Toyota’s Chief Engineer Wants to Know
The Toyota Supra fanboys begging for a manual transmission may eventually break Toyota down. It seems even the chief engineer Tetsuya Tada is now discussing the possibility of a manual transmission. In a recent interview with Autoindustriya, he talked about future iterations of the Supra. During that interview, he said the following:
If you had to choose between the S58 twin-turbo or introducing the manual transmission, which would have the higher priority? What you’re experiencing today is the first iteration of the new Supra. From this point on – as with all other sports cars – every year we will have a new iteration of it that comes with new upgrades. For the 86, for instance, every year there were a few evolutions and upgrades, all the way to the GRMN model. With regard to upgrades, there is an order we can introduce things in. The only question is in what order should we go with?
This really makes it seem like he’s interested in putting a manual transmission into the car, at least at some point. That will make a lot of people very happy, but it sounds like Toyota is in no rush to do it. The company will likely come out with several different iterations of the car over the course of the next several years.
That could mean a manual transmission could make its way into the car years down the line or it could make its way into the car much sooner. As Tada-san said, the only question is what order to do the different performance upgrades. We vote manual before anything else.
