It’s Back! Toyota Debuts Supra Racing Concept
Toyota brings back the legendary Supra name with a racing concept that signals the return of the street car.
It’s finally happening. A Supra will (probably) return to Toyota showrooms. Suddenly, all those RAV4 and Camry sales seem to have been worth it. Today at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show Toyota introduced the GR Supra Racing Concept. The “GR” stands for GAZOO Racing, the official factory racing team for the automaker. Though it isn’t the production car debut we’ve been waiting for, there are plenty of cues that are making us very excited and hopeful.
Perhaps most importantly, we found the words “front engine” and “rear-wheel drive” in the same sentence, and haven’t gotten a whiff of hybrid-anything. Yet. Only time will tell. The concept sports a number of race-specific features, like the center-lock BBS wheels, roll cage, and stripped down interior. Outside, the Supra is clad in Toyota GAZOO’s signature paint scheme and on the door is a telling detail: 90. From Toyota’s press release, “the large ’90’ race number on its doors is a historical reference to Supra’s code name and a big visual clue to the fact that this concept heralds Supra’s return in a fifth generation.”
The second major indicator is this line from the release, “The concept’s chassis features lowered front and rear suspension using original equipment (OE) components.” (emphasis added) These concepts are routinely one-off custom jobs that often merely hint at the styling direction. While the bodywork is sure to do that, the fact that there are OE components to pull from leads us to think there’s quite a bit more production Supra under there.
Styling wise, the GR Supra cuts a similar profile to the highly modified Mk4 Supras of yesteryear, with a few dashes of GT86 thrown in to keep the styling in line with the corporate language.
Because Race Car
While we’ve said much about what the concept means for the production car, the race car shouldn’t be overlooked. This is one serious machine, and we hope it gets some track time to back up those looks. The introduction of a race concept does pay proper homage to the racing heritage of the Supra. Toyota outlined a bit of the racing pedigree of the previous Supra models, including the Mk4’s wins in the All-Japan GT racing, the predecessor of the Super GT series, where it won the GT500 class four times.
The last new Supra sold in America was back in 2002. In the 16 years since then Nissan has dominated with the GTR, and Acura has released a new NSX. We can’t wait to see the three-way battle, that we enjoyed so much from the 90’s, to be replayed in 2018 and beyond.
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