A sports car produced by Toyota Motor Corporation from 1978. The name “supra” is derived from the Latin word supra, meaning to go above and beyond. The first four generations of the Supra were produced between 1978 and 2002. The fifth generation was launched in 2019. The original Supra’s styling was derived from the Toyota Celica, but it was longer. From mid-1986, the A70 Supra became a separate model from the Celica. However, Toyota also stopped using the Celica prefix and renamed the car Supra.
It came from the era when the Japanese wanted to prove to the world that they could make a better car than anyone else, especially from a technical point of view. When it was not marketing, the environment or safety that mattered, but technical parameters. This car became the pinnacle.
In 1997, the Toyota Supra Turbo set a record in a brake test, in American magazine Car and Driver. Its Formula 1-inspired braking system, tested on racetracks, held its own. It braked from 113 km/h in 45 m in the American test, making it the best braking production car for seven years.
It was not until 2004 that the record was broken, when a Porsche Carrera GT test car was used to measure a braking distance of 44 m. It took seven years and a supercar well into the 21st century to break the Supra’s braking record. Far from being the braking system, the fourth-generation Toyota Supra there are more parts which leads it to become the greatest legend.
When Toyota created the fourth-generation Supra, it started with a clean slate, with new developments in every part of the car. The aim was to create a sports car with outstanding performance. Even though it is 25 years old, the performance of a turbocharged Supra is still commendable today: it can reach 60 mph in 4.6 seconds, with a target line speed of 175 km/h. Top speed would be around 285 km/h if it had not been limited to 180 km/h for JDM versions and 250 km/h for export models.
In 1998, Toyota stopped sales of the fourth-generation Supra in the U.S. In 2002, production of the fourth-generation Supra in world markets ended. In January 2019, the fifth-generation Supra, developed in partnership with the G29 BMW Z4, was introduced.