Recently, Top Gear Philippines’ Editor-in-Chief Vernon B. Sarne (whom we were privileged to meet at the 2010 Paris Motor Show) was fortunate enough to interview Tetsuya Tada, Toyota’s chief engineer for the joint Toyota/Subaru sports car project that led to the widely acclaimed Subaru BRZ and its Toyota iterations variously badged as Scion FR-S, Toyota GT 86 or, simply, Toyota 86. Their conversation brought to light a couple of interesting revelations.

The first of these is Tada-san’s claim that

…the 86 is just the first of three sports cars that Toyota is planning to roll out, and that the 86 is the middle of the two in terms of market positioning. The first is more mass-market and cheaper than the 86, and the third is more upmarket than the 86.

The notion of a smaller and cheaper than 86 sports car is something that we at Kaizen Factor wrote about over 2 years ago as a derivative of Toyota’s sole remaining small and inexpensive rear-wheel-drive platform underpinning the SUVs sold under the Daihatsu Be‣go, Daihatsu Terios and Toyota Rush badges. In fact, enthusiastic Toyota engineers cobbled together what could be construed as a development mule for this idea in the Gazoo Racing/MN FR Hot hatch , a neo-KP61 Starlet of sorts unveiled at the 2010 Tokyo Auto Salon. One year later, the carmaker took the idea several steps further with a preliminary concept for just such a sub-86 sports car, the front-mid-engined TES Concept T-Sports built by the Toyota Engineering Society and shown below right. This seminal vehicle was amply discussed as part of our 2011 Tokyo Auto Salon coverage.



What about the “more upmarket than 86″ sports car? The last Toyota concept that addressed this segment was 2007′s FT-HS, powered by a variant of the Lexus GS 450h’s 2GR-FXE 3.5-liter V6 hybrid powertrain. This was widely touted as a predictor for a production Mark V Toyota Supra that, as of this writing, has yet to see the light of day. Fueling fans’ hopes, Toyota renewed the Supra trademark on 16 July 2010. Trademarks carry a “use-it-or-lose-it” provision for a period of time after its filing. This author was always under the impression that it was 5 years, but Car and Driver‘s Justin Berkowitz swears that it is, in fact, 3 years. So, should we raise our hopes of seeing a reborn Supra next year? Not so fast, for, as the second revelation of the Top Gear Philippines interview informs us,

Tada said…that nothing is sure yet since his team is still in the process of conceptualizing the two other Toyota sports cars. He also noted that it takes five years to develop a sports car from conceptualization to production, as compared with the three years it normally takes to develop a regular vehicle.

Given that time frame, might Toyota once again lose the Supra trademark? Not necessarily, for Toyota can either renew it or, perhaps, slap the Supra badge on a concept predictor for the eventual production car and thus safeguard it that way.

Would a 21st-century Toyota Supra be built on the new rear-wheel-drive N-platform that debuted on the 4th-generation Lexus GS? Perhaps. Or it could be a lower-priced, Toyota-badged offshoot of the rumored production version of the Lexus LF-LC concept. Or it may be the joint BMW/Toyota “future sports vehicle” touted in the memorandum of understanding the 2 carmakers signed on Monday 25 June 2012.

A final noteworthy observation is the implicit promise that Tetsuya Tada will be an integral part of the development of the 2 new Toyota sports cars. Might Toyota be grooming Tada-san to be the successor of the late, great Hiromu Naruse?

Toyota FT-1 Confirmed as Next-Gen Supra

Radical coupe concept to morph into a born-again Supra; Toyota also developing sub-86 hybrid sports car

One of the hottest concepts unveiled at last month’s Detroit motor show was Toyota’s FT-1. No one will argue that point. What is controversial is how much meaning this radically styled coupe has in the real world.

While Toyota heads were saying the car was merely a concept conceived to celebrate the Calty design studio’s 40th anniversary as well as pay tribute to Polyphony Digital’s ‘Vision Gran Turismo’ project, major publications were purporting the FT-1 to be the next-generation Supra.

Now we have the definitive verdict: It is. But there is another sports car in the mix as well. After a mandate from Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda calling for “cars that touch the heart”, a source close to Toyota has confirmed the company is busy developing not only the FT-1 as the next Supra, but a smaller sports car too.

“Priced at around $16,000 (in the US), this entry-level sports coupe will slot into the line-up under the successful 86,” says our insider.

Developed within a new sports car division headed up by none other than 86 chief engineer Tetsuya Tada, our source says these two next-generation coupes will form the base for a whole range of sports cars set to start joining the line-up from 2016.

Word from Toyoda went something like this. “If the FT-1 makes a good strong impression on the market, then we will add it to the line-up.”

We think Toyota knew this car was going to be a smash hit, because from what we are hearing it’s already well into the development phase. But don’t expect the finished product to land in showrooms looking like this. Our source says those sharp lines, scoops and edges will definitely be “softened” for the market.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen an aggressively styled coupe boasting some of Toyota’s best hybrid hardware. The FT-HS concept coupe received rave reviews when it was unveiled in Detroit in 2007.

But the global financial crisis soon put this project on the back-burner, as car-makers were forced to tighten their belts. Now in 2014, Toyota is back with even raunchier styling and two powertrains.

The entry-level variant is expected to incorporate a turbocharged 2.0-litre petrol-four from the upcoming Lexus NX, while the flagship will employ a 2.5-litre turbo V6 hybrid powertrain generating more than 300kW.

Obviously the new Supra will be rear-wheel drive but it is also strongly rumoured to employ an LFA-style rear transaxle, meaning the new Supra could sell for less than $100,000 when it appears in showrooms as early as 2016.

Meanwhile, the smaller sports coupe said to slot in under the 86 should be powered by a 1.5-litre hybrid set-up and is set for a 2017 debut.

Here, the information is only coming from one anonymous source, which hardly counts as an official confirmation. And just from my own personal experience in handling sensitive information, if you've got a really big scoop (as this would be), you're going to want to get it from at least two people. P

So did Toyota "confirm" the FT-1 to be the new Supra? I doubt it, as much as I'd like to be wrong.2P

Oh, and there's some other bits about a smaller "sports car," but we can get into that at another time.P

We've reached out to Toyota, and we'll let you know if we hear back.P

UPDATE: Well, that was fast. Toyota got back to us, and while we're waiting to get some sort of official in-writing response, they're holding fast to the company line, at least here in the US. It is, as of this moment, a design study only, according to a company spokesperson.P