By Christopher A. Sawyer
The Virtual Driver

(April 3, 2013) I’ll state it up front: This isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison. The Toyota Camry is a top of the line XLE, while the Fusion is the mid-grade SE model. Had they both been top of the line models comparably equipped, the Toyota would have carried a significant price advantage; an advantage that would be considerably smaller if the comparison was SE to SE.

However, the mid-grade to top-grade comparison isn’t as lopsided as it may seem; the Ford holding its own against the higher line, but similarly priced, Toyota. Also, it became very apparent on the road that this evaluation could not be judged on supermarket, price-per-pound parameters. The differences were too great to allow so drab a judgment.

Exterior Styling

This is a comparison where looks matter. The Fusion’s Aston Martin-like styling is quite eye catching, unlike anything else in the mid-size sedan segment, and a radical departure from the previous Fusion. Much of that is due to the fact that the American Fusion and European Mondeo are no longer separate. They are the same car. That means it must play in a very diverse sand box, one that has all of the usual suspects (Honda Accord, Chevy Malibu, Hyundai Sonata, Toyota Camry, Nissan Altima, etc.) on the one side, and European rivals like the Audi A4, BMW 3 Series, VW’s Euro Passat, Renault Laguna and Peugeot 407 on the other. Designing a car that would be a hit just in Middle America wouldn’t cut it this time around.

Toyota, on the other hand, took a more conservative route with the Camry. Though some competitors deride the styling as Corolla-plus, the Camry is inoffensively handsome. It won’t win any design awards, nor will it foul the landscape like the Pontiac Aztek. Yet for the vast majority of Camry buyers since the car’s inception, that’s just fine. These folks aren’t looking for the latest and greatest. They want a vehicle that is solid, safe and dependable, with just enough style to announce that they own something more than a mere appliance.

Interior Design

Inside, the disparity continues. Ford has given the Fusion a sweeping cockpit with numerous soft-touch surfaces, tasteful bright trim, and a “mid-Atlantic” feel. You can’t help but wonder if the European designers wouldn’t have been a little less liberal with the metal-look trim, and a bit more adventurous with the instrumentation. Especially since the speedometer, an analog gauge, is in the center of the gauge cluster, which is flanked by a pair of 4.2-in video screens.

In other words, the same basic instrument layout seen in just about every new Ford and Lincoln. Yes, you can call up a lot of information, but tiny little tachometers and bounteous bar graphs don’t look right. A full set of real gauges — or their digital equivalent — would be more in keeping with the Fusion’s sporty design and demeanor.

If that’s not enough, the screens — in the gauge cluster and the center stack of the instrument panel in our MyFord Touch-equipped test car — go blue-white when you get in the car, making it damned near impossible to see where to put the ignition key, especially at night. Quite honestly, the default setting should be one that “wakes” the displays by gradually bringing up your last settings up to their pre-set brightness level, not one of retina-searing light.

The Camry, on the other hand, takes a much more sensible approach, placing three analog gauges (a tachometer, central speedometer and combined fuel gauge/mileage gauge) directly ahead of the driver. Smaller displays give information like the gear you are in, engine temperature, outside temperature and average mpg. It isn’t fancy, but it also doesn’t blind you at night.

The instrument panel itself is an interesting mix of hard and soft materials, with the upper portion covered in a flowing, stitched soft pad, the middle section in a soft-touch material bordered by metallic and wood accents, and a bottom section that is a light-colored hard plastic. The look is clean and crisp, but spoiled by light-colored pillars on each side of the center stack. These features also are made of a soft material, but one unlike that used in the rest of the instrument panel. Its “stitching” is fake, having been a feature carved into the die in which these pieces were molded, and made of a plastic that feels as though it also is used to make children’s toys.

Toyota’s designers would have been better off leaving these throwbacks to the previous generation Camry on the cutting room floor, much as they would have been better off designing a latch for the glovebox door that didn’t look like an afterthought.

Interior room is broadly similar, with the sweeping roofline of the Fusion taking a slight toll on entry into the rear seats. The more upright stance of the Camry, despite being 0.2-in lower, makes ingress/egress into the back seat easier, and more than makes up for its nearly three-inch wheelbase deficit. However, the nod has to go the Fusion. Its front seats have longer and more supportive lower cushions, and both front and rear seats have more side bolstering to hold you in place. You don’t feel as though you are sitting on a leather-covered park bench as you do in the Camry.

