. It is the 3rd most expensive to develop product in corporation history, after the 1989 Lexus LS400 and the Lexus LFA.

Toyota produced cars with extraordinarily advanced styling in the 1990s, it was absurd how much it cost to tool dies to stamp body panels for the Lexus LS400, ES300, SC300, and the 1992 Toyota Camry. Infact, the Lexus SC300 was designed fully with clay models for the most beautiful shape possible with no regard to how hard it would be to stamp.

Another corporate secret is referred to as "Market Dumping" which Toyota was accused of. This is generally frowned upon in business practice today. As Top Gear UK states, "Toyota is out for blood (with the 1992 Camry), and they don't much care who sheds it." This was very true. Toyota had a secret technique, almost like cheating against the competition. To do this, They took advantage of the difference in the Japanese and American currency. This allowed them to engineer a midsize sedan that should sell at about 45,000 dollars in 1992, but sell it at around 20,000 dollars. Even at this price, adjusted for inflation, 1992-1996 Camries were vastly more expensive than modern Camries. This low price was not profitable, as the Gen 3 Camry was so overengineered it was only breaking even. But the goal was not profit, it was setting a reputation for the entire company that would cement popularity and huge sales in the future that would bring in massive profits.

There is a term in engineering known as "Benchmarking", which involves reverse engineering product competition to understand where your own product will stand against other competitive products. Long story short, competitors like Ford were simply confused, they simply could not figure out how Toyota achieved building a car like this. Ford engineers could not figure out how Toyota engineers did it, one engineer simply claimed it was too good to be true and said he was dismayed. The head of the Taurus program admitted that if you study the car, it would seem like a consensus of 20 years of development would be required. Competitors of all kinds could never figure out why Toyota had such high standards in the surface finish of the engine components even in places it was not only unnecessary but it couldn't even be seen without a tear down. There was simply no reason or necessity to have standards this high. Eventually Ford assumed Toyota simply did it to be the "Best".

But it wasn't only standard midsize competition that were getting worried. BMW appearantly got word of this car. "Special reports" in the industry revealed what Toyota had in its arsenol. So, even BMW reverse engineered and Benchmarked the 1992 Camry. There goal: to understand how Toyota built such an incredible car and sell it at such a low price. This was BMW, the company known for excellent performance and precision engineering.

Toyota had ways of striking fear into competitors, even luxury marques such as BMW, Audi, and Mercedes Benz when their engineers saw the 1992 Camry, even from the outside. The body styling required the most sophisticated metal stamping techniques availible. The shoulder at the C pillar, which

was continous metal, was something Toyota had the capability to do this type of styling, but Audi and Mercedes Benz had to use plastic filler pieces in place of the continous metal. It was Toyota's little way of letting the competition know what they were in for.

Additionally, the 1992 Toyota Camry's NVH reduction technology was leading edge, and even by today's standards, are considered one of the best NVH reducing cars in automotive history. The engineering of "NVH reduction", also known as "Noise, Vibration, and Harshness" reduction in cars requires the use of advanced mathematics and physics, utilizing Complex Algebra, Differential Equations with Linear Algebra Matrices, which specifically includes the Laplace Transform and Fourier Series operations.

Then there is the story of David E Davis, the founder and CEO of Automobile Magazine, and he admitted numerous times how much he loved the 1992 Toyota Camry V6 XLE, he even favored it over the Mercedes Benz 300E and Jaguar XJ6.

"Car: A Drama of the American Workplace", 1997- Mary Walton

After this book was release, Ford said "Never Again" to allowing a journalist access to engineering and design

"Ford's mission statement was "to deliver a product competitive with the Japanese in quality and function, and Better in Styling"

The mission statement talked about the japanese in generic terms, but the Taurus team had specific competitors in mind. Until Toyota introduced a redesigned Camry in 1992, the Taurus target had, in fact, been the Accord. But the new Camry was in a class by itself. And so the mission boiled down to two words: Beat Camry

One day in early fall, 1991, while DN101 was still a sightless, tailless whelp in the Design Center studio, Dick Landgraff slid behind the wheel of a 1992 emerald green Toyota Camry with a V-6 engine and set out for his home in peaceful Bloomfield Hills, a northern suburb thick with auto company executives. To the east was the steamy urban blob called detroit.

