The Breakdown: 2020 Toyota Supra vs. the Porsche 718 Cayman vs. the BMW M2 Competition

MotorTrend

We’ve driven the Supra alone and come away impressed. But how did this sports car from an unlikely brand stack up against two of its sharpest

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 - When I went to drive the prototypes

00:06 and they had the engineers there

00:08 and they gave the presentation,

00:09 one of the items that they had to check off their list

00:11 was can it drift?

00:12 So they made sure that it could drift.

00:15 (upbeat music)

00:17 - Hi, I'm Scott Evans here with Chris Walton and Kim Reynolds

00:28 to freshen it off of our first comparison

00:30 with the all new Toyota Supra and Supra 1.

00:33 - Yeah, that thing's pretty amazing.

00:35 - Surprising.

00:36 (laughing)

00:37 - I wanna talk for a second about why the Supra 1

00:39 because it was not a unanimous decision.

00:41 - I think it deserves credit and a win

00:43 for doing something that BMW used to be able to do very well

00:47 is do that Jekyll and Hyde thing.

00:49 Have your really nice luxury ride, you know,

00:52 to Palm Springs or you can press that sport button

00:54 and all of a sudden it's Hyde

00:56 and it's snarling, you know, the exhaust popping.

00:59 - I was following you on the Canyon Road

01:01 and I was like, what's the date?

01:03 Is it the 4th of July yet?

01:04 'Cause it was just crackle pop, crackle bang, bang, bang

01:06 every which direction.

01:07 - It was awesome.

01:08 - In this car, the Supra was really turning a lot of heads.

01:11 I mean, it was really noticeable people coming up to us,

01:14 those folks on the motorcycle,

01:16 I thought the passenger was gonna fall off the motorcycle

01:19 staring around at it.

01:21 - When we first put it in the real world out here,

01:23 like even in our own parking lot,

01:25 it's like, wow, that thing is really very different.

01:28 - I enjoyed how it drove and I enjoy how it looks.

01:31 I think it's a little much for me

01:33 and I'm not sure how this is gonna age,

01:34 but I think it's absolutely an entertaining car to look at

01:38 at a really good price that drives very well

01:40 and is very entertaining to drive.

01:41 - You know, one thing we did find in this

01:43 is that the Supra reacted better to

01:46 maybe your or my driving style than to Kim's.

01:49 - You two, particularly you, I know,

01:51 are very, very smooth and very deliberate drivers.

01:54 - Smooth is fast.

01:55 - Smooth is fast.

01:57 Not always, we'll talk about that later.

01:59 But I tend to chuck cars, I tend to kind of go too far

02:03 and then reel it back in again and again.

02:06 The Supra didn't take to that quite so kindly.

02:08 - Yeah, it had to be driven in a very specific way

02:10 and I think any sort of sports car enthusiast

02:13 could get in the Cayman and drive it fast

02:15 and be very comfortable doing so.

02:17 - So we know from the numbers

02:18 that they were all very similar performers,

02:21 but they drove very differently, right?

02:23 - Yeah, radically different.

02:24 Each one had its own personality.

02:26 You know, the BMW competition was kind of brutal.

02:29 The Porsche was just that mid-engine

02:31 kind of delicacy and balance.

02:35 And the Supra kind of had a foot in both worlds, I think.

02:38 - For me, my favorite thing about the Supra

02:40 was how predictable it was and controllable.

02:45 I mean, it made me look like a hero on the figure eight.

02:49 That's the best drift I'd ever done.

02:51 - So it would do that and it was very controllable

02:53 and a lot of fun.

02:54 Relentlessly did it.

02:56 I mean, throughout the cornering section,

02:58 it would not stop drifting to some degree.

03:00 - Was that the point?

03:01 Was it meant to do that?

03:02 - Yeah, no, actually the development drivers

03:05 and engineers worked on it

03:06 to make sure that it would be driftable.

03:08 That's part of its mission.

03:11 - So this Supra is a big deal

03:12 because we haven't had one in 20 years,

03:14 but Kim, you've driven all of them.

03:15 So what makes it a Supra?

03:17 - The characteristics of a classic Supra,

03:19 I think, are an inline-

03:21 - Inline six.

03:21 - Inline six, turbocharged, ideally,

03:24 most famously for a wheel drive.

03:27 Agile handling and so on, all at a good bargain price.

03:30 The drifting aspect, I don't remember.

03:33 - Okay, so then does the Supra actually live up

03:36 to the legend of the fourth gen car?

03:40 - Well, if you look at the specs, absolutely.

03:42 It crushes the old car.

03:44 So any question of it, "Oh, is it going to be as good as?"

03:47 That's been erased.

03:48 I would say it is more entertaining, certainly.

03:52 That previous generation car

03:54 was a very impressive piece of machinery,

03:56 but this one is more delicate and more fun to drive,

04:00 I think.

04:01 - So we just put a Toyota in a comparison test

04:03 with a BMW and a Porsche, and the Toyota won.

04:07 So are we talking about Toyota in the same breath

04:09 as Porsche and BMW now?

04:11 - When I interviewed the product planner,

04:12 I specifically asked him,

04:13 "Was there any consideration to this being branded a Lexus?"

04:16 Like, "No, no, no, never."

04:17 It was always intended to be a Supra.

04:20 People have been asking for the Supra for years.

04:22 We're finally doing it.

04:24 If it can play with those guys at that price,

04:26 then welcome to the club.

04:27 - But I think something that's going to be important

04:29 is that they keep it up.

04:30 Don't just say, "Here's the Supra," and da-da-da.

04:33 And in three years, it kind of drifts away

04:35 because the sales aren't spectacular or whatever,

04:38 and then you don't see it again for 20 years.

04:40 I think to have that reputation,

04:42 to be talking about it in the same sentence

04:44 with Porsches and BMWs,

04:46 they got to build another one and another one

04:48 and keep at this.

04:49 (upbeat music)

04:52 - So that's our verdict.

04:54 The Toyota Supra wins.

04:55 To read all about it, go to motortrend.com.

04:58 (upbeat music)

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