It was unveiled at the Detroit show where the new Camry also debuted. This is not the first time the Camry went into a competition as Toyota has been competing in the Nascar Premier Series competition with the Camry since 2007, and the manufacturer won its first driver’s championship in 2015, followed by its first manufacturer’s championship in 2016.
Camry drivers have won 95 Nascar Premier Series races over 10 seasons.
"Re-imagining both the Camry race car and its production counterpart has been a tremendous undertaking and our goal has been to maintain parallel design characteristics so our fans can enjoy driving a Camry that closely resembles the one their favorite Nascar driver races each weekend,” said Toyota Motor Sales USA marketing vice-president Ed Laukes.
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Spearheaded by Camry chief designer Masato Katsumata, the production Camry received a radical redesign for 2018 and engineers from Calty Design Research, Inc., Toyota’s North American design studio, and TRD, USA (Toyota Racing Development) worked together to ensure the Nascar Camry showcased the same aggressive attributes as its updated production sibling. TRD and Calty worked together with Nascar throughout the process.
Calty previously worked with Toyota and TRD to update the Nascar Camry when Nascar introduced its Gen-6 models in 2013, and again when Toyota updated the Camry race car in 2015. The design group also worked with TRD on the 2015 Nascar XFINITY Series Camry, the 2014 Toyota Tundra for the Nascar Camping World Truck Series and the current NHRA Funny Car Camry.
The Nascar Camry will make its debut on-track in 2017 prior to the 2018 production Camry hitting showroom floors at Toyota dealerships later this year. The Nascar Camry will first compete at Daytona International Speedway on Feb 18 in The Clash at Daytona before defending its Daytona 500 title on Feb 26.