Landgraff had been waiting for this

"If asked about benchmarking, under no circumstances was Landgraff (Head of the Ford Taurus program) or anyone else at Ford to mention the 1992 Camry. His vice president, Jim Donaldson, was a

bear on the subject. "We're not making a commercial for the Japanese," Donaldson had said just two days ago at a sales rally. This is what Landgraff should say to the journalists: "Although we looked at every vehicle in the segment, we took a hard look at Japanese Imports." Sure enough the question came up. "What were some of the benchmark cars?" asked Jim Healey from USA Today. "The 1992 Camry set a new standard" Landgraff answered. "Its one of the best cars in the world." Landgraff had been waiting for this car to drive. According to special reports, the 1992 Camry was something special. Landgraff didn't know it at the time, and he wouldn't have cared, but that little trip in the 1992 Camry was going to cost Ford half a billion dollars. All the while Landgraff was making his presentation, he kept thinking about the 1992 Camry. They targeted the wrong car. Forget the Accord, Dick Landgraff was thinking to himself as he drove the 1992 Camry. Now there was a Japanese car that was even better. Holy-moly! Was Ford in trouble, or what? Sometimes Landgraff wondered how it happened. "Did Toyoda, the guy who runs the company's name is Toyoda, did he suddenly have the idea one day? Did it bubble up from the bottom? Bubble down from the top? Did it have-you know the japanese- consensus? It's overblown, it isn't quite as consensus oriented management as you might think- butdid they consense on this over twenty years? I don't know how they did it. They somehow said, "We're going to be the best, And that's how they build cars like the 1992 Camry." Where Taurus was good or better, Camry had the edge. What it would take to match Toyota." As Soon as another 1992 Camry became availible, the Ford team dispatched it to the engineering teardown center in the body engineering building, where cars were painstakingly disassembled and their parts, including the tinniest screws, bolts and brackets, were mounted in grids on white 4-by-8 foot wooden panels suspended from an overhead track. You could slide them back and forth, as if you were standing inside a giant file drawer. DN101 Taurus engineers went over to examine the splayed out Camry innards, which had been methodically labeled, weighed, and evaluated for cost. The boards told them several things. Camry engineers had gone to extraordinary pains in the design of every component. Moreover, some of the parts were identical to those used in the more expensive Lexus ES300. That kind of quality didn't come cheap. Toyota had spent maybe $1,000 per car more than the amount budgeted for Taurus. Ford engineers described the level of engineering excellence of the 1992 Camry as "Freighting"... Freighting that Toyota could make a car this good. "As always, the 1992 Camry was the benchmark. Gary Sopko, a Ford engineer, was especially impressed with Toyota's fit and finish. "Their paint is perfect, their doors are perfect. Everything fits real good." The [1992] Camry purred along. This was some car. It was heavier, larger, more expensive than the old Camry, it was upscale in every way. It was quiet, smooth and responsive. The gears seemed to glide into place. In fact, the powertrain was just amazing. He'd [Dick Landgraff, head of the new Taurus program] have to give it a 9.5 on a 10-point scale. If this test drive were any indication, Landgraff would bet that the Camry's quality ratings would make even the Honda Accord look inferior." It was still a basic box, but it was one in which all the parts fit snugly, both inside and out, and they all matched in color. There were no exposed screws; the instrument panel and interior trim didn't have that tacky plastic finish found in Ford cars. It had craftsmanship. Landgraff, wasn't sure how to define the craftsmanship, nor was anyone else. But Landgraff knew it went beyond quality. It was nothing you could measure. It was more the look, the feel, the smell and the sound of quality. It could be summed up as "well made", an attention to detail, a return to first principles., when skilled carpenters and metalworkers painstakingly turned out cars by hand, individually shaping and mating parts, so they fit together and matched in color and texture, turned smoothly, and wore evenly. However brief his stewardship of the new Camry, it was enough to impress George Evalt (Head of powertrain for the Taurus) with its powertrain, especially the transmission. The shifts were so smooth they were barely perceptible. The V6 was astonishingly quiet.

