[supra93]

They also removed some camo from the regular test cars.

[supra93]

Supra GRMN anyone? Stripped-out new Supra could weigh 100kg less

Exciting news. Gazoo Racing chief and father of the new 2019 Toyota Supra, Tetsuya Tada, has confirmed that a stripped-out, track-focused version is already part of his plan for the reborn sports car, co-developed with the new BMW Z4. Expect it to be called the Supra GRMN.

“At some point I would like to make a track-limited Supra with less weight. We’re already making a racing version so we know if you take out 100kg it’s a completely different car – you don’t even need any more power,” Tada told us. Question is, will it be road-legal or a track-only toy? “We’re investigating both avenues, there’s always a trade-off because being road-legal brings restrictions.”

Tada fleshed out the details on his desire to take the car racing, too. Toyota has already confirmed a Supra NASCAR will be competing in 2019, but that’s little more than a look-a-like nose grafted onto a stock car. Tada says the blossoming LM GTE category is being looked at – potentially pitting the Supra against the Ford GT, Ferrari 488, Aston Vantage, Porsche 911 and others.

For the road car, the Supra’s targets are less lofty: “The Porsche Cayman has been our dynamic benchmark from the start,” says Tada. “The Cayman has the advantage with its engine positioning but I’ve driven the cars back-to-back on track and we’re definitely in the same zone.”

Although there are no concrete facts about the Supra’s spec yet, we do know it will use BMW engines and gearboxes – likely to be a 3.0-litre straight-six with around 300bhp and an eight-speed auto. “We stuck with front engine because of feel and control. We know how to control a front-engine car, we already have that capability. In the planning stages we suggested a mid-engined layout and BMW was happy to go with it, but I took the idea to Akio Toyoda and he told me off.”

So what’s changed in a company once renowned for its risk adversity, that means a family of sports cars, including track-focused derivatives, is now an essentially part of the recipe? “What’s changed is what Toyota sees as success. 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 took the reigns. Numbers are one thing, but it’s the feeling that matters.”

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/tgs...-focused-supra

[shay2nak]

Is this car ever going to be released? Freakin hilarious...

[Dog Face Pony Soldier]

Originally Posted by shay2nak

Is this car ever going to be released? Freakin hilarious...

This new trend of implementing a soft launch with the vehicle in camo is frustrating and actually makes me lose interest. BMW is every bit as guilty.

[FLATBMW]

Originally Posted by Never_Enough

LOL @ this car not being out yet. It's going to be a big let down like the BR-Z/FR-S

IMO it looks like the offspring of an i8 and FR-S, not really getting a Supra vibe from the new Supra. I remember back in the old days when everyone wanted a Type R Integra and you could pick up an older stock Supra for a couple grand, same with the MR2 and people were practically giving RX7s away!

[Never_Enough]

Originally Posted by FLATBMW

IMO it looks like the offspring of an i8 and FR-S, not really getting a Supra vibe from the new Supra. I remember back in the old days when everyone wanted a Type R Integra and you could pick up an older stock Supra for a couple grand, same with the MR2 and people were practically giving RX7s away!

+ this one is not even targa. What a sad story

[tranquility]

Originally Posted by shay2nak

Is this car ever going to be released? Freakin hilarious...

x9999999999999999999999

Enough already, so annoying, just like the sister Z4 but ofc recently released finally.

[shay2nak]

Originally Posted by FLATBMW

IMO it looks like the offspring of an i8 and FR-S, not really getting a Supra vibe from the new Supra. I remember back in the old days when everyone wanted a Type R Integra and you could pick up an older stock Supra for a couple grand, same with the MR2 and people were practically giving RX7s away!

I miss the 90s.

[wdb]

I missed the 90s

[supra93]

So yeah its going to share styling cues with other Toyotas like the 86... What were you guys expecting? For it to look like a Lambo or Ferrari lol. Even the A80 Supra shared styling cues with the Celica.

[shay2nak]

I saw a camo one again going home from work yesterday. I think Toyota is just going to sell it like that. ONLY ONE COLOR OPTION...HYPNOTIZE CAMO.

[IllSic_Design]

Originally Posted by shay2nak

I saw a camo one again going home from work yesterday. I think Toyota is just going to sell it like that. ONLY ONE COLOR OPTION...HYPNOTIZE CAMO.

They are/were actually thinking about offering the checkered red/black camo. Seems people like it lol

[supra93]

Toyota’s Performance Boss Was Going to Make a New Supra in 1997. Years After It Was Cancelled, He Finally Gets His Chance

Tetsuya Tada, you’ll not be surprised to hear, is a regular car nut, just like you and I, and Dave, that guy down the block who owns a Camaro. You’d hardly expect otherwise from the man who created the sweet-hearted GT86 coupe, and who was personally appointed by Akio Toyoda himself to rebirth the Toyota Supra for a new generation.

