All-wheel drive is not available and remains rare in this class, with the exception of the Ford Fusion and Chrysler 200, where it’s optional, and the Subaru Legacy, where it’s standard. Optional in higher trim levels is a much more powerful 268-hp, 3.5-liter V-6, still matched to the six-speed and routed only to the front wheels. Standard (and present in my SE test car) is a 178-horsepower, 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine mated to a six-speed automatic transmission. Two engines are available for the Toyota Camry, and they should be familiar by now.

With the notable exception of the new Ford Fusion and Mazda6, the competition isn’t winning any style awards, either other best-sellers in the segment, like the Honda Accord and Nissan Altima, are just as generically car-shaped. Given the constraints of designing a car for mass-market consumers who truly prefer function over form, the Camry is attractive enough to continue drawing happy buyers. Faulting the Camry for generic styling is probably unfair it’s like taking points off a refrigerator for being boxy. Things get better from there, thankfully, with new headlights and slightly revised sheet metal along the sides of the car, leading to new taillights that sadly look as generic as most of the offerings in this category. This is the least attractive styling change, giving the front end an oddly unfinished look, like Toyota forgot to attach the last piece of painted plastic to the bumper. The most noticeable alteration comes to the front end, where a gaping black plastic grille now extends from the edge of the hood all the way down to the street on the SE (it’s replaced by a multi-bar plastic look on some other trims). The 2015 Toyota Camry’s styling changes are subtle, and not entirely successful. Big, dramatic changes to the company’s best-selling product have never been how Toyota works, but this year some challengers are stepping up their game - namely the new Hyundai Sonata and Subaru Legacy - making the Camry’s updates all the more important. The company has updated the Camry for the 2015 model year, but the changes are so subtle that if you didn’t know it was being updated, you probably wouldn’t notice any difference (compare the 20 models here).

Buyer inertia is powerful with the Camry, and it’s one big reason why Toyota continues to sell hundreds of thousands of them year after year. If you own a Toyota Camry and are thinking of buying a new one, you may as well just stop reading this review right now chances are you’re going to buy another one regardless of what’s said here in the next few paragraphs. The redesigned 2015 Toyota Camry looks a little different but feels and performs the same as the old one - meaning the best reason to buy a new one is because you like the one you already have.

Thon 2015 totals