2015 Toyota Supra

posted by: king leoric

The Supra was a sports car produced by Toyota from 1979 to 2002. Its demise was due to restrictive emission standards, and it went away quietly into the night. Or did it? Rumors have been suggesting that the Supra name would be making a comeback and the fact that Toyota has just renewed the "Supra" trademark registration that expired back in 2006, leads us to the one logical conclusion: we will soon be able to drive around in a Supra again.

This evidence may all be there, but no one should expect the Supra anytime soon as Toyota is still busy fiddling around with their version of the FT-86. As if trying to outdo Subaru’s FT-86wasn’t enough - Hey Toyota, good luck with that - Toyota is also planning on a new MR2rumored to debut in 2013. So the Supra will be anything but chilling on the backburner until about 2015.

The last generation Supra was powered by a turbo engine with an output of 320 HP at 5600 rpm and 315 lbs-ft of torque, but don’t expect the same to happen with the next generation Supra.

UPDATE 12/05/2011: The return of the Supra name has been denied and confirmed by Toyota so many times, it’s equivalent to watching a tennis ball endlessly shooting over the net - back and forth, back and forth. Now, however, that game may finally be coming to a close. During the official debut of the GT 86, Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada, said there was room for a three-tier sports car line-up in the Toyota range, with one car sitting below the 86 and one above it: "Right now the 86 will be a mid-size sports car. I would like to have one smaller and one larger. One would probably be a Supra follower. Nothing has been decided yet. It would [be] like a Supra successor."

We’ll see how long this story rides before Toyota throws another game into the set.

UPDATE 12/13/2011: MotorTrend has offered new details on the new generation Supra set to be released in 2015. It seems that the car is being tested with a 3.5-liter V-6 hybrid system generating over 400 hp. It has also been rumored that the car will feature a design close to the FT-HS concept revealed at the 2007 Detroit show.

UPDATE 07/03/2012: A few days ago BMW and Toyota signed an agreement for co-developing a new sports car. And now, Automotive News is reporting that the next generation Toyota Supra could be built using the BMW 6-series architecture: "Anything is possible. The key factor is that the products of both companies retain their own individual character, despite jointly developed technologies."