HOW WILL THE SUPRA COMPARE?
At Toyota, former GT86 chief engineer Tetsuya Tada is working on the new Supra, a job he first thought he’d be doing 15 years ago.
That the new Supra needed to be true to its predecessor is why Toyota involved itself with BMW. “When we decided we were going to do this, we didn’t just want a revival or a rehash of what we had before,” Tada said last month at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. “We wanted to ask all the Supra fans around the world what was essential, and I tried to look for these conditions. The answer was clear: an in-line six, turbo, front engine and rear-wheel drive. A lot of manufacturers had stopped making in-line six engines; BMW was the only one continuing with an in-line six.”
The Supra is yet to be revealed in its finished form, but beneath the disguise the model Toyota revealed at Goodwood is, aesthetically at least, finished. “We still have another half a year for it to be mature engineering-wise,” Tada said. “We’re still working on some of the handling aspects and finer details.”
Tada said the Supra’s centre of gravity is “even lower” than that of the boxer-engined GT86, ensuring its handling will be both neutral and adjustable. As with the BMW, the Supra’s weight distribution will be 50/50 front to rear, and although Toyota hasn’t confirmed specific details yet, Tada did reveal that the Supra will produce about 350lb ft and weigh approximately 1500kg.