In the mainstream family car market there’s probably no vehicle more important than the Toyota Camry. Toyota’s midsize front-wheel drive sedan is a huge seller, accounting for some 45 percent of all Toyota vehicle sales,

The Camry is a conservative-looking yet well proportioned car with a reputation for solid engineering, quality, safety and value. (Photo: Canadian Auto Press)

and it has been the best-selling car in North America for almost the entire past decade.

Part of the Camry’s success is that it generally doesn’t try to be something it isn’t — Toyota markets the Camry based on its strengths of solid engineering, quality workmanship, safety and excellent value for money. This alone is enough to bring in the buyers, and so rather than risk alienating any of those buyers with radical styling, Toyota has tended to update the Camry in an evolutionary fashion, keeping the styling fairly conservative and the ride comfortable.

For 2010 Toyota refreshed the front end treatments on both the SE and LE. The SE's new nose is particularly effective, with a chiseled, purposeful look. (Photo: Canadian Auto Press)

That said, Toyota’s designers are becoming quite skilled at tweaking what is essentially safe styling to give it a little more personality and individuality. The Camry was last redesigned in 2006 (for the 2007 model year), and for 2010 Toyota has refreshed things with updated front-end treatments that are unique to each trim level, larger headlamps, LED taillights and new wheels and wheel covers.

The redesigned noses feature more prominent lower valences, with new character lines sweeping up from either side of an enlarged lower grille to underneath the headlamps. The result is more chiseled and muscular looking, and also more cheerful. The SE “sport” model in particular has become quite a good looking car.

The SE gets nicely bolstered sport seats, plus a leather-wrapped steering wheel and shift knob. (Photo: Canadian Auto Press)

With its mesh grille and deep chin spoiler it looks purposeful, and while it’s still a fairly conservative design it’s a real step up from the rather bland Camrys of only a couple years ago.

What hasn’t changed is the Camry’s value proposition — it remains a well-built, reliable car and continues to offer a lot of motoring for the money. My tester, an Alpine White Camry SE 4-cylinder, clocked in at an MSRP of $27,310 and included a wide array of standard equipment. All Camrys now feature vehicle stability control and traction control, four-wheel ABS disc brakes with electronic brake force distribution and brake assist, a full array of airbags (including side curtain airbags), power door locks with keyless entry, power windows, remote heated mirrors and projection-style halogen headlights among the standard equipment.

The SE trim includes six-speaker AM/FM CD audio with auxiliary input jack (a JBL system is available with the V6 SE), and adds 17-inch alloy wheels shod with 215/55R15 all-season tires, sport seats, 8-way power adjustable driver’s seat, rear spoiler, leather-wrapped steering wheel and shift knob, aluminum pedals, fog lamps and sport-tuned suspension.

The interior is low-key but well fitted, with lots of useful storage space and everything logically placed. (Photo: Canadian Auto Press)

The only option on my tester was the 6-speed electronically-controlled automatic transmission at $1,395. Realistically though, in North America it’s the lower cost 6-speed manual transmission that’s offered as an option for sport-minded drivers — the 4-cylinder SE is the only trim level with a stick-shift option, and only a tiny percentage of SEs are actually sold with the manual transmission. Selecting this configuration drops the MSRP to $25,915.

The engine in the 2010 SE is a 2.5-litre, 16-valve, DOHC inline-four with variable valve timing and sequential multiport electronic fuel injection. It puts out a respectable 179 horsepower and 171 lb-ft of torque,

The SE's 2.5-litre, 16-valve, DOHC inline-four delivers good fuel consumption with 179 hp and 171 lb-ft  of torque. (Photo: Canadian Auto Press)

and will happily chirp the tires off the line and accelerate briskly enough to highway speed, though to my ear it sounded taxed rather than eager when pushed. The six-speed transmission works without fuss in automatic mode, but I found the sequential-shift manual mode useful only for holding gears when cornering. Under hard acceleration, there’s simply too much delay between driver input and transmission shift response. Fuel consumption is good for a mid-size car at 9.0 L/100km in the city, 6.1 L/100km on the highway.

The SE’s sport tuned suspension has 15 percent stiffer spring ratings than a Camry LE, yet it is by no means a stiffly-sprung car. My tester absorbed big

The trunk offers lots of space and easy loading, but the cargo net pops off its hooks when you pull items out. (Photo: Canadian Auto Press)

city bumps and potholes with aplomb, but exhibited a certain amount of float over highway dips and humps. Carving through the corners it was competent if not exactly awe-inspiring. The sport seats proved comfortable and supportive, and there’s a genuine dead-pedal on which to brace yourself, so while the Camry SE is no Lexus IS F, it does allow you to clip along at reasonable speed in reasonable comfort.

On the practical side, the SE has all the goodness that buyers have come to expect of Camry.

From any angle, the 2010 Camry SE really is a good-looking family car. (Photo: Canadian Auto Press)

The interior is relatively plain and uses a fair amount of hard plastic, but there's a big 425 litre (15 cubic foot) trunk with low lift-in, comfortable seating for five and, for the most part, good quality materials with excellent fit and finish. If I were to pick any nits I’d point to the hooks for the trunk net, which hold the net side-to-side just fine, but allow it to pop off whenever you pull anything up and out. The climate controls were also not up to the standard of everything else: they felt loose, and the clear plastic caps distorted and clouded the lettering underneath. These are minor details, to be sure, but they stood out in the otherwise well-done interior.

At roughly $3,000 more than a comparable Camry LE, the SE’s pricing knocks the edge off the Camry’s famous value proposition, but the SE trim does add some desirable features and a sporting edge. Think of it as comfort food with a dash of fresh-ground pepper.

Interior

Exterior

Mechanical

Safety

Dimensions

Misc

(J004) Standard Black Paint

(J005) Standard Gloss Paint

(J003) Standard Metallic Paint

(J002) Standard Pearl Paint

(B) Upgrade Package

(V) Value Package