The decision to use [the V6 from the older model] in the base Taurus was a decision made long ago, largely for financial reasons. The 2 new engines - a 3.0 DOHC V6 and a 4.0 DOHC Yamaha V8 for the SHO - were in the final stages of development. The base engine was a reliable, hard-worker. The 2 new engines were extremely promising. The Camry engine didn't seem to pose a threat, if they could match its noise level. It was a different story with the transmissions. The base Taurus was using the AX4S transmission developped 10 years earlier. The 'S' stood for synchronous shifting...In a synchronous transmisison, gear sets could engage only when one was moving and the other was not. The Camry transmission used non-sychronous shifiting, where both parts were in motion. The result was a faster, smoother shift. The crazy thing was that GM had the technique long before the Japanese but had abandonded it. Ford was now making a transmission that employed the technique on 2 downshifts and 1 upshift, the AX4N, which was teamed with the 4-valve V6. But it was not as good as Camry's. Landgraff reassured Hagenlocker that there was little evidence that Toyota planned to back off its quality commitment. If anything its costs were increasing. According to Ford's trained cost estimators, the 1994 camry just out contained 200 dollars in upgrades, Toyota had installed passenger-side airbags two years before the legal requirement, and also converted to an aluminum engine block that must have added 50 dollars to the cost. The weight savings was 30 lbs, and they didn't especially need it. "I don't know why they did it" Landgraff said. "Maybe just to be the best" Try to make the Taurus as good as Camry."

Formula 1 driver Jackie Stewart on 1992 Camry vs. 1996 Ford Taurus:

When it came time to discuss the DN101 Taurus prototype, Tom Moran reported: "We're very close to Camry in shift quality." Very Close. Stewart pounced. "So your saying "almost as good as best in class?" We've got to get out of that... I would not be here to be listened to if I had been almost as good as best in class... You've got to win every time. Nobody remembers who is second." Stewart could go on like this forever. Landgraff shut him down. "Okay, let's not get carried away with this, guys."

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Toyota's Metal Stamping process on the 1992 Camry was more advanced than Mercedes Benz or Audi, the compound curve of the C-pillar forming the shoulder design feature needed an ultra-advanced stamping process in 1992... state of the art. Most other cars had not achieved this level of metal stamping advancement.

The 1992 Toyota Camry was studied even by BMW reverse engineers to try to understand Toyota's engineering capabilities.

"How Toyota Became #1"-By David Magee

In the history of Toyota's evolution from a middle of the pack enterprise into a global leader, the restyled 1992 Camry sedan stands out as an excellent example of how the Japanese automaker builds customer loyalty. It's a textbook case of how setting high quality and value goals for specific products or services can improve the image and strength of the overall company and build a loyal customer base. Through a restyling effort in the early 1990s that improved the vehicle well beyond its competition, Toyota made the Camry into America's perennial best selling car.

In response to the negative publicity (of the recalls of the 2nd Gen Camrys), Toyota recalled more than 500,000 of the 1989 Camrys in question. By the time the 3rd generation Camry was launched in 1992, the vehicle's quality and engineering were so high the episode was hardly remembered, and Toyota's reputation in the United States was never better.

The year was 1989, and Robert B. McCury, along with Jim Press, was dissatisfied with the new, third generaton Camry that was to be introduced in the early 1990s as the answer to Ford's Taurus. It was still a Japanese design at heart, and while it would prove effective at market maintenance, it would not allow Toyota to meet its full potential by capitalizing on both quality and design. Like its predessecors, the thrid-generation Camry was going to be reliable and value-oriented but generally staid and lacking the flair needed for the American market. McCurry and Press lobbied executives and managers at Toyota's headquarters in Japan to take the vehicle back to the drawing board and see if more could be done to put the camry in a class of its own.

Basing the design on a Lexus Platform, which provided more room and an engineering base that had proven exceptionally effective just years before, designers and engineers approached the new Camry much like they had Toyota's luxury brand: No expense was spared. The company had been earning money in the late 1980s, but cash was not exactly gushing from the company's coffers. Still, they got the green light upon urging from the United States sales team to raise the bar so far on the new Camry that the competition would have difficulty responding. The result of the significant added expense was an engineering work of genius that delivered far more value to the customer than comparable vehicles like the Taurus and the Accord.

