Mid-size sedans are in a sales slump, and Toyota arguably has a lot to lose. The company has long dominated the segment (and the market as a whole) with its Camry, the top-selling passenger car in the United States for 15 years running. And it hopes to buck the trend with its redesigned 2018 Camry family, which was revealed earlier this month at the Detroit auto show.
The latest Camry was developed, Toyota said, to deliver an improved driving experience. To that end, it is a clean-slate design, including its mechanicals and its more expressive styling. The car is claimed to have more space-efficient interior packaging,  thanks in part to its fresh Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) underpinnings. To make sure there?s a Camry for all, the lineup remains diversified, with Dynamic Force four-cylinder engines anchoring the bottom, a V-6 remaining on offer, and a Camry hybrid that is poised to be more enticing to buyers than ever. The Camry hybrid will pack a fully re-engineered version of Toyota?s latest hybrid system, THS II, which takes advantage of the efficiency gains in the latest Prius. Toyota has poured a large amount of effort into the powertrain, aiming to rejuvenate sales of the Camry hybrid even as gas prices have remained low and sales of the variant have dropped to about five percent of total Camry sales.
?I think, with the improvements made in this generation of the hybrids, we?re expecting the hybrid mix go back up, probably to 10 to 12 percent,? said...