“I spy a Toyota Camry, but here it’s called a “Levin” and is a plug-in hybrid.”
Oh, its way more complex than that.
Toyota makes two cars (Well, the two we’ll talk about). The Camry and the Crown. They make them at the same time. Camry is a word for Crown. So in Japan they make a Crown and a Crown.
The Levin is a Corolla. Levin means Lightning. The Toyota Corolla is a design program where the brightest and best designers get to have their designs put out in the world for the ultimate in testing. That’s why in the 80s a Corolla was many different things : RWD sporty car, a 4 door FWD car and a FWD econo hatch all in the same year. The 4 door hatch was a totally different car as well.. but all were called the Corolla. The problem is in the name.
They like to say that these names mean nothing, but they are wrong.
“Corolla” is a japanese “sexual art” of arranging floral pedals around the genitals.
“Levin” and “Trueno” are “Lightning” and “Thunder” respectively. For many years the two were used to describe the same basic car with different front end treatments (Again, because of the design schools and the bright designers who made them).
The Celica is a japan twist on the tale of Circe where Celica turned men into Swans and Dragons (depending on the region. This is why some Celica logos were swans and some were dragons)
The Supra was introduced to the US as the Celica “Supira” which is “Super” in Japanese. But at the ports they only got the word Supra out so it was created first to be in the US only.. then it went back to the island as Supra. Because of this, even the US celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Supra in 1997. A falsehood because they were brought to the US in 1978.
I ramble, but I’m a big old Toyota fan (For me, the entire car industry died in 1991). But either way, that Levin wasn’t a Camry. They all look the damned same now so whatever.
The Camry is also the Lexus ES300 right?