This 22-Year-Old Toyota Camry Just Sold For Almost As Much As A New Corolla

Every so often, car auction sites run a car that truly makes you raise an eyebrow both for the vehicle and the result. The latest case? A 2002 Toyota Camry XLE just sold for $22,000 on Bring a Trailer. For those keeping track, that’s $50 shy of the MSRP of a new Corolla. Huh?

The XV30 Camry isn’t the most important Camry ever made, but it’s still a solid car. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great continuation of the lineage, but it isn’t a moonshot model in the same way the 1992 Camry was. However, there’s just something special about well-preserved versions of ordinary cars that few people thought to save, and that’s exactly the case here.

With just 17,000 miles on the clock of this example, you can’t help but get the sense that there likely aren’t many fresher-looking 2002 Camry XLEs outside the possession of Toyota. The paint hasn’t seen enough weather to be weathered, the seats haven’t seen enough wear-and-tear to be worn or torn, the alloy wheels still gleam, and the plastic-lens headlights haven’t developed automotive cataracts. It only takes one glance to imagine vividly what it must’ve been like to be a high-earning Consumer Reports subscriber with 1.6 children circa 2002. Every appliance in your Cape Cod house was industrial-grade, every piece of clothing in every solid-wood heirloom wardrobe was made to last, and in the garage sat a well-equipped Camry.

Not only is everything on this Camry said to work, everything on this car will continue working essentially forever with regular maintenance. So long as you change the oil and the timing belt at suggested intervals, the three-liter non-VVT-i 1MZ-FE V6 will keep going forever. So long as you change the transmission fluid every few years, the four-speed automatic will continue to work just fine. If you live in a sunny climate and want a car you can buy and keep for life, this is a respectable candidate.

However, $22,000 for a 2002 Toyota Camry XLE is a lot of money in 2024, and the price combined with the state of residence for this car might make it a little challenging for those looking for a reliable daily driver and those looking for a collector’s item alike. On the one hand, a new Corolla carries an MSRP just $50 more, although once you add freight, you end up with a price delta of $1,145. Now, the Camry with its V6 is rated at 21 mpg combined, but the Corolla is rated at 35 mpg combined. If you drive an average of 13,000 miles per year, you’ll wipe out that delta within two years.

At the same time, this particular Camry is a rust-belt car, and while the underside isn’t one oxidized mass, there’s some light corrosion on the chassis legs and some more prominent corrosion on the subframes that’ll take some money to get perfect. For collectors, that corrosion could limit the number of people wanting to buy this particular car in the future.

Then again, it only takes one person to make a sale, and as little as two or three to create a bidding war. The fact is, someone did pay $22,000 for this 2003 Toyota Camry XLE, and they seem stoked about it. Auction winner Falcon7711 wrote in the comments, “If you never owned one of these Camry’s from this vintage you would not understand. This will be my 4th, all the others have gone to the Kids. This one I’m keeping.”

Now those are some family ties. Hey, when your kids have taken the other three Camry sedans, what’s spending $22k on a nice one? Car enthusiasts come in all stripes, and that includes fans of America’s most popular passenger car.

(Photo credits: Bring a Trailer)

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