You made a performance car out of a Camry? Well, why not? In 2024, something seems entirely insane about the Toyota Camry TRD. Everyone wants crossovers, so a midsize sedan with a wing and chassis bracing seems as right for the times as a new From First To Last album. However, do you remember the last time you and your childhood friends hung out around the neighborhood electrical box? Yeah, this is like that. Certainty is turning to history before we can even realize what’s happening.
The V6 Accord’s been dead for years, as has the V6 Altima, as has the Mitsubishi Galant Ralliart. Subaru last sold a six-cylinder Legacy five years ago, and both Ford and Stellantis don’t make mainstream midsize sedans for North America at all anymore. Hell, we don’t even get a Volkswagen Passat these days. Once the all-hybrid 2025 Camry rolls into showrooms, the era of the V6 midsize sedan will be officially over, which means this is your last chance to dance, with or without pants. So, should you? Needless to say, we needed to take this thing for a rip to find out.
Oh, and when I say this is the last chance, I mean this exact car. See, while you can still get a Camry TRD in America, this is the only one not yet spoken for in Canada. Why is it on the press fleet? I have no idea, but I’m glad it is, because I can share what it’s like to drive with all you wonderful people.
[Full disclosure: Toyota Canada lent us this Camry TRD for a week so long as we returned it with a full tank of fuel, kept the shiny side up, shot it, and reviewed it. As is customary, fuel was paid for by yours truly.]
Red Is The New Black
Like Playboi Carti, this Camry TRD features a whole lotta red. There’s red on the brake calipers, red on the badges, red on the skirts, red on the seat belts and the floor mats and the seats. The gauges are all red, which looks wicked, but as any 2003 Toyota Matrix owner will tell you, likely isn’t the best for legibility. Even the dashboard features red stitching, and when you pair all that with an otherwise greyscale colorway, you end up with a car that looks a bit like a Warped Tour kid’s backpack.
Mind you, the Camry TRD’s appearance is more than just stickers and badges. That giant rear spoiler is apparently functional, and it’s hard to deny that the design of the lightweight TRD alloy wheels is great, even if the dark satin finish means they blend into the wheel wells a little too well. Oh, and who could forget the massive tips on the TRD exhaust system? The end result is an aggro Camry, one that looks, um, grounded to the ground. Mission accomplished.
Inside, you get everything you need and nothing you don’t. There’s no sunroof, no native navigation system, and no flashy branded stereo, but you get Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, automatic climate control, heated seats, a heated steering wheel, automatic headlights, and all the advanced driver assistance systems you could possibly want. Ten years ago, this would’ve been a nigh-on fully loaded car. Oh, how times change.
Bend Your Arms To Look Like Wings
Of course, appearance isn’t why we’re here. Although a few sporty touches make this Camry stand out from the crowd, the real story is what’s under the hood. Internally dubbed 2GR-FKS, it’s a 3.5-liter 24-valve quad-cam V6 with direct injection and port fuel injection, along with variable valve timing and a simulated Atkinson cycle when the mission calls for efficiency. It’s also quite potent, delivering 301 horsepower at 6,600 rpm and 267 lb.-ft. of torque at 4,700 rpm, the sort of linear power band enthusiasts crave. In an age of abundant low-end twin-scroll turbocharged torque, there’s joy and rarity in an experience that only builds as the tachometer needle climbs.
Not only is the Camry TRD the most affordable way into a new V6 Camry, it’s also the most tantalizing due to real performance upgrades. Thanks to stiffer, lower springs and new anti-roll bars, roll stiffness climbs by 44 percent up front and a whopping 67 percent in the back. Of course, stiffer springs require different dampers, else you’ll feel like you’re riding a space hopper, so those are also on deck. Outboard of the front dampers sit larger 12.9-inch front discs clamped by two-piston calipers, which raise an eyebrow compared to the XSE V6’s 12-inch front discs and single-piston calipers. Add in additional chassis bracing and a naughty TRD exhaust system, and you get a stock midsize sedan aimed at the sort of person who once bought APC taillights for their high school or college ride. It’s the tuner car, all grown up.
Press the starter button, slot the shifter into drive, and roll into the throttle, and you’ll find that the Camry TRD has just a little bit more power than winter tires can ever hope to handle. Thanks in part to the cold season rubber on my test car, anything more than half-throttle in first and second gear was greeted by a vigorously strobing traction control light. Right, third it is.
