Trying To Change The Toyota Camry's Bland Image

The team from Mighty Car Mods have doubled down on their efforts to sanctify the internets most obscure and unloved vehicles, this time building a turbocharged gold Toyota Camry for the latest Supercheap ‘Best Performing Oils’ video ad campaign.

By now, the video itself will be burning like wildifre all over social media, and if history has proven anything, it’ll be inescapable for a week or so. But rather than examine the long list of motorsport personalities that feature or cameo within the ad, we want to explore the Mighty Car Mods’ Camry at more length.

The process of turbocharging the Camry was relatively straightforward - amazingly, they managed to source an off-the-shelf cast turbo manifold from the aftermarket which soon had a decent sized Pro Boost turbocharger plumbed in to the Camry’s stock engine. Some welding and fab’ work, along with fuel system upgrades and a Haltech ECU helped the car make 200kW at the wheels, up from the stock 80kW offering.

And while the Mighty Car Mods boosted gold Camry, with its 250% power increase, might represent the kind of vehicle that nightmares are made of in the wrong hands, it’s hardly the first time Toyota - or the aftermarket - have tried to make one of the world’s most boring cars cool.

In 2005, Toyota themselves built the TS-01 concept vehicle for the Melbourne Motor Show. With aggressive styling and a supercharger added to the V6 engine, the TS-01 made a reported 185kW.

The concept wasn’t unique to Australia, and in an effort to insert some enthusiasm in to the Camry (which formerly competed with household white goods in terms of excitement) Toyota USA built the Toyota Camry Solara - a supercharged version of the then-3L V6 Camry powerplant that made a respectable 247hp, and was available with a manual transmission!

Still pushing the ‘Make Camry Great Again’ barrow, Toyota USA and their imaginative skunkworks department debuted a Camry body draped over a tube frame that was powered by a 700hp blown Tundra V8 engine at SEMA in 2014, seemingly at odds with the company’s global strategy of taking EVs and Hybrids mainstream. Nonetheless, the car garnered plenty of attention

In the present day and still in the States, Toyota USA offers the 2023 Camry with an optional turbocharged 3.5L V6 and it’s available in AWD, leaving us wondering why Toyota Australia insists on serving us ‘pleb’ instead of ‘performance’? Last year, WhichCar has speculated that a Gazoo Racing version of the Camry may join the expanding line up of GR-badged Toyota performance vehicles, but such a threat is yet to materialise.

The Australian aftermarket even flirted with the idea of the Camry’s 2GR-FE 3.5L V6 engine becoming a popular engine conversion - it appeared in Lotus pocket rockets afterall, and Aussie engineering legends even do a TVS1900 supercharger kit for the 2GR if you’re interested.