Toyota Supra chief engineer Tetsuya Tada has previously said the company envisions a three sports car lineup known as the “three brothers.”
As he explained last summer, the 86 is the middle child and the Supra is the “big brother.” This naturally led to speculation that Toyota’s third sports car would be a ‘baby brother’ which would slot beneath the 86.
Toyota hinted at this possibly when they unveiled the S-FR concept at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show. Featuring compact dimensions, rear wheel drive and a six-speed manual transmission, the concept was designed to “make a whole new generation fall in love with driving.”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear the S-FR concept or any other affordable sports car is going into production. Speaking to Evo at the Geneva Motor Show, Tada said “I believe most people are looking forward to the smallest of the ‘three brothers’ and when people say the smallest, they expect it would be the most affordable.” He went on to suggest this isn’t necessarily the case as building a small sports car is “quite difficult.”
As Tada explained, it would be hard to make a small sports car profitable because it would still need all the components and safety gear of a larger sports car. He also noted a small and affordable sports car would face competition from used 86s. He probably has a point as low mileage Scion FR-S’ can be bought for $15,000 or less.
So if we ever see the ‘third brother,’ it’s possible the model could slot between the 86 and Supra. Of course, that remains unconfirmed and there’s no word on when or if the model will be greenlighted.
