Safety technology will be keeping back the improvement of some other small sports car from Toyota to fit below the GT86, forcing the third of the “3 brothers” (the Supra, Celica, and MR2) to fall in between the GT86 and the new Supra.
Building an MR2-esque small sports vehicle is very tough, and it’s even tougher to sell it, Toyota Gazoo Racing leader Tetsuya Tada recently advised Evo.
“I accept as true with the majority are looking ahead to the smallest of the ‘three brothers,’ and while people say the ‘smallest’ they expect it might be the maximum less costly,” he explained. “But in reality, developing with a compact small sports activities vehicle is quite hard.”
Meeting emissions and safety requirements charge the identical irrespective of a vehicle’s size, but the expected decrease fee of a smaller vehicle method much less room for profits. That’s especially actual if GR’s subsequent car is undoubtedly an (excessive-improvement-cost) mid-engined MR2 successor.
Packaging all of nowadays’s needful protection technology also makes it very hard to build a small vehicle—the result is that until that tech may be scaled down, the motors will stay massive. At the very least, if Toyota’s subsequent sports activities are somehow smaller than a GT86, it in reality gained’t be any inexpensive.
This additional method that adorable little Toyota SF-R idea from some years in the past (pictured above; yes, Toyota, we do not forget while you make cool stuff) possibly won’t make it to production for a long term, if in any respect.
However, even as a subcompact might not be at the manner, Tada maintains the GT86 is an exquisite small car.
“GT86 became a vehicle to remind our Toyota customers of the fun of riding sports activities automobiles, and we additionally wish that these drivers might improve their abilities in using a sports activities vehicle,” he stated.
“In the actual marketplace there are now masses of 2nd-hand GT86s which might be pretty compact, so for you to compete with these second-hand cars, it’s difficult to give you a smaller version.”