Toyota Plans a Track-Focused Supra

You may have heard the news about the return of the Toyota Supra, but did you know that it will not only land on the road, but also on the track? Toyota had previously stated that the two-door sports coupe will go to NASCAR. It’s also possible that another Supra variant will enter the LM GTE category.

Toyota engineer and Gazoo Racing chief, Tetsuya Tada, told Top Gear that a track-focused Supra is under consideration. And judging from his words, we feel a strong possibility that it will come out, in addition to the racing version that has been confirmed. Tada thinks taking 100kg out of a Supra racing would be enough to give you a perfect track variant, “you don’t even need any more power”.

So far, only a few details have been revealed about the new Supra, hence it’s not easy to guess about the technical specs. One thing for sure is that the Supra will sit on the same platform as the new BMW Z4. It will pack a BMW powerplant and gearbox as well. So what comes to our mind is a 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-six engine paired to an eight-speed automatic transmission.

There’s no word from Tada whether the track-focused variant would be street-legal or not. The advantages and disadvantages of this are still being investigated. Because allowing the car to go down the road would cut its maximum potential at a certain point in accordance with regulations.

Meanwhile, with a performance equal to the Porsche Cayman, it looks like the Supra will enter the wrong world as well if the LM GTE class is where it wants to go, unless Toyota performs some major modifications in advance, that will make the coupe strong enough to battle bigger competitors like the Porsche 911, Ford GT, Ferrari 448 and others.