Once you’re in a position to find traction, giving it a boot unleashes an effortless surge of acceleration accompanied by a vaporwave-smooth soundtrack. Overtaking a slow truck on the freeway requires but a twinge of your right foot, surfing a wave of dino-powered gratification. Toyota’s done velvety naturally-aspirated V6s for a long time, and the last in the line is no exception. It makes good torque under the curve but encourages you to ride out the revs to get the most from it, a reward that’s certainly worth pursuing.
I’ll tell you what, the Camry TRD doesn’t falter in ride or cornering either. If anything, all the TRD tweaks have actually made it ride better than a normal model. Bumps in the road are quietly dispatched with haste — you might hear a thwap from the tires, but you won’t feel anything through the seat. There’s no float, no secondary body motions, just a well-tuned suspension system perfect for the task of daily driving. Pitch this sedan down an on-ramp, and the body remains flatter than you’d expect, even if there isn’t much in the way of feedback coming through the helm. Sure, it’s no BMW 3 Series, but it’s noticeably improved over the standard car.
Escape Artists Never Die
Midsize sedans have always been sensible transportation, but ticking the box for the V6 added a dash of intrigue. As children, when the schoolbell rang, we’d be catching fleeting glimpses of badges seeing whose parents were a little bit cooler than the rest. Later on, when trying to scrape together enough cash for your first set of wheels, choosing something with a V6 meant that even if your parents wouldn’t let you get a sports car so long as you lived under their roof, at least you could get something a little more keen. The V6 midsize sedan slowly turned from a status symbol to a starting block, but still made life a little bit better.
The V6 midsize sedan made life a touch better for parents too, because it meant that they could add a dash of fun to the family car drudgery of crumbs, bulk, and dirty boots. Between dropping the kids off at school and arriving at a monotonous desk job, there was always just enough time to let six cylinders sing, easing life’s worries as on-ramp meets freeway. A V6 midsize sedan usually meant accessible straight-line performance in a fuel-injected, post-OPEC embargo world. Sure, most of them couldn’t keep up with V8 Mustangs, but a bit of speed is a bit of speed.
Over enough time, these final V6 Camrys will suffer from the typical automotive attrition, weeded out by insurance adjusters and the tinworm alike. A common sight on the road will seem to vanish overnight in a way that will make you miss it, and as soon as that pang of tortured nostalgia hits your chest, you will become one of them. Yearning for a bygone era, and although we aren’t talking about muscle cars, the misty-eyed social hierarchy is the same. The relentless march of time will stop for no one, so how gracefully will you attempt to crowdsurf it? In the rust belt, if you buy a 2024 Toyota Camry TRD brand new as a year-round daily driver, keep it treated with oil-based undercoating, and try to take care of it as long as possible, you might get 15 to 20 years out of it. By 2039 or 2044, you would be an anomaly, the house in your neighborhood with an anachronistic car. Some would see that as a social faux pas, others a mark of pride. We know where we stand.
For now, I just want to say thanks. Thanks to the V6 midsize sedan for being a little slice of fun for the average parent, and thanks to the 2024 Toyota Camry TRD for being the last one left celebrating. If you’re in the market for a family car and that little V6 badge on the corner of the trunk lid meant anything to you at all as a kid, don’t buy a crossover, buy this. At $34,580 including freight ($40,160 in Canada), it’s about the same price as a RAV4 XLE Premium. Which would you rather have?
(Photo credits: Thomas Hundal)
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My parents bought one of the first V6 Camries (circa 1990 or 91?), and the car was almost a complete stripper, with unpainted bumpers and mirrors, cloth seats, manual door locks, 5 speed manual, and silver paint. The only two option boxes they checked were for an upgraded stereo that had amazing bass, and the V6. That car was way faster than anything my friends’ parents drove, and also completely invisible — the same car as this TRD and yet somehow the exact opposite.
In hindsight, maybe my parents were a touch cooler than I ever gave them credit for.
You make a compelling argument, and I wouldn’t mind owning one. Alas, I cannot afford a new car right now, and it’s a shame they are only available in grayscale. No colors!
Without a stick I don’t see the point of this car.
It is sort of sad to see front wheel drive “average” sedans go away in the new car market, but trends change I suppose. Seven out of my eight cars are front wheel drive (based) and of those seven they are all V6 cars, coupes and sedans large or intermediate. I’ve always liked them. I was the kid at 18 years old who wanted a Trans Am but my parents weren’t keen on the idea of me potentially being wrapped around any stationary objects, so I got a LeSabre. Later on bought a TA anyway as a project to their chagrin, but never have been able to get away from the FWD slugs as daily drivers and that’s ok by me. This latest Camry is a fitting end for the V6 Camry from the look of it.
