Earlier this week, a billboard went up at Fuji Speedway in Japan. Normally, this wouldn’t be huge news, except the billboard featured three cars: The Toyota 2000GT, the Lexus LFA, and a close-up of a supercar we haven’t yet seen undisguised. The Toyota GR GT is almost here, and this billboard gives us a hint of its mission.
When Toyota showed off the GR GT in camouflage at Goodwood, it felt like a debut was imminent. Not only did it run and drive up the hill, the public was allowed to get up-close with the car. That doesn’t typically happen until something is nearly finalized, and it seems like we’ll be seeing a lot more of the car next week.
In this latest teaser, juxtaposing the new supercar against 2000GT and LFA feels intentional. Not just because those were absolute halo cars that now command sky-high valuations, but because their paths have parallels despite being nearly half a century apart.
Since the company’s inception, there have been two times when Toyota has built a supercar, and one was before we even had the words to describe this upper echelon of automotive desire. Sixty years ago, Japan’s car industry was exceptionally young. Honda was still primarily a motorcycle manufacturer, the Skyline was a Prince instead of a Nissan, and the Toyota Corolla wouldn’t go on sale for another year or so. However, at the 1965 Tokyo auto show, Toyota showed off something big: The 2000GT.
Alright, so it wasn’t all Toyota’s doing, but the motorsports-influenced, Yamaha Motor co-engineered 2000GT was unlike anything Japan had made before, a voluptuous grand touring coupe with world-class engineering. We’re talking independent double-wishbone suspension at all four corners, four-wheel disc brakes, magnesium wheels, a two-liter twin-cam straight-six that made peak power at 6,600 rpm at a time when that was truly exotic stuff, and a five-speed manual transmission when many sports cars were still playing with four. To match the engineering, the 2000GT was beautifully made. Every instrument had a bright bezel, the dashboard facing was available in rosewood finished by Yamaha’s instrument division, and gadgets like an auto-seek radio stood out from the spartan appointments of most period sports cars.
Unsurprisingly, the critics raved about the 2000GT. In April 1968, Car and Driver wrote that “No effort has been spared to provide luxurious comfort with spirited performance,” while Road & Track went even further when the magazine concluded “the Toyota 2000 GT is one of the most exÂciting and enjoyable cars we’ve driven.” High praise. However, because the 2000GT was so exquisite, it was also expensive. The 1968 U.S.-market 2000GT carried a price tag of $7,150 at a time when you could buy a Porsche 911 for under $7,000 or a Jaguar E-Type for about $5,500. As a result, only 337 production-spec examples were ever built, and it’s likely that Toyota didn’t make much on the project. It didn’t matter, because it raised the bar and sent a message across the entire industry: Any company that could build both mass-market cars and cars like the 2000GT could take over the world.
Fast forward to the 2000s, and Toyota had taken over the world. The Corolla became the best-selling car nameplate of all time, the brand had taken a huge chunk out of the Detroit Big Three’s market share, Lexus had gone from idea to actual trouble for Mercedes-Benz and Cadillac seemingly overnight, and Toyota was looking to go big. Lexus needed a flagship, and that flagship was going to be the LFA.
While the development of the 2000GT was speedy, development of the LFA was anything but. Work started on the project of a Lexus supercar in 2000, and the actual production car didn’t debut until 2009. What happened? Well, after testing aluminum-intensive prototypes, Lexus’ engineers decided that carbon fiber would be a better option. Of course, instead of outsourcing a carbon tub to an outfit like Dallara, Toyota built its own circular carbon fiber loom, the first of its kind in the world. It landed on a 72-degree even-fire V10 as the engine, a single-clutch transaxle for torque multiplication, and a sound that is genuinely among the best in the world.
When the critics finally got their hands on the LFA in the early 2010s, they found it beguiling. When Car And Driver compared the LFA to a Ferrari 599 GTB, the verdict was “Out of the box, Toyota’s first supercar beats a Ferrari. Yeah, you read that correctly.” Jeremy Clarkson once said that the LFA was “The best car I’ve ever driven.” The praise came absolutely showering down, but amid the rave reviews, there was a little bit a problem on the consumer end: The price.
When the Lexus LFA launched in America, it started at $375,875. That was about $19,000 more than a Ferrari 599 GTB, about $21,000 more than a Lamborghini Murcielago, and more than $100,000 more than an Aston Martin DBS. From the start, LFA production was capped at 500 units, but such pricing meant it took a while to sell all of them. Even beyond the handful that dealers kept for themselves, it wasn’t uncommon to see an LFA sitting on the showroom floor years after production wrapped.
