My white 2018 Toyota Camry Hybrid LE is easily the least attractive of the 3 white Camry vehicles we have in our parking lot at work. Today I noticed a beautiful car that looked so nice I didn't even recognize it as a Camry at first. The lovely car was a newer Camry SE in metallic gray. The curious thing is that it isn't that terribly different from my car, yet it looks spectacular while mine looks blah. So why the difference? After some serious comparison perhaps only 4 things are all that much different. 1) The color. The white color of mine washes out the nice lines on the side of the car while the gray just looks fantastic. 2) Wheels. My steel wheels look dumpy next to the alloy rims on the SE. 3) The nose. The LE's nose is just not quite right. It looks like a big gaping maw. The SE's nose looks great. The lines on the hood (which are the same between the 2 cars) blend in with the grill and just look great. 4)The lower section on the tail. My lower tail is black while the tail on the SE is body colored and sculpted to look a bit nicer. This is a minor thing but the SE does look better. I don't know what Toyota is thinking with some of their front end treatments. I thought my nose was ugly but the new Avalon is even worse IMHO.
I keep thinking, some day they'll get tired of this gaping maw nonsense. I can wait. Forever if need be.
A white LE Hybrid like mine. Notice the grill and plastic hub caps. Edit: Oh and how the white washes out the lines on the side. Compare to below.
Toyota sure gets a lot right with cars, but I don't think they can style a nose/bumper to save their lives. I really can't remember the last time I saw the front of a Toyota and thought "hey, they really got that right." Some cars are best seen from the inside.
Yeah, but that's a prius. And throughout the entire history of the Prius, Toyota's styling has been subordinate to aerodynamics, and also (strictly my opinion) it's been a secret challenge to the buyer: Designer: "Okay, here's our new Prius." Pointy haired boss: "Snooze alert, too boring. Let's push the edge a little." Designer: "Push?" Pointy haired boss: "Heh. C'mon, they're just buying it for the fuel economy and virtue signalling. Doesn't matter what it looks like. Let's mess with their heads." Designer: "Ummm..." Pointy haired boss: "No seriously, we could offer this thing rolling on 7 wheels with only one door, on the bottom of course, and they'd still buy it." Designer: "Okay?" Pointy haired boss: "I double dog dare you, c'mon. Then we offer it only in a two-tone lavender & bronze color scheme. Canary yellow interior." Designer: "You really don't think that's going to eat into the sales?" Pointy haired boss: "Look, we let it slide when you did that boring normal console for the 2nd generation. Leave the sales estimates to us." Designer: "Right then, but... all those extra wheels?" Pointy haired boss: "FINE. We'll do it with just the four wheels and some normal doors but see if you can come up with some bizarre shapes for the head and taillights so we can juice the revenue on spare parts from collisions. What's the toughest possible shape for an injection molder? That's what I want." Designer: "Stained glass on acid, coming right up boss!"
i don't understand, the le gets one full maw, and the se gets the fish gills? agree on the color and the wheels. i don't like the black plastic 'teardrops' they've added to the outside corners of the tail lights.
All of these superfluous styling exercises drive me nuts. The front corner "intake ports", for example, and the correesponding rear corner "exhaust ports". I guess the magic smoke has to exit somewhere, right...
Good or bad styling, the fact that we are talking about a Toyota product means that Toyota marketing has done their job well.
When I was looking at hybrids I hated how boring the 2012 camry looked. But then I realised that that was the American version: the Japanese / Asian styling that I would have access to looked much better My actual car and I've seen a few like this around too:
sharp! we have a '13 and are very happy with it. but we're old and boring. may look at a '19 this summer.
