TOYOTA SUPRA PROTOTYPE DRIVEN
It’s still a prototype, but Toyota’s pending Supra promises sports car thrills – with help of BMW power
It’s still dazzle-camouflaged outside and carpeted inside, it’s still eight months away from production and it’s still very much in prototype form. All that matters at the moment, they say, is the way it drives and the way it makes you feel.
And this, I’m thrilled to report, I can tell you. I’ve driven it, quite a lot and quite fast. It’s nonetheless yet another painful “plink” in the agonising drip-feed of Supra information that, let’s not forget, began in 2012 when BMW and Toyota announced they were going to work together. Does Toyota really need seven years to build a car?
Of what we know, then, only this much is confirmed: the Supra has a lower centre of gravity than today’s 86 coupe, despite having a 3.0-litre straight-six engine, which drives the rear wheels through an eight-speed automatic gearbox (BMW/ZF respectively), while a BMW M Active limited-slip differential sits at the back axle. As with the BMW Z4 version, the weight distribution will be 50:50. I still can’t tell you the exact power but 340hp sounds about right and the kerb weight is likely 1,500kg. The body, despite being a blend of steel and aluminium, is as rigid as a Lexus LFA’s carbon fibre one. The wheelbase is around 2,440mm and the track approximately 1,600mm.
There will be faster and, I suspect, slower versions of this car later, to make the sums add up for Toyota, so the slow release of information will go on even after production begins in May. You’ll see the final car, shorn of its disguise, at the Detroit motor show in January.
And we can add this to what we know: it’s good to drive. Our route is a two-hour loop from the outskirts of Madrid in Spain, so partly in the city, partly on the motorway, partly on country roads, and then — goody gumdrops — partly at a racetrack.
Despite the drapery inside, you can sense it’s a BMW-centric interior. The switchgear is BMW, the driving position is long and straight, the gear lever is BMW’s. The iDrive multimedia system is better than Toyota’s alternative, although there’ll surely be a Toyota face on that, as there is on the instrument binnacle, while the steering wheel is thinner of rim than BMW uses and round.
You sit low, peering through a letterbox windscreen with a high window line and the curved bonnet spearing off into the distance. No idea whether it is (it probably is) but it immediately feels bigger than, say, a Porsche 718 Cayman, whose corners are easier to place, owing to better visibility. You are aware at once where the Supra’s engine is.
It’s a refined drivetrain, though. If there’s work still to be done on the calibration, it’d be news to me. A six is always smooth but a BMW six, turbocharged here, is incredibly so. Step-off is smooth and the Supra, even in standard drive mode, is unencumbered by the response modern autos sometimes give, where they feel like they’re trying to lug things out from revs that are too low.
Push the Sport button and the throttle and gearbox response sharpens, but there are gearshift paddles. If you want a quicker response, it’s probably more rewarding to take control yourself.
The Supra rides well too — better than, while on the same size tyres as, a BMW M4: bespoke Michelin Pilot Super Sports, 255/35 R19 at the front and 275/35 R19 at the rear.
Passive dampers will be standard but adaptive dampers were fitted to the cars we tried. These, too, firm up via the Sport button, as does the steering weight, although in regular daily driving there’s no need: the underlying compliance is welcome but there’s no sense that the body weight is getting away from it.
The Supra feels like a stable, well-rounded sports coupe. Its engineers say they did 90% of its development work on the road, and I think it shows. In town, on the motorway, it’s mature in a way that, say, a BMW M2 Competition, perhaps even a Cayman, are not.
It’s only when you get on to a country road, then, that you start to push the boundaries of the standard suspension setting’s limits. The steering is smooth, progressive, sharper off the straightahead than some front-engined coupes, presumably to give an extra sense of agility that, compared with a 718, the Supra simply can’t have.
Body roll builds progressively, but this is where you want the dampers firmed because, without it, as you get back on the throttle and the differential begins to worry about acceleration, you feel the body’s mass shifting in a way I don’t think you would in a Cayman. With the dampers tightened, the sensation is much alleviated with not too much loss in compliance, and there’s a pleasing, reassuring balance.
There are other things a Supra can do. The engine is extremely sweet, smooth and broadly responsive but happy to rev. In Sport mode, a flap opens in the exhaust and Toyota says there’s more work to do on the induction noise, probably via sound tubes off the engine — so real, rather than fake noise.
And it’s clearly a chassis that can handle more power. Nowhere is that more evident than on a circuit where, Sport mode engaged, the Supra displays the same balance as it does on the road, only enhanced. The suspension maintains good control but serious compliance over bumps or kerbs.
Toyota has taken a delicate path with the Supra: a road car that gives more when you ask for more. And where, say, an M2 Competition might give you more all the time, that’s no bad thing. In terms of daily maturity, it’s closest, then, to a 718 Cayman.
Curious. A few years ago, a Cayman was regarded as unbeatable. Now everybody wants a crack at it. On this showing, Toyota is getting as close as anyone.