We’ve driven the Supra alone and come away impressed. But how did this sports car from an unlikely brand stack up against two of its sharpest
Category
🚗
MotorTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - When I went to drive the prototypes
00:06 and they had the engineers there
00:08 and they gave the presentation,
00:09 one of the items that they had to check off their list
00:11 was can it drift?
00:12 So they made sure that it could drift.
00:15 (upbeat music)
00:17 - Hi, I'm Scott Evans here with Chris Walton and Kim Reynolds
00:28 to freshen it off of our first comparison
00:30 with the all new Toyota Supra and Supra 1.
00:33 - Yeah, that thing's pretty amazing.
00:35 - Surprising.
00:36 (laughing)
00:37 - I wanna talk for a second about why the Supra 1
00:39 because it was not a unanimous decision.
00:41 - I think it deserves credit and a win
00:43 for doing something that BMW used to be able to do very well
00:47 is do that Jekyll and Hyde thing.
00:49 Have your really nice luxury ride, you know,
00:52 to Palm Springs or you can press that sport button
00:54 and all of a sudden it's Hyde
00:56 and it's snarling, you know, the exhaust popping.
00:59 - I was following you on the Canyon Road
01:01 and I was like, what's the date?
01:03 Is it the 4th of July yet?
01:04 'Cause it was just crackle pop, crackle bang, bang, bang
01:06 every which direction.
01:07 - It was awesome.
01:08 - In this car, the Supra was really turning a lot of heads.
01:11 I mean, it was really noticeable people coming up to us,
01:14 those folks on the motorcycle,
01:16 I thought the passenger was gonna fall off the motorcycle
01:19 staring around at it.
01:21 - When we first put it in the real world out here,
01:23 like even in our own parking lot,
01:25 it's like, wow, that thing is really very different.
01:28 - I enjoyed how it drove and I enjoy how it looks.
01:31 I think it's a little much for me
01:33 and I'm not sure how this is gonna age,
01:34 but I think it's absolutely an entertaining car to look at
01:38 at a really good price that drives very well
01:40 and is very entertaining to drive.
01:41 - You know, one thing we did find in this
01:43 is that the Supra reacted better to
01:46 maybe your or my driving style than to Kim's.
01:49 - You two, particularly you, I know,
01:51 are very, very smooth and very deliberate drivers.
01:54 - Smooth is fast.
01:55 - Smooth is fast.
01:57 Not always, we'll talk about that later.
01:59 But I tend to chuck cars, I tend to kind of go too far
02:03 and then reel it back in again and again.
02:06 The Supra didn't take to that quite so kindly.
02:08 - Yeah, it had to be driven in a very specific way
02:10 and I think any sort of sports car enthusiast
02:13 could get in the Cayman and drive it fast
02:15 and be very comfortable doing so.
02:17 - So we know from the numbers
02:18 that they were all very similar performers,
02:21 but they drove very differently, right?
02:23 - Yeah, radically different.
02:24 Each one had its own personality.
02:26 You know, the BMW competition was kind of brutal.
02:29 The Porsche was just that mid-engine
02:31 kind of delicacy and balance.
02:35 And the Supra kind of had a foot in both worlds, I think.
02:38 - For me, my favorite thing about the Supra
02:40 was how predictable it was and controllable.
02:45 I mean, it made me look like a hero on the figure eight.
02:49 That's the best drift I'd ever done.
02:51 - So it would do that and it was very controllable
02:53 and a lot of fun.
02:54 Relentlessly did it.
02:56 I mean, throughout the cornering section,
02:58 it would not stop drifting to some degree.
03:00 - Was that the point?
03:01 Was it meant to do that?
03:02 - Yeah, no, actually the development drivers
03:05 and engineers worked on it
03:06 to make sure that it would be driftable.
03:08 That's part of its mission.
03:11 - So this Supra is a big deal
03:12 because we haven't had one in 20 years,
03:14 but Kim, you've driven all of them.
03:15 So what makes it a Supra?
03:17 - The characteristics of a classic Supra,
03:19 I think, are an inline-
03:21 - Inline six.
03:21 - Inline six, turbocharged, ideally,
03:24 most famously for a wheel drive.
03:27 Agile handling and so on, all at a good bargain price.
03:30 The drifting aspect, I don't remember.
03:33 - Okay, so then does the Supra actually live up
03:36 to the legend of the fourth gen car?
03:40 - Well, if you look at the specs, absolutely.
03:42 It crushes the old car.
03:44 So any question of it, "Oh, is it going to be as good as?"
03:47 That's been erased.
03:48 I would say it is more entertaining, certainly.
03:52 That previous generation car
03:54 was a very impressive piece of machinery,
03:56 but this one is more delicate and more fun to drive,
04:00 I think.
04:01 - So we just put a Toyota in a comparison test
04:03 with a BMW and a Porsche, and the Toyota won.
04:07 So are we talking about Toyota in the same breath
04:09 as Porsche and BMW now?
04:11 - When I interviewed the product planner,
04:12 I specifically asked him,
04:13 "Was there any consideration to this being branded a Lexus?"
04:16 Like, "No, no, no, never."
04:17 It was always intended to be a Supra.
04:20 People have been asking for the Supra for years.
04:22 We're finally doing it.
04:24 If it can play with those guys at that price,
04:26 then welcome to the club.
04:27 - But I think something that's going to be important
04:29 is that they keep it up.
04:30 Don't just say, "Here's the Supra," and da-da-da.
04:33 And in three years, it kind of drifts away
04:35 because the sales aren't spectacular or whatever,
04:38 and then you don't see it again for 20 years.
04:40 I think to have that reputation,
04:42 to be talking about it in the same sentence
04:44 with Porsches and BMWs,
04:46 they got to build another one and another one
04:48 and keep at this.
04:49 (upbeat music)
04:52 - So that's our verdict.
04:54 The Toyota Supra wins.
04:55 To read all about it, go to motortrend.com.
04:58 (upbeat music)