What I mean, though, is that he’s really a car nut. He’s utterly happy even when tired from a long day’s driving, and trying to enjoy his dinner, to sit and talk endlessly about cars, especially his beloved new Supra, but cars in general. By the end of our chat, my notebook was full, and my hand ached from constantly trying to scribble down what Tada was saying.

Tada’s association with the Supra goes almost all the way back to the 1993 with the fourth-generation car, the A80. That car, developed by famed engineer and Lexus LS godfather Ichiro Suzuki, would go on to become something of a legend (rather like Suzuki himself) and Tada found himself assigned to Suzuki’s ‘Z-Division,’ ready to begin work on the next Supra.

That didn’t work out so well, though.

“Suzuki-san was doing the A80 Supra and invited me to join his team,” Tada told us over dinner, through an interpreter. “I got excited because I knew that meant I’d be working on the next Supra. That was in 1997…”

Tada laughs hard at this once-painful memory. “That was exactly when Toyota began shedding cars like the Supra, cars with small margins. The Supra project was suspended almost as soon as I joined.”

Yes, there was supposed to be another Supra. Take a moment and allow yourself to feel those emotions and work through them. I’ll be here when you’re ready.

Anyway, Tada was given a humble people carrier, the Toyota Raum mini-minivan, to work on.

“I can’t tell you how disappointed and angry I was,” he says. “I went to Suzuki-san to complain. But he said I was getting it wrong. Because the basics of car making are the same, whether for the Raum or the Supra.

“He said it’s about thinking through and through about the person who’s going to be owning and driving the car. You have to spend day and night thinking about what they want, nothing else matters. Of course, you have metrics, and targets, and costs to think about, but that’s really all nonsense. The numbers and targets mean nothing. Think about the people who drive this car, the heart, the feeling, what they get from the car. That’s what I’ve tried to do with the Supra.”

Tada has clearly been doing a lot of thinking. It would surely have been tempting for Toyota, having partnered with BMW for the Supra project, and developing the car alongside the new Z4, to simply let the Germans do the dirty work, stick a coupe body and a Toyota badge on the finished product, and finish early on Friday.

That’s avowedly not the Toyota way, and certainly not Tada’s. His work on the car was focused on keeping it as simple as possible. Why? So that as many people as possible could afford it, he said. So that it didn’t become some over-priced exotic. So that the basic car would be tune-able afterwards.

You’d think most senior car engineers would scoff at aftermarket tuners, but not Tada. He knows that while some independent tuners take some of the bread off Toyota’s table, the fact is that the tuning community forms a big part of the Supra’s customers base, and is one of the major reasons why there’s still, in this world of SUVs and hybrids, a clamor for a new Supra.

“One example of this is that we wanted to set a very high rigidity target for the car, but we didn’t want to use carbon fiber,” he says. “Why? Because using carbon makes the car very expensive to buy, and it is also expensive to customize after.”

Instead, he’s built the Supra’s body and chassis from high-tensile steel, aluminum, some carbon-reinforced plastic, and lots of bonding, rather than heavier, less stiff, welding. The result is that the mostly-steel Supra is more torsionally stiff than a carbon Lexus LFA, yet it’s still simple enough to be tuned and tweaked. Tada has even reinforced the rear structure to cope with the downforce from aftermarket wings, and left holes pre-drilled at key points for bodykits and aerodynamic add-ons.

Toyota could build and supply such parts itself, but Tada says: “If we did that, we’d kill the small companies that supply aftermarket parts and components. You have to look at the long term, look at the customers, and why they’re buying the car. Look at the GT86—a lot of the reason that people bought one was because of the fun of adding their own parts, their own customization. At the grassroots level, people are enjoying doing this, and so it’s much better for everyone.”

He added, “I always think back to what I did with my cars before I joined Toyota. I used to enjoy putting on a decal, or some new part. Maybe I wasn’t technically making the car any better, but I was having fun.”

Fun is not a concept that would have been much associated with Toyota in those post-A80-Supra years, but it’s come back in a big way under Akio Toyoda and thanks to the efforts of Tada and others like him. And the reason is not just to make cars that are fun to create, and fun to drive. It’s about fixing that high-performance, motorsport-style mentality into the whole company. Make fun cars, and take them racing, goes the theory, and that snappy decision making, low-waste process will filter through to more workaday models.

So what works for a Supra works for a Corolla? Pretty much, yes, says Tada. “That’s the nature of cars. You ask 100 different questions about what people want, and get 100 different answers. What we need to do is to take the 100 ideas and take what’s good about them. But if you try to have everything, you end up with a car that doesn’t know what it is.”

