A common knock on the new Toyota Supra, besides its close ties to a certain BMW, is its lack of a manual transmission. Sure, there are umpteen reasons why a well-sorted automatic is (on paper) better than a stick – but the involvement and entertainment of a slick-shifting manual cannot be denied.
Now, well-placed rumors are suggesting Toyota is going to offer Supra buyers a chance to row their own gears.
The report comes from gearheads at The Drive who cite unnamed but apparently well-informed sources. We are inclined to lend credence to their assertions since we know they are rational human beings not given to making up content for clicks, plus the fact they dropped some other well-founded Toyota rumors about the upcoming GR Corolla just the other day. It’d appear they have the ear of a loose-lipped Toyota employee.
All this is third-hand news, of course, and should be taken with several grains of salt. After all, plenty of engineering prototypes are built for purposes known to neither man nor beast and never see the light of day in a retail showroom. There’s also the perpetual chance that a pencil-necked accountant deep within the bowels of Toyota will find some asinine reason to scupper the project before going home to his mother’s basement to play with his math set.
Still, it’s good to have a gearhead at the helm. Akio Toyoda is a noted car guy, one who spends time at the track and is known as something of a wheelman. In the years after decreeing that his namesake company needed to root some of the dullness out of its vehicle lineup, we’ve seen the return of this Supra, a second-gen GR 86 (something which was definitely not a foregone conclusion) and entertaining styling tweaks to other machines in its roster.
Even if this rumor gets confirmed, plenty of questions remain. Will it be paired with the four- or six-cylinder car? Does the engine to which it is mated require a power tweak for durability reasons? Did Jeffrey Epstein really kill himself? Answers to all those questions remain shrouded in mystery for now. One thing’s for sure – a stick shift Supra would be tremendously entertaining.
[Image: Toyota]
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