The 2018 might very well be the best Camry yet. For one thing, it’s beautiful: taking in its dramatic bodylines and gleaming shark-smile grille, you’ll find little in common with the slab-sided beige appliance that’s helped fill office garages and commuter park-and-rides for the last 36 years. The Camry has arrived, its outward beauty announcing its maturation into a car you truly want to drive, rather than the one you pick because it’s reliable and innocuous. Even its hybrid variants are a cut above the expected. As the manufacturer probably most closely associated with hybrids due to its long-running Prius, Toyota knows a thing or two about combining gas and electric power—and in top-shelf XLE trim, this Camry encroaches upon the luxury sport sedan segment while netting the enviable fuel economy that hybrids are known for. There are a lot of very appealing flavors of Camry to choose from, including a V6-powered XSE boasting 301 hp—yet the posh hybrid that I spent a week with is a standout all on its own, and helps illustrate the breadth of what Toyota is getting right with its main breadwinner. Also, with Honda’s Civic having unseated Camry in 2017 as the America’s top-selling car for the first time in over a decade, Toyota is against the ropes and the timing couldn’t be better for a compelling counterstrike. Who will emerge victorious in 2018? Let’s see what the Camry has going for it besides its svelte looks.

On the road, this all-new Camry feels absolutely rocksolid. With its quiet, refined ride and unflappable handling, there is virtually nothing to complain about concerning its road manners. Toyota’s secret sauce here is a completely revised chassis: the new TNGA platform includes a fully independent suspension front and rear, along with a longer wheelbase and greater track width. These changes improve handling and stability, and the lower beltline and hood increases outward visibility over the last generation as well. There’s also more interior room, particularly in the backseat, where a battery pack relocated from under the trunk floor to beneath the rear seats not only improves weight distribution but helps accommodate 60/40 split folding rear seats and a full-sized trunk pass-through, contrasting the mail-slot pass-throughs commonly seen in hybrids.

The rest of the car’s cabin is pretty sweet too, with a sweeping, asymmetrical dash and center stack that brings together an interesting mix of textured surfaces, from gloss black to stylized woodgrain to creamy soft-touch textiles. The armchair-like seating is cushy and gorgeous with 8-way power adjustments and 3-stage heating up front. Camera-assisted visibility is next-level as well, and with some packages including a birds-eye view plus a neato 360 “perimeter scan” that looks all around the outside of your car for you at the touch of a button. Other notable tech includes a color heads-up display and an effortless wireless phone-charging pad located in a recess beneath the center stack—I’m always a bit surprised when the newer tech that shows up in vehicles actually works, but the latter detected different phones and charged them happily and without drama. The 7” touchscreen display is nicely intuitive, and the upgraded JBL audio system sounds fantastic, and is in fact so good that it causes a slight interior rattle even at factory settings—the only flaw keeping this Camry out of true luxury-car territory.

As for the drivetrain, Toyota applies continued high standards here as well. The hybrid looks pretty normal under the hood, with Toyota’s big 2.4L gas-powered inline four taking center stage. Coupled with the less-visible electric motor, you get a combined 208 hp, channeled to the front wheels via an exceptionally well-behaved CVT that doesn’t detract anything from your powertrain experience. Indeed, this hybrid feels quick, with a crisp launch and impressive acceleration, particularly in Sport mode. It felt more powerful than Ford’s Fusion Energi plug-in, and in fact just edges out that car in measured 0-60, with the Camry XLE Hybrid clocking a 7.9 seconds to the Ford’s 8.0. It was torquey enough to slip the front wheels pretty easily in cool and wet weather, though this can be blamed on the 18” alloys wrapped in low-rolling-resistance eco tires—a great wheel-and-tire setup for warm dry climates, though maybe not the best for the cold and wet. But other than the big eco gauge where your tachometer should be, you’d hardly know you were driving a hybrid.

You will know at the pump, though. Both the XLE and the second-tier SE trim are rated for a solidly respectable 44 mpg city, 47 highway. Here’s where things get a bit weird, though: both of the top-trim Camry hybrids use the old-style nickel metal hydride battery. If you want the lithium-ion with the corresponding significantly better fuel economy (53 city / 51 highway), you need to downgrade to the entry-level Camry LE hybrid. Why wouldn’t you get the higher-end battery with the top-most trims? Toyota claims that the move was calculated on the assumption their base-model customer “values higher fuel efficiency” more than those shopping the higher-end trims, which might pass the sniff test except that there doesn’t seem to be any discernable advantage to the old NiMh battery other than that it’s been around for a million years. In any case, the LE is a perfectly well-equipped little package that comes standard with heated cloth seats, the same 7” screen and Entune infotainment interface that our test car had, and all the advantages of the new TNGA platform. There doesn’t seem to be much downside to getting the less-expensive Camry hybrid with the better battery and the higher fuel economy, unless you can’t live without a wireless charging pad. At press time, at least one Amazon customer had already reviewed his new LE Hybrid and seemed more than happy with its roominess, comfort, and 208 horsepower.

Speaking of things you get at every trim, the Toyota Safety Sense (TSS) suite of active safety and collision-avoidance technologies comes standard on every version of the Camry, including all three hybrids. These include adaptive cruise control, automatic highbeams, lane departure warning and correction, and pre-collision including pedestrian detection. If this sort of tech floats your boat, it’s nice to know that it’s included, and Amazon customer reviews are reliably appreciative of Toyota’s safety equipment: you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d disagree that adaptive cruise, at the very least, is nice to have for long trips. Personally in the recent past I’ve found TSS more proactive features like lane control and pre-collision to be alternately too intrusive and too intermittent, but the tech as a whole really does seem to be improving each year: I was tickled, for example, by this 2018’s ability to represent errant pedestrians as little gingerbread men on the screen when I was attempting complicated reverse maneuvers in crowded downtown. I still haven’t been able to get the auto highbeams to work though, but any feature you don’t like can always be disabled.

Across the entire lineup, the 2018 Camry is a force to be reckoned with on its new underpinnings, and its hybrids are among the best of their genre. Returning Camry buyers are going to be impressed by the upgraded platform and refined feel at every trim level, and those shopping the hybrid segment would be remiss to overlook the Camry’s three distinct levels of gas-electric. The XLE Hybrid is absolutely worth a look if you want your fuel-sipper with an extra-generous helping of luxe, and the LE is an even better deal despite its sparser furnishings, with stratospheric fuel economy and a still-impressive list of standard features. Camry Hybrid sales have never seen the explosive growth enjoyed by the Prius, but this stylish, practical, and solid-handling 2018 may very well be the Camry to turn that around.

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