Not only was the 1992 Camry more powerfiul, roomier, and sharper in design, but engineers added hundreds of extras, such as passenger air bags before they were mandatory, and an aluminum block engine, which cost 50$ more per vehicle, even though it was of no visible use to customers. When Ford engineers studying the Camry tried to figure out why the Camry's designers added the block engine when customers would never know of the added value, all they could come up with is Toyota did it simply to be "The Best".

When the more sleekly, arguably overengineered Camry hit dealer showrooms, customers responded positively and competitors like Ford were shocked- no, stunned. At the time, the over-the-top Camry

was arguable the best midsize sedan ever built. The program cost Toyota millions, which, combined with the expertise of the Lexus launch, caused the compant to begin looking for more effective and less costly ways to develop new products. Still, the value to customers and damage to competitors was already done.

The Taurus held on to number one in sales for several years after the 1992 Camry launch, but this was mostly because Ford continually dropped thousands of units into unprofitable fleet sales just to keep factory lines running and to keep the car artificially on top. The Taurus may have been America's best-selling car, but as many as 60 percent of the units sold were to outfits like Hertz rentals. Insiders at Ford knew they had a problem: If the Taurus was not restyled as the best in class, its future success was questionable. So, in the early 1990s, Ford's executives authorized one of the most ambitious vehicle initiatives in the company's history: the Taurus remake.

Initially, the Taurus redesign was intended to best Honda's Accord, the top-selling car at the time. But when Ford team members checked out Toyota's new Camry during the research phase, they quickly learned they had a new car to beat. Customers were still favoring the Accord, but the Ford team knew the Camry would soon take over. The vehicle was undeniably a wonder for the price. No other car in the class came close. When Ford engineers took a Camry apart piece by piece for study, many became mesmerized and others panic-stricken by the obvious quality, suggesting it was frightening to think Toyota could make a car so good.

Dick Landgraff is the former Ford vice president who was charged with leading the Taurus restyling program and who wrote the project's mission statement after test-driving the 1992 Camry. Wrote Landgraff: "Deliver a produc competitive with the Japanese on Quality and function and better in styling Features and value. Beat Camry."

The statement become almost an obsession for Landgraff and the team, and Ford poured millions of dollars in support just as Toyota had done for the Camry. The Taurus program was riddled with discontent and indecision, though; the Camry had set the standards so high that they seemed unreachable. Throughout the two-year development process, Landgraff and others found themselves vacillating between respect and resentment of Toyota's accomplishment: "Did Toyoda, the guy who runs the company's name is Toyoda- did he suddenly have the idea one day?" asked landgraff in 1995. "Did it bubble up from the bottom? Bubble down from the top? Did it have-you know, the japanese consensus? Its overblown, it isn't quite as consensus oriented management as you might think- but did they consense on this over twenty years? I don't know how they did it. They somehow said, "We're going to be the best", And that is how they build cars like the Camry.

Ford's new Taurus was launched in 1996. In 1997 the Camry overtook both it and Honda's Accord to become America's best-selling car, a position it still held in 2007. The Taurus met with harsh reviews,

and Ford did very little tp update it again, allowing it to die a slow death, sustained only by heavy fleet sales. Finally, in 2006, Ford ceased production of the Taurus, killing one of its best brands. The company did, however, announce in 2007 that it would rename the struggling Ford 500 the Taurus, ressurecting the brand, but the damage from ineffectivley chasing the Camry had already been done.

For Toyota, the 1992 camry and the development of Lexus validated the company's ability not only to duplicate its success in designing and building for the American Market, but also to do so in raising the bar to greater heights than ever before in the company's history. With its bigger interior, more power, and unequaled engineering for a midsize sedan, the camry also proved that Toyota could be a leader in more than just small, lower-priced vehicles. By developing a product that slotted a class above the competition but cost the same as some in the class below, Toyota exceeded customer expectations and greatly enhanced its brand,"

"Toyota-Coorportations That Changed the World"

Perhaps the best example of how Toyota constantly thinks about the future is in the classis battle between Ford's Taurus and Toyota's Camry, with America as the battleground.

