One of the most long-awaited and highly-anticipated comeback cars of recent years, Toyota is finally gearing up to bring back the legendary Supra a decade and a half after it was phased out.
Naturally there’s a lot of excitement surrounding the new Supra and also a lot of different rumours, meaning that it can be hard to sort the fact from the fiction.
However, ahead of the car’s official unveiling, here’s everything we know for certain about the new Toyota Supra so far.
It’ll share a platform with the BMW Z5
It’s been known for a while now that the Supra will share a platform with BMW’s next-generation roadster, which carries an internal code name of G29 and which is expected to wear a Z5 badge.
The successor to the current Z4, the Z5 will be considerably larger than its predecessor thanks to the fact that Toyota will need to develop the Supra on its underpinnings and it’s expected it’ll be nearly identical in size to the previous Mk4 Supra.
Both cars will share a basic platform but BMW and Toyota reps have implied in the past that the Supra and Z5 could also share suspension setups, differential housings and transmissions, albeit with different ratios.
It’s going to be built in Austria, not Japan
Despite the fact that the Supra has traditionally been built by Toyota in Japan, due to the fact that it shares a platform with the BMW roadster the new model instead will be built in Europe.
Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung reported that the new Supra will be built at the Magna Steyr plant in Graz, Austria. Built on the factory line currently used for the MINI Coupe, Paceman and Countryman, the Supra will begin production when those first two models are phased out in the next year or so.
Kleine Zeitung states that Toyota is looking at making around 60,000 Supras each year from 2018 onwards, meaning that there’s hopefully not much time left until the car is unveiled in production-ready form.
It’ll be powered by a new twin-turbo V6
Although it’ll be built in Europe on a BMW-derived chassis, Toyota will ensure that the Supra preserves its Japanese performance heritage by using a powerful new engine of its own design.
As Car Keys reported earlier this month, Toyota is busy working on a new 3.0-litre twin-turbocharged V6, which bears the internal code 943F and which will produce upwards of 400bhp with up to 440Nm of torque.
The first biturbo V6 Toyota has made, it’ll mark something of a departure for the Supra, which traditionally has always been powered by a turbocharged inline-six engine. There’s also rumours of an entry-level four-cylinder option and a hybrid, but both are as yet unsubstantiated.
However, the use of a powerful V6 would mean that the Supra could potentially rival the R35 Nissan GT-R in terms of performance, which also swapped the traditional straight-six engine of previous generations for a twin-turbo V6 back in 2007.
It’ll be based on the gorgeous FT-1 concept
The Supra has always been a looker, and it’s widely expected that the reborn version will be no different as it’s due to be based on the gorgeous FT-1 Concept that was unveiled back in 2014.
Designed to capture the emotion and style of Toyota’s enviable sports car heritage, which includes cars like the 2000GT, the Celica and the original Supra, Toyota explicitly said that the FT-1 would preview a future car.
Expect familiar styling cues like the sleek coupe profile and big rear wing, while bits carried over from the concept could include the twin rear exhausts, sculpted aerodynamic scoops and the aggressive front air intakes.
