The current Toyota Supra may now be approaching the end of its life, but the manufacturer has strongly hinted that another one’s in the pipeline, and now rumours are suggesting that it could have a twin from Mazda.
The report, as with many of these rumours around Japanese performance cars, comes from Japanese magazine Best Car. A short snippet on its website promoting its new issue leads with a story (translated from Japanese) claiming that it has information about a new Mazda sports car, supposedly powered by a straight-six engine in a front-engined, rear-drive layout.
Toyota GR Supra
This, apparently, is a result of Mazda deepening its relationship with Toyota, which owns around five per cent of the smaller manufacturer’s shares. This has already spawned products like the Mazda 2 Hybrid, a rebadged Toyota Yaris Hybrid, but if Best Car is to be believed, it could lead to something much more exciting.
We don’t have much more info at this point, but it’s not hard to infer what could potentially be in the works. Toyota, after all, has previously said it’ll need to work with other manufacturers in order to keep building sports cars, and with BMW not thought to be working on a successor to the current Supra’s twin, the Z4, it’ll theoretically need to find someone new to collaborate with for the next-gen car.
Mazda CX-80
Mazda – besides already having close ties to Toyota – already builds a petrol straight-six engine, the 3.3-litre Skyactiv G turbocharged unit found in the CX-60 and CX-80. They’re also based on a native rear-wheel drive platform, although it’s not clear how well it would suit a sports car when it’s so far only been the basis for SUVs.
If these rumours are true, though – and they very much are just rumours for now – they do raise one question: what does it mean for the hybrid rotary production version of the Iconic SP concept that Mazda is thought to be working on? Would that fall by the wayside, or could we end up with three Mazda sports cars at once (assuming the MX-5 sticks around?)
Mazda Iconic SP
Until we hear anything more concrete, we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed – and cross them even harder that these cars could make their way to the increasingly sports-car-hostile European market.
