The New Supra Was Almost Mid Engine – Until Akio Toyoda Put a Stop to It

In a recent interview with Top Gear, Supra lead engineer Tetsuya Tada shared some interesting details on the A90 Supra’s development process. He and his team benchmarked the mid-engine Porsche Cayman’s handling feel and overall performance while engineering the new Supra. They considered making the new Supra mid-engine like the Cayman, but Toyoda seems to have immediately shot the idea down when Tada-San ran it past him.

“We stuck with front engine because of feel and control,” Tada-San said. “We know how to control a front-engine car, we already have that capability. In the planning stages we suggested a mid-engined layout and BMW was happy to go with it, but I took the idea to Akio Toyoda and he told me off.”

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What’s interesting is that BMW was willing to continue the joint development process of the Supra and the new Z4 even if Toyota decided it wanted to go with a mid-engine layout. That means we were also fairly close to having a new mid-engine BMW sportscar. We’re now left wondering if BMW would still have called such a vehicle a Z4 or if it would have opted to name it something else entirely.

Tada-San shared some other interesting details about the new Supra in the Top Gear interview as well. He revealed to the publication that Toyota is considering a lightweight version of the sports coupe that would weigh about 220 lbs (100 kg) less than the standard version. The longtime Toyota engineer said reducing the weight by this much makes the Supra drive like a “completely different car,” and that’s before you add some extra power to the equation. If such a model ever does see the light of day, it will likely be later on in the A90 Supra’s lifecycle.

For now, we’re still waiting for the debut of the regular version, which is expected to go down in early 2019.

[Source: Top Gear]

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