Let’s Raid The BMW Parts Bin To Make A Real Toyota Supra GT

Over the years, there have been some bizarre car brand mash-ups. Naturally, some have worked better than others.

The Saab 9-2X “Saaburoo” has to be considered a success: a Subaru Imprezza WRX modified to fit the more upscale Swedish car brand. Somehow the quirkiness of the Subie was something sorely missing in the GM-based Saabs offered at the time.

The Alfa Romeo ARNA was just the opposite. Whose idea was it to combine the worst parts of a sub-par Italian car experience (rust-prone steel, a rather throbby engine, and unreliable electrics) with the least appealing elements one might encounter in a Japanese car – as in bland styling and soggy handling?

Currently, Toyota sells another improbable mash-up in the form of the Supra. The flashy skin doesn’t give anything away, but below the body panels, it’s mechanically identical to a BMW Z4.

Performance and handling are undeniably impressive; you might consider it to be a success, but for me the new Supra was and is a bit of a letdown. Surprisingly, my disappointment has nothing to do with the reformatted German-car lineage. My issue is with what the new Supra most essentially is: a full-on sports car in a small package with just two seats. And that isn’t really a Supra, if we’re going by what the Supra used to be.

It Was The Celica XX In Japan, So You Knew It Was Serious

To those of a certain age, the Supra was always a four-seat grand touring car. The short-lived first one (1979-81) was almost a more capable personal luxury car than GT, but things changed quickly. My personal favorite is the angular second-generation A60 model, the kind we either rode in the back of as kids or tried desperately to get our dads to buy (I did). I love the styling of this still-underappreciated car for two big reasons: First, it’s one of the few cars that successfully embrace a pure Japanese style. The A60’s origami-folded shape and the blunt nose seemed to celebrate the culture that created it rather than emulate some European or American design.

Second, if you look closely at the detailing, the A60 Supra is trying to channel what is now the most valuable Japanese car ever produced: the 1967 Toyota 2000GT. Predating Nissan’s 240Z, examples of this lovely GT car now sell for over a million dollars; the $2.4 million needed to buy a Shelby modified one a little while back was reportedly the highest price ever recorded for the sale of a Japanese-built car.

Side-by-side pics prove it out. The 2000GT’s low front driving lights, the wraparound signals and pop-up headlights above are all echoed in the 1982-86 Supra:

In the back, the kink in the rear quarter window and the faired-in rear marker lights are also angular interpretations of what is now apparently Japan’s most valuable classic car.

Exactly why Toyota would choose to ignore such a landmark car from their past today is beyond me, and we can fix that right now.

It’s Not Like You’ll Miss Those Damn BMW Nostrils

Could we make a “Supra GT” to sell alongside the current model? At around six inches longer than the Toyota GR86, the latest Supra is larger and more powerful than that tossable little coupe but far more expensive and actually less useable as a “real” car; it lacks much interior space or any kind of back seat. That’s fine, but there’s a bigger market for cars like the first four generations of Supra served that’s being missed.

Actually, Toyota hasn’t had any reasonably-sized coupe on offer since the Solara, which was much more of a LeBaron-adjacent thing than a grand touring car. Nobody is exactly clamoring to make non-SUV cars of any type right now, but I feel like the market for the little Z4-based coupe is even more limited to a very small number of buyers.

What do we start with?  As I’ve said, “real” (1982-98) Supras were larger cars than the one being produced now; the current 4-Series BMW is actually about the perfect size if we’re going to base this Supra GT on another Roundel-logoed car. A foot and a half longer than the Z4/latest Supra, it doesn’t have limo-like space in back, but it at least has a rear seat.

However, for the Supra GT we’d use a body style that BMW doesn’t offer. One reason why BMW was apparently fine sharing the Z4 with Toyota to make the current Supra was that they didn’t intend to ever go Clown Shoe and offer a hardtop version of their two-seater, so the closed-coupe-only Supra would be for a different market. My feeling is that the same thing could apply with the Supra GT.

You see, BMW sells two body styles of the 4 series: a two-door fastback coupe with the expected silly-small trunk lid as well as a four-door hatchback “coupe”. A two-door hatchback of this series of BMW isn’t offered by the Munich-based brand; there’s no reason this concept Supra GT couldn’t be such a layout as it wouldn’t be stepping on BMW’s toes, right? Fold down the rear seatbacks and you’d have some impressive cargo capacity, too.

Could Ya Tone It Down A Bit?

Full disclosure: I really don’t like the looks of the latest Supra. Halfway through doing one of those things where I make callouts to point at various elements that are objectionable like the nose and that too-thick sheet metal above the side windows, I realized there was no point in the exercise. Every surface is covered in some kind of scoop or slot or bump or cut line, and the tail features a spoiler with narrow proportions so it seems like the back of a running shoe. I can’t tell if I like the basic shape since I’m not even able to see what the “basic shape” is. Besides, even if you yourself might look cool behind the wheel of one, as a fifty-something director with two kids I’d appear rather ridiculous driving something this boy-racerish.