Tada certainly knew what the new Supra was going to be, and you can tell that from the cars he was benchmarking it against. “The Porsche Cayman was the benchmark from the start,” he says. “There’s a difference in the engine layout, of course, but we’re in the same zone. We did think of a midship layout at one point, and BMW was quite keen on the idea too. If you look at it coldly, objectively, a mid-engine is best, but there’s a reason why we focus on front-engine. It’s all ingrained in us how to control a front-engine car.”

As you’d expect of a car nut, Tada becomes ever more effusive when he’s talking about fun cars, and clearly has respect for Porsche’s work on the 718 Cayman (“although I find its engine noise disappointing”). He’s keen too on the new Renault-built Alpine A110, having driven it back-to-back with the Supra just that morning on track: “It was very good. For daily use, I’m not so sure, but on the track it was great.”

We covered a lot more between main course and desert. Plans for racing versions of the Supra—a silhouette version for NASCAR has already been shown, but Tada’s keen on the possibility of GT3, GT4, and Le Mans GTE versions too. A more hardcore, stripped-out, track day version could also be a possibility (“Take 100kg out of the car and it’s a totally different experience,” says Tada) but there’s debate over whether it should be road-legal or not.

Beyond that, Tada’s Gazoo Racing division will continue to spread its focus out from just motorsport to making more road cars, becoming Toyota’s answer to Ford’s RS or even AMG. I casually suggest that he should do a Camry GRMN, and while there’s laughter, Tada doesn’t seem to think it’s too crazy an idea.

Ultimately though, Tada wants to create cars that draw people into the Toyota brand, and in turn make that brand more desirable. It seems to be working.

“When we showed the Supra at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a little boy came up to me. A British boy, of primary school age, and asked me ‘will you be able to put a 2JZ engine into this one?’ I told him yes, of course you can.”

Who knows if he was serious. But I bet some intrepid tuner out there will try. Isn’t that the point of a Supra?

https://jalopnik.com/toyota-s-perfor...pra-1829125702

[supra93]

A Toyota test driver has confirmed the new Supra will be offered with a so-called “drift mode”, while another executive revealed a manual gearbox is on the cards.

Speaking to CarAdvice, test driver Herwig Daenens said the new Supra – which shares much with the new BMW Z4 roadster alongside which it was developed – would be offered with a dedicated sideways setting.

“There is a drift mode available and you can also drive the vehicle with all systems off. It’s called track mode,” Daenens told the Australian publication.

“It is a combination of settings that you configure and unlock this mode. There is a normal mode and you combine it with ESC on and off. With a short push, it’s traction off, which allows you to have more slip angle. It activates later,” he explained.

According to the same publication, assistant chief engineer, Masayuki Kai, confirmed a manual transmission had been developed for the Supra.

“This is not yet finally decided, and depending on feedback from the market, we will decide if we should introduce a manual transmission,” Kai told CarAdvice.

“We have developed it, yes; there is hardware ready. Right-hand drive? Yes, of course. It needs to be sold in Japan, which is a right-hand drive market,” he added.

The new Supra is expected to be fully revealed in early 2019, before launching in South Africa in June that year.

http://www.carmag.co.za/news/toyota-...-on-the-cards/

[tranquility]

Originally Posted by shay2nak

I saw a camo one again going home from work yesterday. I think Toyota is just going to sell it like that. ONLY ONE COLOR OPTION...HYPNOTIZE CAMO.

LMAO!

[supra93]

Rendered from the prototype.

[scoobysaurus]

Originally Posted by supra93

Rendered from the prototype.

Stunning!!

[Arcades]

I wonder if the whole, "We are going to tease the hell out of everyone until they are sick of the damn car" is gonna always be a thing now...

If the Z4 M40i is such a good car (from what everyone keeps saying) then I wonder how the Supra will end up being.

P.S. I am not a fan of the rear end.

[Dog Face Pony Soldier]

Originally Posted by supra93

Rendered from the prototype.

Looks like it was left out in the sun too long and it melted.

[NickyC]

Originally Posted by glennQNYC

Looks like it was left out in the sun too long and it melted.

It's hot under that camo yo.

[The HACK]

Originally Posted by Arcades

P.S. I am not a fan of the rear end.

Funny everyone complained about the E85/6 Z4 and E63 6 series rear end when they first came out. Now NO ONE complains about the so-called "Bangled Butts."

Time will tell.

[Red Bread]

Originally Posted by The HACK

Funny everyone complained about the E85/6 Z4 and E63 6 series rear end when they first came out. Now NO ONE complains about the so-called "Bangled Butts."

Time will tell.

No one? I still hate every single inch of that awful 6er. Literally the only good thing about that dopey looking thing was the V10 and it was attached to a stupid transmission.

And the Bangle 7er has been relegated to pink wraps and 24's.