The return of the iconic Toyota Supra has been long-awaited by tuners and Fast and Furious fanatics for several years, but does the final product live up to the hype? After all, Toyota did have a lot of pressure to live up to…

Japanese Domestic Market

The charm of the original Toyota Supra and the MK4 generation made popular by the very robust 2JZ engine and its starring role in the Fast and the Furious franchise had a lot to do with its popularity is as a JDM car. As a Japanese car manufacturer, Toyota had become well-loved by tuners and the Supra was a popular choice for modifications. A big disappointment came with Toyota’s choice to make the Supra alongside BMW. The new Supra controversially shares many attributes with the 2020 BMW Z4, including being built in Austria instead of Japan.

The styling offered by the new Supra is also unlike its predecessor or anything available on the JDM. While we definitely can’t complain about its sharp angles and aggressive body lines, there are no physical characteristics relating it back to the original Supra. Toyota didn’t even so much as make a small nod to the most popular MK4 generation, leaving many consumers surprisingly disappointed. While fans were expecting a facelift and obvious updates, the new Supra maintains almost no heritage.

Transmission and Engine

Driving enthusiasts were devastated to hear that the new Toyota Supra would only be offered as an automatic. While it’s not that big of a surprise, considering how even the new Corvette C8 isn’t offered in a manual either, and it seems that the days of seeing new, high-end sports cars with a manual transmission may be almost completely behind us. For such a classified ‘driver’s car,’ many automotive enthusiasts aren’t afraid to admit they were more than irritated with the lack of transmission options.

The new Supra also ditched our beloved 2JZ engine, one of the most robust and build-worth cars of its time. The 2JZ was replaced with a BMW 6 cylinder motor that offers a modest 335hp and is identical to the new Z4’s engine that is tuned to offer 380hp. While the inline 6 cylinder motor offered by BMW has the potential to be tuned and modified to higher horsepower, they are notoriously unreliable and have all of the quirks and downfalls of most other BMW inline 6 motors, making us reluctant to want to ask the engine to produce more power.

The new Toyota Supra may not have been all that we expected it to be. In fact, if Toyota hadn’t chosen the name Supra, the car might be more popular and less criticized for its dramatic departure from the classic Supra that JDM fans have come to adore.