Toyota planning Supra, MR2 successors within five years?

Every sighting of a MkIV Toyota Supra compels a wistful pause and the rhetorical query, "Ah, Toyota... what happened?" The FT-HS concept has been adorning auto show plinths since 2007, taking rumblings of a Supra successor everywhere it went. Last December, four years of hoping out loud led to Motor Trend reporting a Supra return with a 3.5-liter V6, perhaps to be ready in 2015. For any chance of that happening, the Toyota GT 86/Scion FR-S needed to do well.

Seven months later Toyota's little 300-horsepower coupe is still accelerating enthusiast hearts, and in May of this year MT added hybrid mechanicals, 400 horsepower, a CVT from the Lexus RX and a $60,000 price to its earlier report of a Supra redux.

A new report in Asia One doesn't divulge details, but does make it appear that a new Supra is inevitable: at a European event for the FR-S, chief engineer Tetsuya Tada said, "The president (Akio Toyoda) has asked me to make a successor to the Supra as soon as possible." This could be revisionist history, but the larger plan according to Tada has been that the GT 86/FR-S is the middle child in Toyota's sports car strategy, with a lower-tier entry like a new MR2 and an upper-tier entry like the Supra on the company's mind since the beginning.

According to the engineer, reasoning for the sports car push is that Toyota needs to add "driving fun" to its green-car credentials, and it needs to create a stronger bond with buyers that continues beyond the dealership. Tada said both new sports cars would take at least five years to develop and Asia One predicts that the Supra (or whatever it's eventually called) will come first, but Tada gave no indication of where it stands in the development process and he doesn't know when they'll be ready. We're of the opinion that tomorrow isn't too soon.