When Ford executives looked to the future in the early 1980s, the picture was bleak. They were slipping down the slope of declining sales into failure. Ford! America's car company! The carmaker that defined the car culture for America at the turn of the twentieth century was in danger of bankruptcy. Henry Ford would doubtless have preffered death to seeing such an unthinkable thing as the Ford Motor Company coming to ruin. America was trying to recover from the gas shortages of 1973 and 1980, and part of the answer was the Corolla- perky and miserly on gas, it drove past every mechanic's shop in town.

Ford Engineers went to work and came up with the Taurus, one of the best designed and best functioning cars Ford ever built. It looked kind of like a Jellybean, but engineers liked it, and so did drivers. Launched in 1985, Taurus saved Ford. Soccer moms and college students, librarians, and just promoted vice presidents flocked to the showrooms and drove off with a Taurus. Suddenly there were Tauruses everywhere, from Main Street to Wall Street. Seven years of great sales knocked Honda's powerhouse Accord out of the top spot. In 1992, Ford sold nearly half a million Tauruses. Drivers, for their part, were glad to be driving an American car again. Ford execs put on sunglasses and envisioned a bright future. They were kicking Corolla around the track and enjoying every lap.

But the future got dark again for Ford. Toyota decided that Corolla was what it was, it had a better answer waiting in the wings.

Toyota took a long hard look at Camry and knew a winner when it saw one. Now was the time to reconfigure the Camry model. Sedate and Solid when it came out, Camry was nobody's idea of a plush ride. But it was a good value, like all Toyotas, and demonstrated an unusual desire to run forever. If "Plain Vanilla" was continually linked with Camry, nobody at Toyota minded. The vanilla bean is, after all, among the rarest and most delicious spices in the world.

When the Georgetown, Kentucky, plant opened, in 1988, Toyota got serious about the Camry. It wanted something that would kill and deliver last rites to the Taurus, and Camry was elected.

The divine wind was blowing in a fair direction once more. The Lexus had opened to rave reviews in the early 1990s, and what Toyota had learned in producing it was worth billions in market share. The company would do for the Camry what it had just done for Lexus.

It restyled the Camry onto a Lexus base. It was like touching gold. The Taurus was worrisome, of course, but Toyota, which now was a serious player in the luxury market, could envision millions of sub-luxury customers flocking to a working to a working man's Lexus. So it spared no expense and no effort. The 1992 Camry burst onto the scene loaded for bear: passenger air bags, an aluminum engine for performance, a sexy new design, and rich designer colors. The interior was soft and elegant. Knobs, buttons, levers were just where you wanted them. Seats were roomy and comfortable. The ride was as close to what may people (who had never been in one) imagined a Rolls-Royce delivered.

It was overkill- the best midsize sedan ever constructed on the planet. And what it overkilled was Taurus.

Ford execs, hunkered down in Detroit, fought back. They pushed Taurus into fleet and rental car sales with sharply discounted prices just to keep the line moving while they rethought the whole package. (One former Ford engineer said he was dismayed when they took the Camry apart- it really was too good to be true.)

Ford tried to do the Taurus the way Toyota had done to the Camry. But in the end it failed. There was no consensus from the top, and the line workers had no motivation to think up new ways to improve the product. Everyone at Ford just seemed tired of Taurus. The new version in 1996 was greeted with catcalls from the automotive press. Buyers had too many alternatives now, far more than at the time of the Taurus's first introduction. Even people who wanted to "buy american" could see no reason not to buy a Camry, which now was built from the tires up in the United States. Ford stopped producing the Taurus in 2006. It was the one brand in two generations that had even a chance to beat Toyota at its

own game; the people involved had realized that they couldn't play the game at all. Ford gave it all the money and all the hard work, but in the end it understood that Toyota begins with money and hard work and turns up the heat from there.

Automotive News

October 29, 2007 - 12:01 am ET

It was a scene that would have been worth the price of admission: Bob McCurry, the blunt-spoken executive vice president of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. looking at the initial designs for the 1992 Camry and demanding that Toyota make changes.

