I love when novi gets his jimmies rustled.
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.
Damn straight they're rustled -- it's an incorrect comparison and a ridiculous statement overall.
The MKIV Supra was a redesigned Lexus SC 400, itself a lux coupe built to target the MB SL series. The program began in '89 and the keel was laid down in '91 -- any C4 available during this time would have been completely outclassed by the MKIV, much less a Z28.
The MSRP, power and performance was all greater than the LT1 C4's of its day. The big three car mags only compared it to the the other Japanese halo cars, Corvette and the Dodge Stealth TT (itself a rebadged 3000GT VR-4). I am trying to wrap my head around a world where this car would have been considered a Z28-fighter... just because it has a back seat??
Cue my Lewis Black sputtering meltdown!! ( )
I agree with Carlo. The MKIV Supra was never designed to compete with the Camaro. It was Toyota's answer to the NSX, FD RX-7 and Skyline GT-R. And in the US it was marketed and priced to compete with the Corvette, NSX and FD RX-7.
I believe Ross was saying that the pre-Mk IV Supras were comparable to Camaros, and that the Mk IV Supra failed on the market when it attempted to go above that in performance and price. 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.
Perhaps they were just trying to cover both markets with one car, but pushed the price too far up just as the sports car market was diving and were brought down with it.
Get that weak shit off my track
But there was also a naturally-aspirated, 220 hp version. A 2+2 with a 220 hp version and a 320 hp version sounds much more like a Camaro than a Corvette.
But Chevrolet was the only one really attacking this market with two different cars*, everyone else had all of their sports car eggs in one basket until the Boxster/Cayman for Porsche, it may just not be a fair comparison at all.
*I don't know how the hell the 240SX fits into all this.
Last edited by Kchrpm; September 12th, 2016 at 12:10 PM.
Get that weak shit off my track
The origins of the c1990 Japanese sports car escalation are quite exciting. The '80s cars were all kind of swimming around in the middle part of the market with things like Camaros, but the Z32 300ZX dropped the gauntlet (maybe to distinguish itself from the 240SX) and the GTO/3000GT, the RX7 and the Supra all went nutso in response. You can't even really draw a line between these cars and their predecessors. They all jumped out of the commodity sports car pond and directly into the near-supercar pond.
The NSX was on a different track - its development started much earlier than the others with Honda always aiming at supercars. It may have been the thing that caused the 3000GT VR4 to exist, but they were never competition. The NSX was 150%-200% the price of all the others.
Somewhere I have a special edition R&T which offers a retrospective on these imports. It's probably a lot of speculation, but it does offer some neat insights.