The Toyota GR Supra was built in Austria around a BMW engine
After a 17-year gap, Toyota revived its famous Supra in 2019, but the new car was hardly pure Toyota. It shared a platform with the BMW Z4, used BMW turbocharged engines and was assembled by Magna Steyr in Graz, Austria. Even its fake body vents were a deliberate hint to tuners.
The partnership suited both firms. Toyota wanted a rear-wheel-drive coupe to take on the Porsche Cayman S, while BMW wanted a roadster, so they co-developed a stiff platform that could serve both. After that the teams split up: Toyota handled its own chassis tuning, exterior and most of the interior, widened and stiffened the side sills, added bracing and shifted the engine rearward to reach an ideal 50–50 weight balance. The non-functional vents were carried over from the race prototype so owners could open them up later.
Getting there took years. Toyota renewed its trademark on the name, and in 2012 chief engineer Tetsuya Tada said company president Akio Toyoda had asked for a Supra successor as soon as possible. The FT-1 concept of January 2014 inspired the styling, though the production car ended up smaller and more of a pure sports car. Toyoda himself unveiled the finished Supra at the Detroit show in January 2019, crediting heavy testing at the Nürburgring and tracing its lineage to the 2000GT.
Power came from either a turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder, the first four-cylinder in any Supra, or a 3.0-litre straight-six. At first only an eight-speed ZF automatic was offered, which Toyota recalibrated and preferred for its quick shifts and ability to handle torque; a six-speed manual with rev-matching arrived for the six-cylinder in 2022. Car and Driver clocked the 3.0-litre car from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, faster than Toyota's own claim.
The very first production car sold at auction for US$2.1 million in January 2019, all of it donated to charity. Production ended in March 2026 after seven years with no successor planned. A last run of 300 A90 Final Edition cars, split evenly between Japan and Europe, borrowed parts from the GT4 race car.
Source: Toyota GR Supra