It was 1989, a year after the first-generation Camry had gone into production in Georgetown, Ky., and just before the Lexus brand was to launch. The Japanese executives were confident about their performance in the United States to that point — but then they had to face some tough talk from their top U.S. executive.

McCurry wanted a vehicle suited to American tastes, not the traditional low-key Japan-sized model he saw in the designs. There is no explicit record of what the Japanese had to say about McCurry's forceful way of making demands — a dramatic departure from the way things typically were done in Japan. Yoshio Ishizaka, senior vice president and chief coordinating officer of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. at the time, says only: "Some were very much offended by McCurry's comments. Americans like a big car. Always, American opinion is the bigger, the better. That's a very simplified argument."

McCurry later told the Los Angeles Times that he didn't think his direct approach really bothered the Japanese. "I'm a dealer-oriented guy," McCurry told the paper, "and that was a new arena for them. The aggressiveness didn't bother them. They learned a new mode of operating, and I think they respected that."

The Japanese staff might have gotten used to McCurry's style, but the push and pull over the Camry took its toll.

"We really stressed out the chief engineer," says Chris Hostetter, 52, vice president of advanced product strategy and product planning at Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. "I think we worked him into a heart attack or a stroke or something. We dragged these guys out and took them on dealer visits and midnight focus groups. Then we'd grind them on the concept back at headquarters."

NOT WIDE ENOUGH

The U.S. staff wanted a premium product, according to Hostetter. That meant it had to be wider to allow for the styling and aerodynamic shape they wanted. "That caused Japan heartache because Japan has width restrictions," he says. "So we had two widths of cars — for Japan and for the U.S. We also campaigned for a 3.0-liter V-6. All the competitors were V-6-only or V-6-dominated. So we upgraded the V-6 and had a four-cylinder with balance shafts with good fuel economy and performance."

Ishizaka worked to persuade his colleagues in Japan to listen to the American argument. "It was kind of a long, tiring persuasion," the 67-year-old recalls.

He told the executives in Japan: "If you look at the car, it looks a little big for Japanese. But if you put the car under the California sun, with a big landscape, and then if you look at it from a distance, the car matches the landscape well."

Even though the Japanese had been hearing the same argument for more than 30 years, it took lengthy discussions to get the Japanese to recognize that roads in the United States are wider than they are in Japan and that people drive longer distances at higher speeds.

"In a way, I think it was really difficult for the chief coordinator to smooth out both sides of opinion," Ishizaka says. "However, we worked very hard to fill the gap between the two sides."

Akihiro Wada, now 73 and the retired head of r&d at Toyota Motor Corp., was involved in the technical discussions about the Camry and the effort to meet the demands from the American side. The initial model presented what Wada called "a Japan-market five-number car."

"It was too narrow and not suited for the United States," he says. "The engineering problem was the cradle, or engine bay, holding the motor. For America, we had to cut it in half and widen it. The chief engineer proposed some very difficult designs. I made lots of comments."

It was not a matter of not understanding what the Americans wanted, according to Wada. "All chief engineers understand American tastes," he says. "Americans are very frank. But the engineering to meet those tastes was very difficult."

Bryan Bergsteinsson, now 62, who worked at Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. for more than 25 years in a variety of roles, including product planning, calls the 1992 Camry "the maturing of TMS." He credits McCurry and Yukiyasu Togo, then president of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A.

"Bob and Yuki were two dyed-in-the-wool sales guys," Bergsteinsson says. "They did a lot of table pounding at TMS as to what we needed. Bob may have made people uncomfortable, but they respected his credentials and knowledge. And the dealers paid attention to him. TMC recognized and appreciated that."

REACHING THE NEXT LEVEL

Fritz Hitchcock, a Toyota dealer in Southern California since 1976, says McCurry and Togo "really made a difference in kicking Toyota to the next level."

"I imagine slowly but surely they would have gotten there," he says. "But I think Bob's determinedness and Yuki's enthusiasm really got the Toyota board cooking pretty darned hard to get cars that would sell here, whether they sold in the home market or not."

