Fuel consumption

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Toyota Australia's John Conomos has weighed into the brewing six versus four-cylinder debate, to which perhaps there's more than meets the eye

Toyota Australia's launch of the new Camry yesterday saw the brewing debate regards the future of six-cylinder (read: Commodore) versus four-cylinder (Camry et al) take another turn.

Toyota has announced the 2.4-litre four-cylinder automatic Camry will return 9.9lt/100km in the ADR 81/01 combined cycle. This is only 1.0lt/100km less than Holden's just-released fuel stats for full-size V6-engined VE Commodore.

For the record the manual Camry is more frugal -- 8.9lt/100km. That said, only around seven per cent of Camrys sold are five-speed manuals.

In answering a question from the assembled motoring media regards the narrow fuel consumption gap, Toyota Australia Chairman Emeritus John Conomos (pictured) declared that fuel economy was not the key driver of change in the local marketplace.

"In the car business perception is very important -- it determines who will buy what type of car. If you know about buyer perceptions right now, six cylinders is the trigger, not fuel consumption itself," Conomos said.

"Six cylinders seems to be the determinant in changing buyer habits towards four-cylinder cars and you really can't justify the transfer of sales [that has taken place] simply based on the fuel economy of the cars."

Indeed, according to Conomos, the move is more deeply seated than the number of kilometres drivers can eke from a tank.

"It's the perception that fleet owners and governments have that they need to be more responsible. In the minds of many [other categories of] buyers [this] drives them towards four-cylinder cars," he said.

According to Conomos, this 'responsibility' factor is key to the move away from traditional Australian large cars and the burgeoning demand for the likes of Mazda's 6, the Honda Euro and Subaru Liberty -- cars characterised as "quite good prestige imports" by the industry stalwart.

"The vehicle price doesn't really change that much and the fuel consumption itself is not that much in terms of difference, but the perception of people of the need to act differently has created what I think is a new paradigm," Conomos said.

Does this mean the local six market is dead and by definition that Toyota's own "big six" Aurion, set for launch later this year, is already doomed to fail?

According to Toyota senior executive director sales and marketing, David Buttner, the answer is no.

"We're not saying that we believe the large [local] six market will recover to the levels that it was at? But we believe the launch of our competitor's car [read: Holden VE] and the launch of our Aurion in the last quarter of this year will re-stimulate that market."

Said Buttner: "I think we also have to understand that the large six market is still a significant percentage of the overall Australian passenger car market."

The issue of perception versus real world conditions in relation to fuel consumption and running costs is certain, however, to get more complicated.

Consider that the 1.0lt/100km fuel consumption margin between Camry and Commodore doesn't give Aurion a lot of room to move.

Is Sir John preparing consumers for a situation where Toyota's new (according to the television ads) F1-inspired six delivers worse fuel economy than Holden's clunky old V8 Supercar-spec Commodore? Or more complicated still -- could we soon see Toyota launch a six that is more frugal than the four-cylinder car with which it shares much of its DNA?

An intriguing situation; especially the last two paragraphs.