A Toyota Camry is the definition of beige; unobtrusive, boring, and ordinary. Still, this Camry XV10 made my kind of greedy. I met it in Beijing in 2015, and the whole car appeared to be in a super shape. I’ve always loved the aerodynamically shaped mirrors, useless but somehow very cool.
Poor Camry lost a wheel cover.
The third generation ‘XV10’ Toyota Camry was made from 1991 until 1997, it was manufactured in Japan, the U.S., and in Australia. In Japan it was known as the Toyota Scepter, and the six-cylinder version was known as ‘Toyota Vienta’ in Australia. The Camry XV10 was available with two petrol engines: a 2.2 four and a 3.0 V6, both mated to a five-speed manual or a four-speed automatic. The car we have here is a 2.2 automatic.
The inside was in great shape, with the original beige cloth seats and shiploads of beige plastics. And see how giant that gear lever is! Sticks up almost 30 centimeters in the air, like in tractor style. Rare to see a XV10 so well preserved.
LE for the trim level.
The XV10 Camry was never officially sold in China but some cars arrived via parallel import and other misty channels, and there was some strange local production under the infamous Guangzhou scheme in the late 1990’s.
The narrow license plate areas indicates this particular Toyota Camry was originally sold in North America, before it somehow ended up on Chinese shores. Note the CAMRY script in the light bar and they key hole on the right, and note the classy Toyota license plate frames. These frames were very popular in the 2000’s, I had ‘m on my car too, they were forbidden later on, and re-allowed later on again.