Toyota Supra
The BMW Z4’s blood brother is fully German underneath underneath. Let’s h hope it’s still sprinkled with just the right amount of Japanese insanity...
This is the car we’ve been waiting 16 years for Toyota to pull its finger out and build. A brand-new Supra, the fifth generation of a legend (sixth, if you want to throw the 2000GT in there as a spiritual starting point) and the car that could single-handedly revive the Max Power movement.
Developed under a joint venture with the new BMW Z4, the worry here is that Toyota’s wild child might become a little too tamed, too Germanic. To allay our fears, we’re in Madrid to drive a final prototype before the car’s reveal at the Detroit show in January, and meet Gazoo Racing chief Tetsuya Tada, the man also responsible for delivering the GT86.
Fair to say he’s a bit of a TopGear hero.
Toyota has agreed to give us various details on the car, but not all, saving some titillation for later. Fair enough – by Tada’s own admission, this is a car that is more about emotion than numbers: “We were pursuing numbers and profit margins, which are still important, but we’ve started to appreciate the value different cars can bring to customers,” Tada explains. “It all started when Akio Toyoda took the reins. Numbers are one thing, but it’s the feeling that matters.”
We know that the basic architecture is shared with the Z4, although Tada insists the company completely separated its development processes early on, to ensure the cars felt like very different products.
No performance figures yet, but the engine is BMW’s 3.0-litre, single-turbo straight-six with between 300bhp and 350bhp, the gearbox is an eight-speed auto and it’s strictly rear-wheel drive. It has higher torsional rigidity than the Lexus LFA, despite using no carbon fibre in either the chassis or body (to keep costs down) and it has a lower centre of gravity than the
GT86 – no mean feat, considering the 86 uses a low-slung flat-four.
The engine is fully behind the front axle, making it officially front-mid-engined and helping towards a perfect 50/50 weight distribution. The brakes are four-pot Brembos, there’s an active differential at the rear and there’s a choice of passive or active dampers, the latter sitting 7mm lower to the road.
“The Porsche Cayman was the benchmark from the start,” Tada tells us. He admits that there’s an intrinsic weight and dynamic advantage to a mid-engine layout, but says on the track “we’re in the same zone.” He also tells us how “disappointing” the 718’s sound is, “the GTS is even worse.”
Best to save any opinions on the design until we, y’know, actually see it. As for the interior,
Toyota tried its best to obscure it with bits of flappy carpet, but it wasn’t too hard to sneak a peek. All the switchgear, central screen and steering wheel are unmistakably from Munich.
Our first proper go is on some winding B-roads outside Madrid. Toyota has brought along a GT86 too, which is a great touch – if only to remind us how hilarious it is when you take it by the scruff of the neck. However, next to the Supra, the GT86’s powertrain feels a bag of gutless spanners. Helped by the slick gearbox, the Supra is just so much torquier, smoother and more sophisticated in every regard. The drivetrain combination might be BMW down to the last bolt, but it’s also one of the very finest in the world. And the way it responds, zings through the revs and stays composed and smooth whatever abuse you throw at it is a thing to be celebrated.
“You don’t have to thrash it to have fun”
With the GT86 flailing about in my rear-view mirror, I start to stretch the Supra and lean on it into the tighter turns. It immediately feels more substantial, broader-shouldered, more keyed into the road. Stay smooth, and that extra grip and power means a massive chunk more real-world pace. There’s more point-and-stick precision to the front end, but it still rolls a bit and feels organic in the way it responds to your inputs.
The steering isn’t loaded with feel, but it does weight up a fair bit as the loads increase – a useful indicator of how close the tyres are to letting go. The brakes are strong and progressive and the seating position, tucked low next to the transmission tunnel, is spot-on. The basics, in other words, are superb – this is a car that you don’t have to thrash to have fun in… but just to be sure, we stopped off at the Jarama racetrack.
Driving modes are limited to Normal and Sport, while the ESP can be left on, switched to a halfway-house Track mode, or switched off entirely. Tada mentions in the pre-track driving briefing that it “isn’t a car for the less competent driver”. Within two laps, I’d have to disagree. It’s not that it doesn’t feel like a sharp driving tool, just that for someone new to the car and the track it feels friendly and approachable, easy to exploit, full of grip but with plenty of warning when that’s about to run out.
It bobs and weaves a bit more than track-specialised stuff, but that’s half the fun – it moves and you move with it, catching little slides, deploying the full travel of the throttle, pinging through the gearbox and enjoying the engine rasping away in front of you.
Sometimes a car just feels right. Much depends on the price, of course (we predict circa £50,000), but the name, the looks, the badge, the timing – it all seems to add up, and this was just the taster… there are many more details and driving opportunities to come.