Masato Katsumata

A Sense of Crisis That Sedans Had No Future

The Camry was a popular car that had been the best-selling passenger car in the United States for 15 consecutive years, yet what development leader Katsumata spoke of was a "sense of crisis". Not only in Japan but also in the United States, customers were moving from sedans to SUVs, and in Japan some people under 40 did not even know what a sedan was. Believing that sedans had no future if things went on this way, Katsumata and the development team adopted the slogan "unprecedented transformation". For the new Camry, every part, down to the electronics, was developed again from scratch.