Obviously, the current Supra’s styling has its fans, but we’ve raved about the clean, understated shape of the latest Prius. In comparison with Toyota’s tastefully simple hybrid sedan, the new Supra is the total opposite, looking a bit like a prop from Tokyo Drift or from whatever the latest Forza game is.

The design is possibly supposed to evoke the last fourth-generation Supra. However, the A80 model is a far more refined and less fussy design than the current Supra and, at least in my unpopular opinion, the old 1994-8 Supra was not exactly the masterpiece some people think it is to begin with. Yes, I know the Fast And The Furious model has a big following, but even when new I thought it looked rather fat and blobby compared to its competitors at the time. There’s much more tension in the lines of the lithe-looking third-generation RX7, the elegant Z32 300ZX, and even BMW’s own restrained but aggressive E36 M3.

For this larger Supra GT concept, I’ve leaned on the simplicity of the Prius and combined it with characteristics of their famous 2000GT, overlaid onto the BMW 4 Series coupe chassis. Only the windshield from the BMW 4-series remains unchanged, but the wheelbase is the same and the nose is only slightly longer on the rebodied Toyota version (which allows for the lower-looking nose while still clearing the hard points on the BMW).

The 2000GT is saluted with the wraparound signals and large, low driving lights in the grille built into the flexible nose. LED headlamps would either pop out of slots on the hood or the slats would drop to reveal the thin slits of light. See all of the surface detailing, plus the narrow side windows and protruding F1 car-style nose? No, of course you don’t, because this Supra GT features absolutely none of that. “So, it’s a fast coupe for old guys?” you ask. Maybe, and if that were the case what would be wrong with that? Don’t forget that mature buyers are more likely to have the $65,000 or so needed to buy one – much more likely.

Note that we’ve even added a logo on the front fenders that echoes the one from the classic 1967 2000GT, though ours would include an amber turn signal repeater:

The rear also takes cues from the 2000GT and even the fourth-generation Supra model with groupings of round taillamps under the hatch opening. Yes, we’ve also put side marker lights into the “exhaust vents” on the rear fenders as another nod to the 2000GT and A60 Supra. The hatch opening extends to the taillights for as low a liftover as possible (again, far more useable cargo area than the identical-under-the-skin 4 Series).

Your Logo Says Toyota But Your iDrive Does Not

While I might not be a huge fan of that fourth-gen nineties Supra’s exterior, the wraparound “arch” of the dash was always rather appealing to me, far more than the latest model.

Honestly, searching online I’ve found very few fans of the dashboard of the current Supra. Nothing about it says “sports car.” Overall, it looks like BMW controls scattered across a Corolla instrument panel.

Let’s start with the BMW 4 Series dash we’ll have to build on the components of:

Here’s our Toyota version of the Supra GT. A few places online have tried to apply some of that “arc” look of the 1993 Supra dash to the current Supra, but rather unsuccessfully. I’ve taken it a bit further on this 4 Series-based GT with the full arc that starts at the console and terminates at the power window switches on the driver’s door; a “sweep” that envelopes the driver and unifies all of the parts instead of the disjointed mishmash of shapes (including the ever-popular stuck-on-flat-screen). Clean is the word of the day.

The large screen continues from the A-pillar all the way over the passenger’s side of the dash. Naturally one of the many modes offered for the driver’s display would be gauges similar to a third or fourth-generation Supra with the familiar Toyota numbers font. Somehow anything with that type gives me a feeling of implied reliability, even if the car behind the digits is actually a BMW.

The BMW straight six would be the only engine available in another nod to the original Toyota coupes. You’d have the turbocharged 3.0-liter six-cylinder with 382 horsepower and 369 pound-feet of torque from an M440i as standard, and rear wheel drive is the only option. Could BMW let Toyota have the M4’s more powerful motor for a “Supra GT-S” and not steal from the famous BMW’s sales? The way I see it, a BMW engine sold is a BMW engine sold, regardless of what the badge on the car says.

Match Made In Heaven Or Unholy Alliance?

I recall that in the early nineties, there was at least one publication that compared the then-new Supra to the also just-introduced similar-sized E36 M3. The BMW won the comparison, but the Supra didn’t make it an easy fight. I never, ever thought that one day BMW and Toyota (TMW?) would be teaming up to create a car together, but somehow here we are.

There’s nothing wrong with a Z4, but I really wish that the successor to the Supra’s M3 rival could have been the BMW that was resurrected to make the new Toyota sports coupe. Fans of the “real” Supras need to see that before internal combustion GT coupes go away forever.

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