I’ve seen a few of these around and liked them. Wish it was a turbo 4 to compete with the Type R since with an NA V6 you’re stuck on power. They also have an AWD platform for the Camry, but this doesn’t have it. It leaves me wondering what the point of this car is.
So this is an uglier boy racer version of my 2014 Lexus ES350.
Im sure the new Camry is a bit faster and handles better, but Im betting unless you stand on the loud pedal or really hustle it thru the curves they drive about the same.
Really though the genius bit with Toyota’s transverse 2GR v6 is that you have enough power to blow the tires off the car. Yet it gets decent mpg. And its anvil durable/reliable/cheap to service. No timing belt, the timing chain is actually designed correctly to where it never breaks.
The v6 front wheel drive sedan is dead? Good riddance. A transverse v6 has no place in any car intended to be customary transportation, or that needs to be reliable and cheaply serviceable.
lol what the hell are you talking about
Have you ever tried to change the rear spark plugs in a transverse V6? It’s a job that involves ordering a gasket kit.
Ok, got it. So, for packaging purposes, there are.compromises. Got it.
I’m talking about how it takes several days to replace valve cover gaskets on a Dodge minivan because the rear bank is insanely inaccessible. Spark plugs are highly difficult. I had to replace a rear exhaust manifold once and it was highly terrible. A fair number of bigger jobs would actually not be possible with the engine in the car. But guess what? It’s impossible to pull the engine from the top. You have to drop the subframe. The serviceability of a transverse V6 is by far the worst of anything I’ve worked on.
The cooling characteristics of a transverse V6 are terrible: the front bank will always run cooler and the rear one will also run hot. This poor air cooling also makes a transverse V6 need a bigger cooling system, and it’s more sensitive to cooling system issues.
And V6s are just kinda bad in general: less smooth and torquey than a flat 6 but just as complicated, way more complicated/expensive/failure prone than a straight 6 but, again, with significantly worse balance and power delivery.
So a layout that’s more expensive, failure prone, and difficult/expensive to service? In my opinion, this is not well suited to any car that’s meant to be customary transport. These are the things that people have to live with when they buy a supercar, and they shouldn’t have to when buying a Camry or a minivan.
It’s so sad that autopian has become the land of stupid hot takes these days.
Are you suggesting that the packaging advantages and the cars produced as a result are all mistakes, and all should be front engine rear wheel drive? Because that’s stupid.
Stupid hot takes? This is my honest conviction, very logically thought out. It’s not like it’s just me either, several other Autopians are saying exactly the same thing.
What I’m saying is that v6 engines are quite unsuited to transverse applications, and that transverse cars should use inline threes, fours, fives, the elusive straight six, VR5s and VR6s. Literally any engine EXCEPT a V configuration is considerably better suited for this.
Transverse FWD cars, and FWD in general, have many packaging and other advantages, and in general I like them.
V6es are a dumb packaging exercise of a waste of casting alloy. Transverse V6es are even dumber.
I mean, I thought Rust Bucket’s stuff was absurd. Then you said “hold my beer”
He said pretty much the same thing as me……
No, he double down on the nonsense by then saying V6s are all bad, but transverse were worse?
I literally said earlier that V6s are bad but transverse V6s are worse
So, you also had an awful take, too. Yay?
Yay!
Seriously though, I’m very curious to hear why you think v6s aren’t bad and why transverse V6s aren’t bad. Because all I’ve heard so far is “wow that’s a bad take”.
So wait, you like the idea of duct taping two trips together? The worst possible configuration that wants nothing more than to shake itself apart? Only two of them. Fighting each other in a battle royale of mediocrity. You like turning what should be horsepower, torque, and forward motion into heat in your engine mounts or coolant from turning a balance shaft? The V6’s only real value proposition is its external dimensions, and the ability to market it as having 6 cylinders (because 6 feels better than 4 on paper). Sure, some manufacturers made some that were better than others, but none of them were as good as they would have been had that same engineering effort been put into them as I6es, H6es, V8s, I8s, H8s, or even turbo 4s in either inline or flat flavors. There’s a reason the Germans (excepting Audi, which went with turbo 4s, because VW group) have abandoned them and gone back to I6es as packaging dimensions have lost their appeal and they wish to move back up market such that cost on such things as a few inches worth of sheet metal in the hood is no longer a concern. Even the American truck manufacturers are going I6 because it makes more power more smoothly, more reliably, more efficiently, more more more…. V6es are popular because they make cheaper cars easier to sell. The end. They’re good at one thing: being dimensionally less.
There’s your hot take. Yay.
