No self-respecting sports car badge would be caught dead without a manual transmission. Toyota knows this, that’s why it has customers and fans excited with the news that its GR Supra will soon be offering a stick shift.
Finally, the Toyota GR Supra will be getting three pedals
The announcement at the Toyota Europe website was brief, with the automaker saying that the three-pedal variant will be known by a red Supra badge. This differentiates the upcoming model from the initial release, which came equipped with an 8-speed ZF automatic gearbox.
Toyota even described the specific manual transmission as being all-new and tailor-made, hinting that this was specifically developed for the GR Supra’s performance characteristics and not merely borrowed from its BMW Z4 platform twin. The company promises that the upcoming GR Supra manual variant is more faithful to Toyota’s Gazoo Racing DNA.
The red Supra badge will be the upcoming manual variant's exterior trademark
With this development, the GR Supra officially joins the GR 86 and the GR Yaris in offering a clutch pedal, with the iconic sports car having the longest accelerator pedal in the lineup.
Back in 2020, Toyota Supra chief engineer Tetsuya Tada declared that there were no plans to squeeze a manual gearbox into the fifth-generation Supra, advising those who wanted a manual sports coupe to consider the 86 instead. The prevailing rationale at the time was that Toyota wanted to keep the GR Supra from eating into the sales of the 86.
Another reason given was that Toyota considers the automatic faster in the hands of a professional driver. And in Tada’s experience, previous Supras had their transmissions blown up by tuners who constantly increased the boost – and stress – on the drivetrain, which he wanted to avoid with the new Supra.
Toyota promises that the manual GR Supra will be more faithful to the Gazoo Racing DNA
The Toyota engineer eventually relented and said that a manual GR Supra could still be possible if there was a market for it. Two years later, that prediction is now close to becoming a reality.
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