Toyota Supra Vs Porsche 718 Cayman Vs. BMW M2 Competition

Supra Bowl: The Toyota expansion team takes on league heavyweights from BMW and Porsche

- Scott Evans

It should’ve been easy. The Baltimore Colts, led by MVP quarterback Earl Morrall with Johnny U. in reserve, were 18-point favorites going into Super Bowl III against the New York Jets of the upstart American Football League. Spoiler alert, 50 years late: It wasn’t easy.

It’s also easy to cast the new Toyota Supra, playing for Toyota City after graduating from college in Munich, as an underdog. Toyota City’s sports car history is patchy, and with its shared German and Japanese DNA, the latest Supra makes a natural rival for a pair of league stalwarts with many championships: the Porsche Cayman and BMW M2 Competition. And the Germans aren’t about to let the new guy show them up.

But after getting a feel for how the Supra moves, we wouldn’t be surprised if Toyota secretly got Mazda’s playbook as part of the big trade for sharing the Mazda2 and a factory down south. The Supra, for all intents and purposes, drives like the 335-hp Miata the internet has been demanding for the past decade.

It’s not dead flat around a corner like a track car. There’s body roll when you crack the wheel, but it’s quick, perfectly controlled, and deliberate. Dashing through a slalom section of mountain road, the Supra shifts its weight side to side like a barrel-racing champion. The steering is super quick and has absolutely zero dead spots, so every movement you make on the wheel directly translates into precision and accuracy on the road. It lacks the feel of the best sports cars, but that’s its only concession.

The Supra’s standard adaptive dampers do a phenomenal Jekyll and Hyde routine: compliant and comfortable on the commute; appropriately stiff when you press Sport on the center console. The brakes like heat, though the rear end gets light under hard braking from high speeds. Getting up to pace is easy, too, because the power delivery is smooth and linear all the way up.