The 1992 Camry, Hitchcock says, broadened the appeal of the Toyota brand and let people see that Toyota could compete with the Ford Taurus and other U.S. products. Three weeks before the car went on sale, AutoWeek magazine put it this way: The Toyota Camry is "aimed at the enormous American mid-sized car market the way a sawed-off shotgun is aimed at the broad side of a barn: to hit as much of it as possible."

The new model was bigger, wider and longer than its predecessor. The wheelbase increased by 1 inch, the width by 2 inches and the length by 6 inches. The engine was enlarged to 2.2 liters with 130 hp, and

the V-6 went to 3.0 liters and 185 hp. The new Camry finally could do 0 to 60 mph in less than eight seconds.

The car came with a long list of standard equipment, more than the domestic competition, according to Hitchcock. "I think it opened the public's mind to consider a Toyota product," Hitchcock says. "It brought in domestic buyers who never considered buying Toyota before. It got them away from thinking they could only buy American."

Sales did not immediately leap with the 1992 model. But the Camry enabled Toyota to make slow, steady gains in a down market. "Everyone was worried because it was a significant price-up, and all the naysayers said, 'How we gonna do that?'" says Ed Ohlin, 56, a longtime product planner who now consults for Toyota in China.

The base price of the 1992 Camry jumped $2,620, to $15,093. The base V-6 model increased by $1,580.

"What I remember is the intense consternation over how we were going to do this price jump," Ohlin says. "There were people at the dealer level who wanted to bring people in with a low price and then get them to pay more to equip the vehicles with more stuff or pay more in the F&I department on trade-ins. We made that leap pretty seamlessly."

The new model, Ohlin says, "tapped a vein of people who wanted all the superlatives and didn't want an Americanized version of a Japan domestic model. They wanted it aimed at the top of their needs."

THE DINK FACTOR

Hostetter remembers that McCurry kept reminding people that no company had ever repositioned a car upmarket in a recession. "So I was very worried that we had built in too much cost," he says. "But we kept looking at DINK (double income, no kids) households and more disposable income, seeing that there was a bit of affluence. We needed to do Camry like this to develop buyers for Lexus."

The result was that Toyota was lifted from a niche player to one that would take the market head-on. The 1992 Camry impressed the competition, even at Ford Motor Co., according to Hostetter, a former Ford man.

Ford was still reveling in the success of the Taurus, but "this car shocked Ford," he says, "because quality went up by so much."

"It was a difficult price range, but that was where the buyers and market were going," Hostetter says. "That established the Camry brand. It was a hidden secret that this was a Lexus. It even had the hydraulically powered fans that we borrowed from the ES 300. There were some who said the 1992 was too big an improvement and step up. But we wanted to make a total commitment to the car."

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The common refrain from Lexus' luxury rivals is that the entry-luxury ES sedan is nothing more than a tarted-up Camry. Toyota product planners prefer to think of it the other way around — that the Camry is a Lexus with less content.

Indeed, the 1992 Camry — the first Toyota that had the fingerprints of American engineers and product planners on it — had to be good because it was going to share its platform with a Lexus. They knew this because the stopgap ES 250 was based on the previous-generation Camry, and it did not measure up.

In hindsight, some Toyotans have whispered that the 1992 Camry was "too good" and that hitting the price-cost-profit targets was impossible.

Even though this is an iconic vehicle, the Toyota Museum does not have one. Instead, I borrowed a 61,000-mile example from Toyota product engineer Chris Cocores. He obviously is proud of his 15-year-old car because it is in better shape than many mid-sized sedans just off the dealership lot.

While underpowered compared to today's mid-sized competition, the 2.2-liter four-banger has plenty of pep, and freeway speeds arrive surprisingly quickly. Perhaps that's because first and second gear are short. Perhaps it's because the electronically controlled throttle button is set to "power." Yes, there actually is a difference in response between the "power" and "econ" settings.

A FEELING OF UNITY

What really separates the 1992 Camry driving experience is that it feels of a piece. Ever get into a car where it seems as if no one coordinated the feeling of the steering, throttle, brakes and suspension? That each component engineer had a different idea of how the car was supposed to drive? It's frustrating, to say the least.

