Toyota Explains Why The New Supra Is Powered By BMW

Toyota’s decision to team up with BMW for the Supra/Z4 joint project raised quite a few eyebrows when it was announced many years ago. The road to the car’s official reveal has been painstakingly long and we are still a few weeks away from the A90’s debut in Detroit. When it will arrive at NAIAS, under the hood of the fifth-generation Supra there’s going to be a BMW engine. In an interview with Automotive News Europe, chief engineer Tetsuya Tada explained the reasoning behind the decision to source the heart of the Supra from another automaker.

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When Toyota decided to dust off the legendary “Supra” moniker by approving a new sports car, the first order of business was to secure a straight-six engine. Why? Because customer surveys showed that was a must considering all four previous generations of the car had an inline-six. The easiest way to obtain one was to ink a deal with BMW and grab their 3.0-liter you’ll find in the Z4 M40i as well as in the new M340i. Toyota decided against developing its own straight-six, which although did upset purists, it’s a business move that makes sense considering the Supra won’t be a high-volume car.

The engine of Bavarian origins has been tuned by Toyota’s engineers specifically for the Supra, as it’s the case with other BMW-sourced vital hardware, such as the eight-speed transmission and the chassis. Despite sharing more than a few parts, the two companies have promised distinct identities for their sports cars that will go well beyond the different body style. Having seen the new Z4 and a revealing image of the Supra, we know for sure their exterior designs won’t have anything in common.

Getting back to the interview held at a track southwest of Tokyo during a test drive event, Tada hinted future Gazoo Racing models will use engines developed by Toyota’s go-faster division. These will be all-new engines rather than more powerful configurations of existing units, and will likely support electrification for extra boost and lower emissions.

Source: Automotive News Europe