The return of the Toyota Supra may be one of the most hotly anticipated performance cars in modern memory. The car hasn’t even debuted, but already we’re hearing rumors of an even hotter version of Toyota’s two-door sports car.
Speaking to Top Gear, Toyota’s Gazoo Racing chief and Supra boss Tetsuya Tada explains that he’s hoping to build a lightweight version of the car. “At some point I would like to make a track-limited Supra with less weight,” he said. “We’re already making a racing version so we know if you take out 100kg [220 lbs] it’s a completely different car—you don’t even need any more power.”
Would this lightweight version be street legal, Top Gear asks, or a track-only special? “We’re investigating both avenues,” Tada says. “There’s always a trade-off because being road-legal brings restrictions.”
Such a special-edition is likely to be called the Supra GRMN—for “Gazoo Racing, Meisters of Nurburgring,” a label currently applied to other Toyota products tuned by the automaker’s in-house motorsports group. And Tada tells Top Gear he foresees the Supra competing in sports car racing in the LM GTE category, currently contested by the likes of the Ford GT LM GTE, Porsche 911 RSR and Corvette C7.R.
And even excluding the potential lightweight, track-focused model, the street-legal Supra is shaping up to be quite the machine. “The Porsche Cayman has been our dynamic benchmark from the start,” Tada told Top Gear. “The Cayman has the advantage with its engine positioning but I’ve driven the cars back-to-back on track and we’re definitely in the same zone.”