I had heard that the new Camry was also being built in China. I just got back from 2 weeks in Shanghai and was kind of surprised to not have seen a single one, conventional or hybrid though I spent about 1.5 hrs each day on the road. I did see one Prius though, but in general it was a pretty poor showing from Toyota there. I did see the occasional Toyota Crown and Corolla and older Camry. I noticed one Chinese brand had a manufacturer's logo that was easily mistaken for the Toyota logo from a few car lengths away.

Even Honda had a pretty poor showing there too, looks like the Chinese still hold a grudge with the Japanese. The most interesting Honda I saw was the Odyssey, which looks more that a wagon that a mini-van in that market.

I had been there a few years ago and European cars still dominate with VW taking the mainstream, but lots more luxury cars now like the Audi A8s and BWM 740s all over the place. GM really has upped their presense too, Regals and Montana style vans could easily be spotted at any given moment but equipped with either 2.5L V6 or 3.0L V6 according to their trunk badges, along with a smattering of other Buick and Chevy smaller cars.

 

Could be that they still hold a grudge but I'll bet its something simple like import tariffs or poor marketing by toyota/honda there or maybe they just don't like the style. Probably more "sexy" there to drive a euro import than a vanilla Japanese car. Maybe someone on this forum from Shanghai will fill us in.

 

Go to toyotanation.com and you'll find an article on the China Camry along with photos. Different grille and taillights along with a slightly modified dash pad(clock moved forward). A good article.

 

My father has a friend in China (I am half Chinese) that recently brought a GM sedan. He considered a Toyota sedan but he said that the GM vehicles are of much better quality and they are slightly bigger inside. The roads in China are pretty bad, and GM's vehicles tend to be better at handling rough terrain than Toyota's vehicles, so GM is doing very well there.

There is also the fact that the Chinese hate the Japanese for the millions of rapes and murders that occurred in China during WWII. The Japanese government's denial that the events ever took place exasperates the situation.