Toyota Supra: New generation already on the way

The current Toyota Supra is already on its way to retirement. The Final Edition marks the end of the fifth generation's six-year production run. Read our review of the sports car's last hurrah soon. The good news is: the Supra name probably won't disappear from the Toyota product lineup for too long.

In a recent interview with MotorTrend , Toyota hinted that there will indeed be a new Supra. Considering the current challenging environment for classic sports coupes, this comes as quite a surprise. Even better: we probably won't have to wait as long for said Supra as we did for the Mk5. Hopefully .

Image by: Toyota

"It would be logical that we would have a new generation of the Supra. But when and how, that's not yet determined," said Cooper Ericksen, Toyota Motor North America's Senior Vice President of Product Planning and Strategy. "There will definitely be a gap. The question is how big that gap will be... Our goal is to have a gap that's significantly smaller [than the last one]."

And the final gap was enormous. The Mk4 Supra was built in Japan until 2002. In the US, the model was discontinued in 1999, and in Europe (due, among other things, to stricter emissions standards) as early as 1996. So, it took a good 23 years for the model change here. Now Toyota is making it quite clear that we won't have to wait another two decades for the next Supra.

However, we shouldn't count on the sixth generation appearing in the next one to two years. Ericksen noted in the interview that Toyota currently has its hands full successfully establishing core products like the new RAV4 , the ever-popular Camry (in the US), and other models in the market.

It's also unclear whether the next Supra will again be a joint project. The current generation is a sister model to the BMW Z4 .

"A product like the Supra has made it to the point where we now have a Final Edition, and the reason for that is that with all the new regulations and investments we have to make, it's simply not cost-effective," Erickson said. "It has to be a new house. The question is when can we get the new house built?"

The current Supra in the test