This Camry clearly had chief engineer Shoichi Miyagawa's meticulous oversight in all parts of the driving experience.

The driving sensation in one's hands, feet and butt is measured and consistent, no matter what the car is being asked to do. The throttle and brake inputs are crisp, the four-speed automatic transmission shifts seamless, the steering assured and the suspension pliant while quite responsive.

Some chastise Toyotas for being numb. And perhaps compared to the more dynamic Honda Accord of the era, that is correct. To the Camry's credit, though, this may be the easiest-to-drive car ever built.

After getting approval for the U.S. Camry to be different from the Japan-market model, U.S. product planners gave the car considerably more width and length. Compared to the previous-generation Camry, there are acres more shoulder room, elbow room and knee clearance. A 6-footer fits tidily into the back seat, even if another 6-footer is driving — although headroom does begin to run out, given the slope of the C-pillar.

LEXUS TOUCHES

So what Lexus touches are in the Camry?

While the instrument panel fonts are austere and dated today, the sweep of the dashboard and waterfall of the center console surfaces are graceful and timeless.

The signal and washer stalks have cushioned strokes, rather than the plinky ones of most mass-market cars of that era. The radio and climate dials and buttons also have cushioned detents. The seats still have sturdy and supportive bolstering after 15 years' use. And the air conditioner still blows ice cold, immediately, on a 90-degree Los Angeles day.

Was the 1992 Camry too good? Well, that's if you drink the Toyota Kool-Aid. Was it very, very good? Absolutely.

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David E Davis, founder of Automobile Magazine, avoided the stereotype of single-minded car guy by appreciating cars others didn't. For example, he thought the 1992 Toyota Camry -- a breakthrough design at the time -- was good enough to, in his common compliment, "knock your hat into the creek." Threw the sedan around hard and "never crossed the center line," he said, even though others were opining that it was another boat from Toyota.

From Automobile Magazine:

After driving our XLE test car, our publication director, David E Davis wondered why now anyone would consider a Mercedes Benz 300E or Jaguar XJ6

BLOOMBERG BUSINESS

OOMPH, ELEGANCE, SILENCE: SURPRISE! IT'S A CAMRY

You might call it Toyota's bargain luxury car. You get in, crank the starter, and there it is--the almost eerie hush that has become the hallmark of the company's Lexus models.

But this is no Lexus. It's the Toyota Camry, which for 1992 has grown from a boxy, practical compact into a quieter, more stylish midsize car. It's longer, taller, and wider than its predecessor--which translates into 15% more interior space and pits it grill-to-grill against the Honda Accord and the Ford Taurus, America's two most-popular cars.

It's no secret that Toyota wants to unseat the Accord as the best-seller. And the new Camry is a car that could do it. An optional V-6 engine has more oomph than the Taurus V-6 and is quieter to boot. And shifts of the automatic transmission are imperceptible--something neither competitor can boast.

The Camry shares the same basic chassis, engine, and suspension with the Lexus ES 300 sedan, introduced last fall. More important, Toyota engineers have made extensive use of vibration- and sound-deadening techniques developed for the Lexus, such as steel-asphalt-steel floor and wheelwell

panels and fluid-filled engine mounts. They've also halved the tolerances on the fit of body panels, to 1.5 millimeters. Among other things, that lessens wind noise.

Technology doesn't come cheap. Sticker prices are up more than 10%, starting at $14,368 and running above $20,000 for the top-of-the-line XLE model. Some of that difference washes out with options-turned-standard, such as air conditioning and body-color bumpers, and the inclusion of driver's-side air bags. Besides, even after popping for optional leather seats and antilock brakes, you can expect to save about five grand over a comparably equipped Lexus ES 300.

MORE TO COME. And you'll get a superb, elegant car. It's not quite as sporty as its Lexus brethren. But after all, the Camry is a family sedan. Still, Toyota plans to extend the Camry line both ways, with a sportier SE version coming this month and a roomy wagon later this spring.

When Lexus was unveiled 2 1/2 years ago, its engineers promised that the innovations would trickle down to the Toyota brand. The new Camry proves they weren't kidding.Larry Armstrong EDITED BY AMY DUNKIN