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Let's be honest, what Toyota really need is a new Paseo.
Toyota Supra (A90)
- Thread starter RocZX
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- 9,401
- Western Sydney
- mustafur
Starlet coupe lol.
- 29,705
- a baby, candy, it's like taking.
- TexRex72
But it's a CUV.
- 17,084
- United Kingdom
- 3,910
- Null Island
Funny way of spelling Toyota Sera.
Silver Arrows
(Banned)
- 4,715
- Brandon, MB
- Silver-Arrows21
I mean boondoggle in the sense of it's price tag. Plus as @Eunos_Cosmo mentioned, Acura only sold about 170 or so last year. So do people want a Supra to be at that price point and barely be profitable to Toyota, leaving it to be a one and done thing that lasts three years or so?
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Gull wing doors FTW.....
- 29,705
- a baby, candy, it's like taking.
- TexRex72
Gotcha.
Wearing those Bad Idea Jeans, are you? The Starlet community is a volatile group, you know.
- 5,065
- Fort Worth
- That_sneaky_azN
It is very interesting that a paddleshift semi auto is considered to be cheaper than the gearstick manual. I thought all these times that it's usually the opposite.
I was under impression that it's all or mostly because the new BMW Z4 didn't have one until later upcoming versions. We'll see if Toyota has working on the gearstick variant no matter what the BMW counterpart stands. That alone I would appreciate.
McLaren
Premium
- 45,398
- Texas
Possibly dependent on how the car was designed from the beginning, although you're right, a manual is typically cheaper to develop.
The outlined below from this 2016 article however, may hint that developing a manual to meet the not-so-far-out 2025 CAFE standards is a bit more difficult than building an 8/10-speed auto.
https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/best-cars-blog/2016/09/why-are-manual-transmissions-disappearing
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- 27,205
- United Kingdom
Missed this tweet earlier, but I actually agree (well, I agree there should be one - I'm not sure I agree that Toyota actually needs one...). Base it on the Yaris (maybe the next-gen one given the current one's getting on a bit). Two versions: a GRMN with the supercharged 1.8 and a manual 'box, and one using the 1.5 hybrid.
- 283
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- topu999
Also if the manual is the option that a certain minority of people will most certainly buy, making it a special option and pricing it higher will ensure more profit for the company.
As far as I'm aware, the normal cars that are still built with a manual option tend to have higher prices for automatics, as in these cases the minority of people that'd buy a manual because it's a manual are simply too much of a minority. 100 people out of 1000 is certainly not the same as 100 people out of 50000. Thus the prices are set according to development/build costs.
I assume that the Supra will have a manual, at a higher cost than the standard automatic. If the car sells well that's just guaranteed profit. If it doesn't sell then it'd depend on a lot of factors that only Toyota would know.
As far as I'm aware, the normal cars that are still built with a manual option tend to have higher prices for automatics, as in these cases the minority of people that'd buy a manual because it's a manual are simply too much of a minority. 100 people out of 1000 is certainly not the same as 100 people out of 50000. Thus the prices are set according to development/build costs.
I assume that the Supra will have a manual, at a higher cost than the standard automatic. If the car sells well that's just guaranteed profit. If it doesn't sell then it'd depend on a lot of factors that only Toyota would know.
Danoff
Premium
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- Mile High City
I've still been thinking about whether all of the griping about the new supra is legit. To the extent that folks think that it's a rebadged Z4, I think that's a legitimate concern. The Supra is an important enough brand for Toyota that sharing it with the Z4 seems like it undercuts Toyota. BMW, meanwhile, has other brands and doesn't mind sharing the Z4.
It doesn't look like it's a Z4 to me though, even under the styling, I'm still not convinced of that point.
The other criticism that has really sorta stuck with me is that this was more appropriate for the Celica brand, and that the Supra brand should have grown to a higher point in the market. And I haven't managed to shake that one. It might have been a better play for Toyota to call this a Celica and move the Supra to the stratosphere. Oh well. Toyota (from that article) sounds like they're having a tough time justifying sports cars to themselves internally. So I'm not sure how interested they are in reviving the Celica or MR2 brands.
It doesn't look like it's a Z4 to me though, even under the styling, I'm still not convinced of that point.
