Toyota rolls out new Camry

The new Camry, which comes with a slew of ten new features, with price tags in the range of Rs 21.26-23.40 lakh (ex-showroom Bangalore).

New Camry would be available in four grades — W1 to W4 and come in both manual and automatic transmission mode and also with and without moonroof.

Briefing reporters, Managing Director Hiroshi Nakagawa said that they are looking at 500 plus units of the model to hit the Indian roads this year and hope to retail around 40 vehicles a month. “We are not looking at very high volumes,” he said. The new Camry will be fully imported and will attract 105 per cent customs duty.

The focus of the new features that the Camry boasts off is mainly on the exterior, Deputy Managing Director (Marketing) Sandeep Singh pointed out.

Fortuner on its way

With regard to Toyota’s plan to launch a new compact car, Nakagawa said observing that while the company was on target with its second plant for manufacturing its compact cars. Among other plans the company announced that it would launch a SUV ‘Fortuner’ in the Indian market on August 24, 2009. Singh said the joint venture expects to sell 2,000 units of Fortuner from the launch date to December end. Fortuner would come with a price tag of around Rs 20 lakh, he added while observing that Toyota had not planned to launch any new model over the period between unveiling of Fortuner in August and its compact car by next year-end. The launch of new Camry version, he said, was an attempt to revitalise sales of the model in the face of tough competition by rival SkodaAuto. The new Camry will be available in 4 new colours and its other features include  A/C with plasmacluster technology, intelligent rain sensing wipers and moonroof, fog and head lamps et al.

TKM has planned to produce 70,000 compact cars annually initially and the capacity can be ramped up to one lakh units per year in the second plant being built at a cost of Rs 3,200 crore, Nakagawa said.