It's crazy they are mass producing this car, by themselves, after all the excuses we've heard about the Supra.
Not really.
I'm not talking about Toyota's technical capability or expertise. It's that they said it was too expensive to develop the Supra in house for a sports car that would be sold in relatively small numbers. How is this GR different?
Well for starters, the GR Yaris has already sold more than the GR Supra has. Let that sink in for a moment. And the GR Corolla will too.
One of the desires of Akio was that whatever new sportscar they made he wanted it to be accessible to as many people as possible. If Toyota had developed the Supra 100% in-house, from scratch, they would have had to sell it for $100k to be profitable (that number is Toyota's figure, not mine)...and that was a small profit. They had no platform and no engine. Apparently, the engine was the bigger deal of the two. They would have had to build a new plant for it, as the last I6 plant was closed and repurposed. Had they decided to build that plant, it would be just coming online this year had everything gone to plan. It would have been more "doable" if that engine were to go into every high production model under the sun (like Stellantis' new I-6). But that would have been a complete "reworking" of Toyota's model lineup as some of their important new models (Tundra) already had the engine choice selected.
I mean..I know we rag on Toyota for this...but it's nice to see Toyota still committed to interesting enthusiast cars. GR Yaris GR Supra, GR 86 and GR Corolla. A pretty decent lineup of enthusiast cars. I think they're doing alright for the enthusiast.
Agreed.
It's crazy that they pretty much went 15 years with nothing but boring appliance vehicles and then over the past 8/9 years they have slowly become the performance Japanese brand. You look around and Nissan will only have one performance car, same for Honda, and Mazda only the Miata. Subaru has two, but the WRX isn't exactly top notch.
Big time applause for Toyota. They are doing this hot hatch right and I'm thinking it will 100% be as collectible, if not more than, the Civic Type R. Mechanical limited slip diffs at both ends, being able to send more power to the rear than the competitors (and not calling it "drift mode" like a child), a special engine (not some hopped up engine from an Accord), carbon roof, huge brakes, proper tires, man this thing is excellent. That being said, how much will it be? I don't think it should be more than the Golf R or the next generation Civic Type R, but even if it's a little above those I still think it's desirable.
Well done Toyota, well done. I know Ron was worried that they might mess this up, but it looks to me about as good as the GR Yaris, and that car is special.