The new Toyota Supra has to be one of the most hotly anticipated performance models from Japan, and this is the first video footage of the car – or is it?
Being that Toyota and BMW are working on this project together, with the latter to give birth to the Z4’s successor, rumored to be called the Z5, some voices are questioning whether the coupe we’ve seen in spy shots before, and in this footage now, is the Supra or possibly, a hardtop Z5. Car Magazine is among those who believe it might be the latter, while (most) other mediums, including the usually well-informed on German automakers, Automotorundsport, voted for the former.
On our part, while leaning towards it being a Supra tester – even in an early development form, primarily because we’ve heard that each carmaker will have a single body style of the co-developed sports-car platform, with Toyota getting a coupe and BMW a soft-top roadster, we’re not ready to kill the Z5 Coupe theory until we gather more hard evidence.
What we know for sure is that the two companies decided to join forces to split the enormous costs involved in creating an all-new model from the ground up. Both models will be built at Magna Steyr’s factory in Graz, Austria, but apart from that fact, very little official information is out there, leaving room for all kind of rumors and speculations.
One of the most solid reports on the matter says that the new Supra will be offered with a hybrid powertrain, producing a combined 400hp. Judging from the video linked below, this appears to be true; if you listen carefully at the beginning of the video, you’ll hear the prototype approaching the gates in near ‘electric’ silence before the driver floors it to get the car away from the cameras.
Aside from the hybrid Supra, both the Toyota and BMW models are expected to be available with four- and six-cylinder engines. Whether these powertrains will be common or if each company employs its own engines – as in the case of the Mazda MX-5 and Fiat 124 Spider, is another unknown at this time.
We’ve seen the same coupe prototype before in more detail, showing a full-BMW interior, but this is still an early stage in the car’s real-world development cycle, with a lot of things expected to be changed as we approach 2018, when Toyota is going to reveal the car in its final production form.
The prototype was spotted at BMW M’s test center in Nurburgring, which should mean that Toyota will soon begin some high-speed testing, so stay tuned.