I will agree with you that I am leery of transverse v6s as a mega PITA to service for even basic maintenance, having worked on some friend’s cars. I remember a co-worker being shocked that his wife’s older Lexus ES (v6 camry in a suit) was like $1500 for a timing belt change, though at least this TRD car as pointed out is timing chain. Probably why the german’s never bother going fwd + big engine it starts to not make sense after a point, and I have to think as the article alludes to that this thing is probably incapable of putting the power down on anything but the smoothest pavement with good tires mounted. Every time I’ve driven a powerful fwd I have not been very impressed, in anything but a straight line heavy throttle applications have you doing a massive burnout or barely moving as the traction control light flashes.
My first thought after reading second paragraph was “what about the Malibu?” I didn’t realize all Malibus come with a turbo four-cylinder now. Wild.
And you can’t even get it with the 2.0 mated to the actual auto transmission anymore. They’re all the 1.5/CVT combo
A while ago I overheard a clutch of 5th grade boys arguing about the correct way to pronounce “TRD”
Seems to be an even split between “turd” and “”tard”. Both factions seemed to be convinced that theirs was the obvious choice.
Or perhaps they just liked walking through the parking lot pointing at pickups yelling Turd or Tard loudly.
Okay but Dear Diary by FFTL turns 20 this year and it hurts my little emo heart ????. And I’ve always been fond of the camry (and avalon) TRD versions
That’s sad. This is sad. I’m sad. Ironic it’s a Camry because Camrys (Camries? Camri? or just Camry like deer? heheh deer. Look out Jason! ahem, anyway…) usually make me sad for different reasons.
I get the idea of a family car that’s a bit more taut and has a bit more zip than the standard versions. What I don’t get is tarting it up with all of the red bits, the whacked out interior, and the wing. (Functional or not, does it really need to be that ostentatious?) Why would I want to look like 40 year old who never got past his 17 year old Fast and Furious obsession?
Also, the Camry’s seats are pretty bad, rock hard, poor support, will kill your back on a road trip
Sorry mate, this 40+ will never get past my 17 year old F&F obsession. Just to bad the last of a breed is a damned Camry.
Bet?
give it 20 more years. I’m sure you wouldn’t tolerate certain things in a daily that you welcomed then: now project that forward.
-diehard aircooled/shitbox guy who now requires AC & NVH mitigation 😉
20 more years and I will be dead. so it’s moot.
I cannot take this thing seriously. The stealth fighter cosplay aesthetic on top of a car that’s not exactly a looker to begin with, the interior is god awful, and 300hp trying to burst out of one front tire. I want to think of it as a modern SHO, but it just doesn’t have enough “go”. At least give it an LSD or front biased AWD.
I’m good.
The people that designed the new language from toyota in the seating patterns and screen placement should be sent to jail. Every special vehicle they make has the grossest fucking interiors I have ever seen. It’s like a 15 year old got told “make this look cool”.
I’m not joking when I say its literally stopped my family from owning two new toyotas and moved over to other brands.
You know what? I don’t really miss it at ALL 😀
You know why? Because those transverse V6 engines are fucking impossible to work on. You have to pull the intake to get to the back of the engine, if you need to change the spark plugs or valve cover gaskets, for example. The job takes a week when it would otherwise not even take an hour.
It’s a Camry. You literally just change the oil. Modern spark plugs have 100,000 mile change intervals.
I guess you have never been the third owner of a car, or had it break for any reason, or had coil packs go out, or had valve cover gaskets leak?
I commuted for years on an 80’s motorcycle that was abandoned on a porch for 35 years which I refurbished on the cheap from the frame up. Currently daily a 38 year old Honda. Have a 200,000+ mile Toyota that’s needed 0 work, ever, which I picked up used.
And bog help you if you have to do anything with the power steering pump: that’s wedged between the firewall & the rear bank. My back hurt for days
I told myself I wasn’t going to cry….
I used to find these intriguing but the lack of an LSD and the clunky slusher always kind of put me off. If you feel inclined to get one solely for the V6 I certainly respect it, but I’d have a hard time choosing it over the boosted sports sedans and hatches in the price range that have a little more to make them engaging.
Differentials. Manuals. DCTs. AWD in the case of the WRX and GRC. Etc. But I am happy that this existed for as long as it did. Much like for you, the V6 family sedan was kind of a staple when I was coming up. They were, in fact, a cool dad car.
My dad got an Accord V6 right when the power started taking off in the 2000’s. Unfortunately that big V6 turned the transmission into glitter eventually. When Honda finally figured out torque they still hadn’t figured out slushboxes.
I thought the murdered out look was way behind us.
Embrace it. It will never die.
Never a fan of it. Keep the wings too, won’t see any benefit unless track use.
