When the A90 Toyota Supra finally hit the scene as a production vehicle, detractors immediately crawled out of the woodwork to hate on it for sharing a BMW platform. Never mind that Toyota laid out the specs for its chassis, never mind that engineers in Japan handled final tuning — there’s a BMW logo on the oil filter, which means the car is terrible. Well, now signs point to the Supra’s demise in the next two years. Hope you’re happy.
A report from Automotive News claims the Supra will die out in 2026, alongside the BMW Z4, when production ends at Magna Steyr’s Austrian plant. Given BMW’s reluctance to give the Z4 another chance, it sounds like Toyota will have to build a next-generation Supra on its own — something that seems unlikely given the company’s reluctance to build coupes without a partner. You won, haters: The car you despise for being part German will now be entirely dead. Is that better?
There is some hope for a continuation of the Supra line, and it comes from one of Toyota’s most dedicated gearheads: Tetsuya Tada himself. During the initial launch of the A90 Supra, Tada-san told Japanese Nostalgic Car that an A100 would be on the table — eventually:
“The A100 will come, one day, but the taste will probably be very different,” Tada-san replied, “It might be an EV, or autonomous, or like a Formula E car. Who knows. The A100 might take the Supra name in a drastically different direction. Definitely different from the lineage of the A70 and A80.”
He then brought the conversation back to his mentor. “I want to continue Suzuki-san’s wishes, but when I pass the baton to a new engineer, I don’t know what will evolve.”
When it’s time for the A100, Tada-san will likely be retired.
If you all hated the wonderful ZF 8HP gearbox that the Supra launched with, how are you going to like an electric version? An autonomous version? In seeking some sort of purity, some imagined perfection, you let a fantastic car slip through your fingers.