Toyota Supra

[novicius]

And saying the MkIV was better than Corvettes/Camaros when it was first being designed doesn't account for it the ones with the LT1 that were available when it came out.

The MSRP, power and performance was all greater than the LT1 C4's of its day.

I already said the MKIV eclipsed all the LT1 cars of its day.

Not too be short-tempered about this but it's all history. The Supra was Toyota's halo car and it's never coming back as the legend it once was. That task is now up to Lexus' LC 500 F, whenever that drops. That'll be 600+ HP, $180K, yadda, yadda, yadda.

We ARE living in another automotive Golden Age, you just gotta have a net worth north of $500K to play.

[Kchrpm]

*checks old 0-60 times* you're right, over 5 second vs under 5 seconds. Mea culpa.

[Freude am Fahren]

According to CAR magazine, the photos up top are of a Z5 Coupe, not a Supra.

http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/spy-sho...s-and-details/

" this isn’t a disguised mule of Toyota’s mooted super-coupe. Besides the BMW-derived interior, this car – which is clearly based on the Z5 prototypes spotted previously – wears M4 GTS wheels and Munich plates."

Still super-interested to see what the Supra comes out as, tho. I'm assuming the two models will launch fairly close together, if Toyota were a year or more later they would presumably miss out on many sales.

It's kinda moot at this point in development Supra mule = Z5 mule I would think. Just as all the early 86 mules were basically BRZ's as well until they got down to the details.

[novicius]

I believe Ross was saying that the pre-Mk IV Supras were comparable to Camaros

If you look at the MSRP's ($25K for the Supra Turbo, $30K for the C4), I really don't think that's apt either.

In 1986 the Corvette was cranking out 250 horse. The Supra Turbo was boosting 230 and heavy but still loaded with advanced tech for its time: 3-channel ABS and adjustable damper settings. It was still Toyota's flagship -- an $11K 190-horsepower IROC-Z did not compete in this space.

[TheBenior]

I never meant to imply that the A80 Supra was designed as a Camaro fighter, only that it had the market perception as such while being priced higher than the C4 Corvette, which resulted in terrible sales.

By and large, the only way American cars from the 80s through the early 90s could beat their Japanese competitors was on size and price, so no, I'm not saying that Supra Turbos and Camaro IROC-Z had the same performance.

Just because a car has the performance to compete against cars that are perceived to be in a higher class, it doesn't mean that anybody apart from car nerds will care. And we don't typically buy enough new cars to support a unique platform. You can see this in comments about the Focus RS ($40K FOR A FOCUS!?!?), but the Focus RS gets to spread it's platform costs across a couple hundred thousand sales in the US alone, and it's engine development with an engine shared in some form with the Mustang, Explorer, and Mac.

[novicius]

That is your opinion that the U.S. market perception of the Supra was as a "Japanese Camaro". If you have a link supporting that opinion I will gladly read it.

Toyota designed, priced and marketed the car in the U.S.-only as a halo car. Car mags of the day only compared it to the Corvette. Supra owners & fans compare it to the Corvette (at least! ).

By no metric did the American market consider the Supra a "Japanese Camaro".

[TheBenior]

By no metric?

A car has to have the goods before it can play in the sports-coupe major leagues. The combatants in this arena include such potent performers as the Corvette, the Porsche 944 Turbo, the Mazda RX-7 Turbo, and the Camaro IROC-Z —cars fully equipped to devour any competitor that dares to enter the field of battle unprepared. In this fiercely contested market segment, superlative performance is essential to survival.

Sounds like Car and Driver lumped the Supra Turbo in somewhere along with the Camaro IROC-Z and the Corvette, between where it was in price. Back when significant numbers of people still bought them anyway (33,823 in 1986). A80 sales peaked at 3,405 in 1994. That year, GM moved 23,330 Corvettes with a 10 year old body style, 119,799 Camaros, and 45,992 Firebirds/Trans Ams.

[balki]

the moral of the story is we'd prefer a Celica Supra, MKI MR2, Cressida, AE86, new 86/BRZ, ... that we can afford to buy and maintain and drive closer to their limits, right? because no one here actually has a MKIV Supra or Corvette

[novicius]

So an IROC-Z is also a Porsche 944 competitor?

Isn't more likely that the honorable mention of the mighty IROC-Z was due more to the legacy of the MKII Celica Supra at that point? By '89 the magazine you linked to compared the Supra Turbo exclusively to the Corvette.

EDIT: Even a MKII might not be considered a "Japanese Camaro" based on its original MSRP alone.

[Yw-slayer]

All this talk has gotten me looking at UK Corvettes.