When it was announced in late 2019/early 2020 that Toyota would be building a new supra with a B58 inline 6 i was super excited. There it was, the rebirth of the high power, front engine, handling and track focused sports car. No longer would we have to deal with the sub optimal reputation of “VQ owners” or the Porsche quirks involved with a mid engined car whose engine is invisible unless you own 1000$ worth of fine German tooling. Yes it was sad that the manual would not be available, but Toyota made up for it. It was paired to the ZF 8 speed, the best non dual clutch transmission in all of automotive history. Lightning fast, yet somehow as smooth as luxury car. It provides all the thrust you could ever want when needed, but otherwise simply fades into the background. And guess what fuckers, Toyota still gave you the damn manual, and yet even still the car failed.

Nobody bought it. It sold okay for a few years before slipping towards sales failure territory. Good job y’all, you were so scorned by it having a BMW motor that you ignored one of the best sports car efforts in modern history. And now while it wont be going away, it will never be 6 cylinders of pure turbo fed internal combustion ever again.

So you must ask. why is the GR Supra such a damn good car? Well its a part of a larger plan by Toyota, a plan to build more fun cars as well as the typical Camry that drives mom to and from work for 2 full decades without a complaint. Toyota has been off the rails lately in terms of pumping out enthusiast cars. Sure it’ll never match the peaks of the bubble era, but that’s a dead timeline that’s truly over at this point. Toyota has always had fun cars, just not for Americans considering the American car ideal is exactly the opposite of a fun Toyota. Bloated, hideously overweight, pointlessly expensive, packed with useless features and ready to be thrown away the second the new cool thing comes out. They saved their T-sport supercharged Yaris hot hatches for the more refined tastes abroad. But they lost market share, Honda’s Civic Si and VW’s GTI continue to perform admirably against a sea of hopelessly dull SUVs and CVT crossover shitcans. Toyota has effectively won the sedan market in the US, and it was about time they start chasing nostalgia and sports car dreams. And to do that they had one choice and they didn’t half ass any of it, they brought back the Supra.

Well then, what mistakes did they make. Well first off they had to build a car that wasn’t a 300 million dollar development money pit. And only one other car company is known for wonderful inline 6’s – BMW. Developing an inline 6 from scratch for *one, single, sports car* is effectively impossible in today’s car market. It has to pass euro emissions, japan emissions, US emissions, all while meeting Toyota quality standards and staying up to date. They needed help in order to get this car to the market, and the Germans had exactly what they were looking for. While BMW has a relationship with reliability as stable as two 13 years olds who fell in love in detention, the B58 is a gem of a motor, perhaps even the best inline 6 to ever be shat out by an automaker. Whats it good at?

It’s good at what most BMW inline 6’s have been good at for a few years: making a shitload of power while keeping the rods attached to the crankshaft. I’m not even going to bother wasting my time talking about the styling, that’s subjective anyways. I think it looks good, as do many others. Deal with it. As soon as the supra hit the market they had 9 second cars running on stock internals, and a lot of them. When the supra was famous, a 10 second car (as popularized by The Fast and The Furious) was a massive achievement of hours spent in the garage, or stacks of tens of thousands in the banks. Now a 9 second car was accessible to anyone who qualifies for Toyota financing.

-dont mind the fact that 2 of these are flagship supercars and the other costs 50k$ less

I’d be an idiot if I praised this car only for straight-line speed : that’s what a Dodge Challenger is for (assuming you buy one instead of just stealing it like most Dodge enthusiasts do). As soon as it hit the streets, the GR Supra became one of the go-to cars in SCCA autocross. Happily competitive in B Street, only just below the Porsches and Corvettes of A Street, and the supercars in Super Street. You’ll spot them in photos from basically any track day online.

And they drive amazing. I want a chance behind the wheel of one. Every single review of the Toyota GR Supra had almost nothing but praise, most complaints boiled down to nitpicks, like the windows buffeting too much when rolled down. Toyota even gave us exactly what we asked for: a proper 6-speed manual. Yet the engineering brilliance once again fell on deaf ears.

Enthusiasts Didn’t Care. They sat on lots, they waited for the few people both intelligent enough and rich enough to buy one.

They clutched their pearls over “it’s not a real Supra” or “it’s just a BMW,” completely ignoring the fact that the car delivered on every front that actually matters. The car community that claims to worship performance and driver engagement turned its back the second the badge on the engine cover wasn’t personally painted by Akio Toyoda’s ancestors. Instead of embracing what was arguably one of the best driver’s cars of the decade, they whined that it wasn’t a 3JZ reincarnated in carbon fiber that cost 30k$ and a handshake with a nicely dressed salesman.

The GR Supra’s failure symbolizes all of the worst elements among the car community. Oftentimes, the car community is completely stuck in the past, fully unwilling to accept a change. Even if that change makes everything about the car they claim to love a much better purchase. It sucks for y’all, but it’s a win for me. I’m personally excited about Toyota’s new, sure-to-be cutting-edge 4-cylinder turbo hybrid. I’ll always miss the old one, but the engineer in me has always had an attraction toward combining turbos, hybridization, and a 400hp combustion engine into one new, cutting-edge sports car.

Congratulations, you inglorious bastards. Your never-ending nitpicking has killed one of the best sports cars this century will see, and it will never come back the same again. Damn it.