Driven to Extinction: Toyota GR Supra bows out

By the time you read this, Toyota will have closed the order books on the GR Supra in Australia. The timing does seem strange, given that as recently as July, the company had launched a new Track Edition of the car and the competition version of the fifth-gen Supra is in the process of being soft-launched for the 2026 Supercars season.

First launched here in September 2019, the GR Supra logged sales of just over 1400 cars and endeared itself to Wheels testers, who loved its pugnacious attitude and unapologetic focus. However, in hitching its cart to BMW in the development of the vehicle, Toyota ceded control of manufacturing. Sharing its underpinnings with the BMW Z4 roadster enabled Toyota to bring the GR Supra to market in a cost-effective manner, but the slow-selling Z4 has fallen victim to Munich’s bean counters and is set to be deleted at the start of 2026.

1

The Austrian Steyr manufacturing facility will no longer build Z4s or GR Supras, and it’s been rumoured that Toyota will take greater control of its own destiny for a sixth-gen replacement.

“It would be logical that we would have a next-gen Supra. But when and how is still TBD,” senior VP of Product Planning and Strategy for Toyota Motor North America, Cooper Ericksen told Motor Trend. “Definitely, there will be a gap. The question is how big that gap will be. It is our goal to have a gap that is significantly less [than the last one].”

Of course, Mr Ericksen isn’t promising a great deal there given that the last gap between Supra generations spanned more than two decades. Latterly, Toyota has pursued a canny and effective strategy in conforming to the minefield of changing emissions regulations while still maintaining sales by giving customers what they want. A new Supra would doubtless be a similarly smart compromise, but it would be understandable if the Japanese mothership wanted to sit and read the tea leaves for a while before committing to a new product launch.

1

Rumours of a partnership with Mazda, who would donate their 3.3-litre straight-six petrol engine, have refused to die down and that would appear to make sense, given that Toyota owns a five per cent stake in Mazda. In May 2015 the two companies formed a strategic business and capital alliance to collaborate on joint projects and share resources and in January 2018, Toyota and Mazda announced a joint venture plant called Mazda Toyota Manufacturing USA that is now producing CX-50s and Corolla Cross models in Huntsville, Alabama, US. A Japanese plant and a tariff-dodging US facility would appear the ideal solution for sixth-gen Supra fabrication.

In the meantime we’re left to ponder the legacy of the fifth-gen car. Purists dismissed it at first as a badge-engineered BMW, and while the BMW influence was never disguised with any great enthusiasm, it emerged as a likeable and purposeful thing. Spiky, angry and always an event, the GR Supra could well be one of those cars whose light burns ever brighter with each passing year. Roll on the next generation.

1

GR Supra sales in Australia

Serious sign-off

1

There’s no doubt that the manual Track Edition will prove to be the definitive A90 Supra, at least on these shores. Priced at $105,295 before on-roads, it still makes the same 285kW/500Nm as its lesser siblings but adds black Alcantara upholstery (a $2500 option on the GTS), beefed-up suspension, a carbon-fibre ducktail spoiler, a tweaked LSD, revised steering mapping, bigger front brakes, wheelarch aero flaps and front tyre spats.

This article originally appeared in the November 2025 issue of Wheels. Subscribe here and gain access to 12 issues for $109 plus online access to every Wheels issue since 1953.