On the other hand, though the design is a bit clunky, the Camry has the better steering wheel. It is not only thicker, it is finished in a nicer looking (and feeling) leather cover. In comparison, the Fusion’s wheel feels cheap.

Dynamics

The steering wheel is about the only place where the Fusion is lacking in terms of refinement. Dynamically, it operates in a different sphere than the Camry, turning into corners with authority, riding over most bumps and swales well, and showing no signs of indecision.

Meanwhile, the Camry can be surprisingly harsh over bumps, indecisive — “Should I be more comfortable, firmer or both?” — over swales, and troubled by bushings that introduce secondary ride movements as they attempt to keep things comfortable and under control. Similarly, the steering has slightly too much damping, which reduces its feel, coupled with weighting that is slightly heavier (though I’m not complaining) than you might expect from a Japanese car.

As a result, the Fusion feels more nimble, planted and cohesive than the Camry. You do not run up against a wall of understeer as early as in the Toyota, and you can get the rear end to work with you by unloading it under braking into corners, and loading it under acceleration out of them. You can do the same with the Camry, as you can with most front-drive vehicles, but it doesn’t like it as much or feel as sure-footed. I have no doubt each would be able to make an evasive maneuver on the highway, but the Ford would feel much more secure while doing so.

Powertrain

If the Fusion has one major shortcoming, it’s the 1.6-liter EcoBoost four-cylinder fitted to our test car. In my introductory review of the Fusion, I said the engine (mated to a six-speed manual, not the six-speed automatic of my test car) didn’t have the torque it needed. I was right, even in the glacier-scraped (that is, flat) environs of southeast lower Michigan, the 1.6 EcoBoost felt a touch lethargic, despite having a stated 184 lb-ft of torque at just 2,500 rpm.

You can get the Fusion to move out smartly by stepping deeper into the throttle, but doing so will drop fuel economy near to 20 mpg around town. The EPA rates the Fusion 1.6 automatic at 23 city/36 highway/28 combined. However, you have to work with the engine to reach the combined number. This powertrain requires a real Zen approach with gentle acceleration leading into a build up of turbo boost that brings you up to speed with the cars that accelerated away from you at the last traffic light. This isn’t what you’d expect from a $795 engine option with automatic stop-start (a further $295 hit to the pocketbook that’s supposed to give an average 3.5% fuel savings).

The Camry, on the other hand, had no problem returning 29 mpg combined. Its 2.5-liter inline four doesn’t have a turbocharger, produces the same horsepower as the little Ford engine (178), and pumps out 14 less lb-ft 1,600 rpm farther up the scale.

It also weighs a bit over 20 pounds more than the Ford, all things that should conspire against it getting better real world fuel economy.

But it did, and it lent credence to a story a journalist at one of the big four car magazines recounted recently about the little Ford EcoBoost. In a back-to-back test with Escape SUVs, one with a 2.0-liter EcoBoost and one with the 1.6-liter version, he said the smaller-engined Escape’s fuel economy was less than one-half a mile per gallon better. And while I have yet to drive a Fusion fitted with the 2.5-liter four, it’s enough to make me wonder if the only real advantage the 1.6-liter engine has is that you can order it with a slick six-speed manual transmission.

Conclusion

Where the Fusion really shines is in terms of refinement. Not only is the trunk finished off like that of a luxury car, with the hinge arms recessed into finished covers, the primary and secondary controls are similar in weighting and feel. Touch the steering wheel, throttle or brake, and you know just how much effort the pushbuttons and dials are going to take. This is a common trait in Audi, BMWs and Mercedes, but not in mid-size family Fords.

Combine this refinement with the better-bolstered seats, communicative electric power steering and sporty yet supple suspension, and the result is a vehicle that you enjoy driving each day. The Camry on the other hand, feels much less coherent in its responses, and reminds you of what family cars have always been, not what — with the introduction of the Fusion — they have become. It is a fine car whose biggest sin is that it must go head-to-head with a car that, despite its faults, moves the needle decisively in a new and enticing direction.

The Virtual Driver