Th wings are mostly for looks and are only marginally functional. Look at the fake vents on the thing. The car would have benefitted greatly by being a streamliner. Imagine if the V6 Camry got 50 mpg highway, and you removed the speed limiter so it could hit like 180+ mph… assuming the gearing was adjusted appropriately based on the new CdA parameter. It would also be a lot quieter going down the highway.
We absolutely could, and should have 50+mpg hwy. 300hp. fun, serviceable cars, with stand alone proven control computers. The current incentives don’t encourage that, and are letting the manufacturers get away with abusing privacy rights. My shopping options are limited to pre-2016 or so because of this, It sucks!
Same here. When I’d talk about the privacy violations back in the 2010s, the normies used to call me a “conspiracy theorist”. Facts are finally starting to enter the mainstream cultural zeitgeist, a decade too late…
Wait until people find out what their DMV is doing in conjunction with the Federal Government, the intelligence agencies(FBI, Homeland Security, ect.), AAMVA, and various multinational corporations(IDEMIA, Morpho, 3M Cogent, Gemalto, ect.). Of course, it’s already too late to put a stop to it since it’s been going on for so long, and we are ruled by people that will not allow the profits they are making to be compromised.
Everything the USA criticizes China for doing, it is doing mostly the same stuff, and there is a large amount of overlap regarding the people involved in and profiting from the schemes of both countries.
It keeps on showing up. Black rims look terrible most of the time.
“A common sight on the road will seem to vanish overnight in a way that will make you miss it, and as soon as that pang of tortured nostalgia hits your chest, you will become one of them. Yearning for a bygone era, and although we aren’t talking about muscle cars, the misty-eyed social hierarchy is the same.“
I feel this. However, not all change is necessarily progress.
Well, the FWD midsize sedan. All the luxury V8 midsize sedans are now V6 midsize sedans.
Also, it should be a war crime to orient and shape the engine cover to simulate a longitudinal layout in a transverse engine bay. The only people who are going to notice are going to hate it.
LOL I think it’s hilarious! At least someone on the team has a sense of humor 😛
I miss the days when they took the time and effort to make the top of the engine beautiful, and kept the damn plastic out of there.
Damn! That was a loooooong time ago.
Well technically M-B and BMW use I-6’s and Audi has already transitioned even bigger non-S/RS sedans to turbo 4’s. The Infiniti Q50 is the only truly midsize sedan other than the Camry that I can think of that comes std with a V6.
I had actually forgotten that the Lexus GS was no longer made and had no idea that Audi discontinued V6s. Sad.
I double checked and I stand corrected. Audi still has a turbo V6 for the S4 and RS4. A quick check shows that the V6 is also available in the A6 as an upgrade and std on the A8, but we’re getting away from mid-size in these cases.
I also forgot about the Koreans and Italians. The Alfa Giulia and Genesis G70 are both available with V6’s as upgrades.
Didn’t even notice that! That’s Toyota for you though. All stickers and marketing spin on dumb engineering compromises.
Would it be dead if you could buy a version not fully loaded with luxury crap for $20k? I’d think not. But then people might buy that instead of paying $60k for a luxu-barge on an 84-month plan, and the automaker will reap less profit.
The stuff you call “luxury crap” does not encompass half the value of the car. There’s a reason almost all of it is in a Versa and Mirage too. It just doesn’t cost that much.
This vehicle being as cheap as it is should be considered a minor miracle.
There’s a lot of profit margin padded into the entirety of the car as well. Narrowing it is how you get a less expensive product. Toyota has been posting a gross profit margin consistently between 15-20% these last few years. Considering the base MSRP for the 4-cylinder is about $27,000, and that a V6 engine isn’t inherently that much more expensive to produce, and that there is easily a few thousand dollars of wiggle room to cut features from the car, the possibility of “downgrading” components like offering a manual transmission, then a $20k price tag with a smaller $500-1,000 profit margin on each car isn’t out of the realm of possibility. It would put them in competition with the Chinese offerings at that point, and there’d be a lot more people that could afford the car as a result. You’d also have to cut the stealerships out entirely, as Tesla has been doing.
Instead, when you go to a stealership, you find almost nothing but loaded models with $40k price tags. And that’s exactly how those making money within the industry wants things to be.
Even for someone as willing to accept a car with zero comfort or features as you are (the 99.99999th percentile of US auto consumers), this just isn’t true.
Toyota’s margin is made on Tundras and Sequoias, not on base model Camrys.
The Camry is built in the US. I don’t want it to be in competition with slave-labor CCP crap.
Honestly, the Camry sells itself and doesn’t have to compete with Chinese shit because the name Camry is synonymous with “good car”