The other criticism that has really sorta stuck with me is that this was more appropriate for the Celica brand, and that the Supra brand should have grown to a higher point in the market. And I haven't managed to shake that one. It might have been a better play for Toyota to call this a Celica and move the Supra to the stratosphere. Oh well. Toyota (from that article) sounds like they're having a tough time justifying sports cars to themselves internally. So I'm not sure how interested they are in reviving the Celica or MR2 brands.
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Celica seems like it'd be redundant, as despite being driven from the back rather than the front, the GT86 pretty much fills that niche (and of course, early Celicas were RWD anyway so that's appropriate enough). The MR2 is the one a lot of people are mooting as the sub-86 car in Toyoda's "three brothers" sports car plan, though with that I can't shake that an all-new mid-engined platform seems like it'd be even more of a stretch than a FR one like the 86 or Supra. Best-case for me would be a production S-FR, with either a cut-down 86 platform (though with something smaller than the flat-four), or more platform sharing - the MX-5 seeming most appropriate, both for size and since Toyota and Mazda already have ties.
Danoff
Premium
- 33,968
- Mile High City
Maybe the supra being a mid-range car is genius after all. What if their plans all along were to take the MR2 and make it their supercar? I know it wouldn't be recapturing the old one, but it would make a ton of sense. It's a good brand. I think they could move some $150k MR2s if they got it right.
- 11,791
- Marin County
I think that one thing that has changed since the MKIV Supra was developed is the trajectory of Lexus.
At that time, Lexus was not much more than a maker of well made but super-cushiony luxo barges. There wasn't a teaspoon of charisma. A halo sports car was far more in the realm of Toyota with the already-established lineage of the Supra.
In the year 2019, however, things have changed. Lexus has become a more sporting name and a higher-end name too, thanks to the "F" line. The IS-F to start things out, the 'greatest car ever' LF-A, and now the oozingly cool LC-500/LC-F.
All of that is to say, if Toyota corp is going to make a Halo car, it's going to wear a Lexus badge. I will say that it might have been cool for the LC to have a top of the line, above F, lightweight/performance trim called Supra. Lexus LC-Supra. It would be migrating the Supra name from a model to a performance designation, I think it kind of works because of the 'superlative' nature of the nameplate. But I'm not in marketing, so who knows.
Danoff
Premium
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- Mile High City
I'm not necessarily going to deny any of that, but I think that Toyota wants Lexus to be seen as its own brand. Certainly Honda did that with Acura and the NSX. But it doesn't seem to be the direction Toyota wants to go, at least at the moment.
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- Betelgeuse
- Beeblebrox_237
Personally, I don't see much of a market for Toyota to make another sports car anywhere under the Supra. The 86 has its issues, but ultimately I suspect the costs of developing a cheaper, smaller sports car would never be recouped even if the car turned out well. I'm not sure there will be much space between a 4 cylinder supra and the 86, so that only leaves the market space above the Supra. The profit margins are higher on a car like that, but I'm not sure Toyota would go for it, primarily for the reasons that have been brought up as to why the Supra isn't a 100k+ car.
- 27,387
- Toronto
- NewAesthetic
- SlipZtrEm
It makes me wonder what sort of profit margins Mazda has with the Miata. The car's silly expensive here in Canada for what it is, but even then, it's still a bespoke platform that sells in relatively tiny numbers.
Also, I really want to see the comparison between the base 190hp four-cylinder Supra and the 86...
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Elsewhere it's arguably a bit of a bargain. Back in 1990 an MX-5 was £14,249 in the UK - about £31,840 in 2018 money. A 2019 MX-5 is currently £18,995.
That Mazda can sell a modern MX-5 for almost £13k less than it was almost three decades ago is remarkable, and really does make you wonder where the profit is - though I'd anticipate some of it is in more efficient production. What it presumably isn't in is economies of scale, as despite Mazda presumably sharing development and production costs with Fiat, no generation of MX-5 has ever sold in the numbers the NA did. Wikipedia doesn't show sales volumes post-2015, but to date the car's best year globally is still 1990!
Mazda's a small company too so I'm guessing it's working with fine margins. I'd guess that it's prepared to do so on the basis the car is such a halo product for the company (it basically defines everything they do), but it'll be interesting to see whether the market ever supports a fifth-generation car...