So, where will the Toyota GR GT fall? Will it be an exquisite low-volume masterpiece that the world won’t truly appreciate until after it’s gone, or will it defy convention and sell out almost instantly? Given the billboard that went up at Fuji Speedway, we won’t have to wait long to start seeing where this moonshot goes next. If precedent is anything to go by, it should be amazing.
Top graphic image: Toyota
I’m confused by the topshot. “THE SOUL LIVES ON,” it proclaims. I heard the Soul was discontinued and it’s not even a Toyota product. It’s not much of a supercar, either.
Is this what you’re looking for ?
Toyota GR Supra, which will be racing in Aussie Supercars next year.
https://youtu.be/rwK6nNilqHA?si=TYnaitZo2p-Wwu3a
Does a car matter if no one gets to experience it? Certainly not as much.
Well technically a car is made of material that make up matter. So it is technically correct which as we know is the best kind of correct
Yes because trickle down is real for cars.
Yeah, the RAV4 is going to be SOOOO much better because Toyota is doing this. Not.
I’ll say the same thing I did about Hyundai’s fancy new design studio. Don’t bother, spend the money on making your actual cars better – or cheaper.
Old Toyota is dead, New Toyota is Japan’s Ford. Don’t get your hopes up for anything good or reliable. It’ll probably be a Highlander GR
“Even beyond the handful that dealers kept for themselves”
This is a drastic misunderstanding of the situation.
Dealers did not choose to keep any of these for themselves. They were forced to take them by Toyota, who could not move the f’n things off dealer lots.
And it was not just the price. It was the fact that you could not buy an LFA. Even if you had the finds and the will, Lexus / Toyota would only lease the thing to you under stupid lease terms that nobody with the funds and/or will would agree to.
Yes, the LFA has gone up in value – but not as much as the four Ferrari flips that were available to these same buyers since then. There is no Jeremy Clarkson today to save Toyota from their self-inflicted production delays and cost increases (and Clarkson offered them little to no real benefit back in the LFA days).
There was an LFA at a luxury car dealership in Bulgaria which stood there for years. It was so bad at some point they called a priest to “bless” the car so it sells.
This is done sometimes in Eastern Orthodox countries but it’s usually done at the beginning, for good luck. In this case it was mostly an exorcism in desperation. The story goes that this didn’t help, and the car stood there for another year or so till it eventually sold at substantial loss.
Then, things changed. But those were different times.
My friend got fired from a Lexus dealership for posting about the shit brown LFA that the owner was forced to buy from Toyota.
It almost put me off brown cars.
I had to google a brown LFA just to see it as I could not imagine one in brown. Pearl Brown is bad enough, the 1 of 1 Brown Stone LFA is the exact shade of my cat’s turds and that is even worst.
This better not be another Lexus. We want the purest race car that Toytoa can put out that is legal to drive on the street.
I hope they don’t fall for the trap of a numbers game. EVs won that, there’s nothing to gain in trying to beat Nurburgring lap times or 0-60 acceleration. You can have a (relatively speaking) mundane Tesla or a Lucid that does close to sub 2 second times.
What makes a supercar distinctive and memorable is the experience. I’m sure Toyota knows this since the LC500 is probably one of the best modern ICE cars still around. It’s special like nothing else in its price bracket. The LFA was also incredibly special but was terribly underappreciated when new. Glad that’s changing now.
I guess the right answer depends on how much they plan to sell this for but their goal should be to merge the best of the LFA and LC500.
Or, just improve on the LC500.
Unless you’re going to fully commit to stupid performance specs for a car that will only ever see revs over 4k when there are enough people around after the valet delivers the car then don’t bother.
If I’m looking to impress, I’ll take an older Aston Martin. Non car people don’t really know if it’s new / old / expensive and I really only need to impress that person for the ride to her place.
I’d be far more impressed by a $30K Miata competitor with looks inspired by the 2000gt with a decent engine in it. That didn’t come from Subaru.
With the sole exception of Ford, because GT40 and Le Mans, mainstream brands making supercars is naff. And even Ford couldn’t really get it right the third time. There are too many companies that ONLY make supercars to have much shot at making them desirable with the people who can afford the damned things if it has the same badge as myriad shopping trolleys. Lexus couldn’t pull it off, no matter how theoretically good the LFA was. That it was ugly certainly didn’t help it’s cause.