Return Of The Supra!

Turbo V6, 300kW, rear-drive: Toyota’s halo car is coming

- Michael Taylor

THE WALKING Dead’s zombie virus has jumped into inanimate objects, with the once-dead Toyota Supra about to roar back to life.

The Supra is the production car that first gave the world the faintest idea that the beating heart of at least one car enthusiast laid beneath that Mount Fuji-sized pile of white-painted, stolidly shaped metal with plastics that smelt slightly funny.

And then, in 2002, it died. And for more than a decade, it stayed dead. And now it’s almost back, thanks to an unlikely technical tieup with BMW.

Every other carmaker in the world has seen enough in the sales data to assume the mid-sized coupe market is shrinking towards oblivion. That frightened the two carmakers, but they both still wanted their sports cars, so they split the costs, more or less.

For its part, BMW will show the “concept” of the G29 Z4 (which it is being called internally, rather than Z5) at August’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.

But sitting on the same chassis, suspension and electronics architecture will the flagship Toyota sports car, complete with a full performance sub-brand beneath it as well.

Prototype Supras are being flung around Toyota’s private test tracks near Mount Fuji, however, they’re also being tested on the Bavarian roads near its technical partner’s Munich headquarters.

Toyota is staying admirably mum about the car, about what it will cost, what engines it might have, what gearboxes it will use, its performance targets – even how it will be different to the BMW twin. What we know for sure is that Tetsuya Tada (no, not the restaurant bloke) has been tasked with overseeing it, and he knows both handling fun and joint venture engineering, having been in charge of the successful 86/ Subaru BRZ project.