Style Star

The long break I have had from blogging has given me d opportunity to go into a venture my wife encouraged me to selling cars. ‘You might as well enrich the lives of others by helping them acquire good cars since you have a vast knowledge about cars and get off on them’, those were her words precisely!!!

From my little experience Japanese cars sell like hot south African hookers and d golden egg among the japs is Toyota.A dead beat Toyota will sell  much faster than an A spec BMW of comparable age and price. In Nigeria, the Camry is Toyota’s most popular model and its greatest rival is the Honda accord. In the brand new car segment the Camry has mostly had the upper hand in terms of sales numbers haven sold 440,000 cars in 2012 against the accords 330,000 in God’s own country *source www.motorintelligence.com *

  
However in the styling dept d accord has always been miles ahead( Honda halla is still being purchased in decent numbers till date in Nigeria, the Camry equivalent is dead and extinct just like our good old  dinosaur friends from Jurassic park).
This disparity in styling is ever more evident in the latest offerings from the greatest rivalry from the ancient fareast nation.

2013 Honda Accord

2013 Honda Accord interior

2013 Toyota Camry

2013 Toyota Camry interior

As is evident from the pictures above, Toyota maintains its philosophy of focusing on reliability and usability rather aesthetics and visual cues.  The current edition of Toyota's Camry is a vast improvement from the fifth generation*aka Big for nothing* which was as interesting as a baboons Butt.

2003 Toyota Camry interior

An African proverb says ‘when the elephant fights, it’s the grass that suffers’. In this case, the grass has gained a great deal. Hyundai and kia have in the last decade, closed the gap on the big Japanese two. The Hyundai Sonata offering superb styling, improved handling and no longer the whooping boy it once was for the Japanese, the Korean’s have their heads out of the sand.  Its no news that Hyundai and Kia are sister companies and as such share parts. The top of the line sonata offers a Direct injected, turbo charged 2.0L 4 cylinder engine delivering 278Hp that thwarts the best efforts from Toyota and Honda’s equivalent engines in the form of 3.5L V6’s that put out 268Hp

2012 Hyundai Sonata

Point, if you keep doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different result, its known as madness.