Do note that the opening photo and some images below are independent illustrations made by talented professional car designer Esa Mustonen. They are neither related to nor endorsed by Toyota.

Raise your hand if you’ve stumbled on reports and forum / social media postings this week alleging that Toyota is working with Porsche on an MR2 successor. We did and decided to investigate after noticing that all stories pointed to a Japanese car website called ‘Spyder7’ as the source. To make a long story short, there are simply no facts to back any of this up.

Breaking Bad: About That Four-Door Toyota FT-86 Coupe Sedan Story

To untangle the web, we must time-travel all the way back to August of 2019 when a journalist from Autoindustriya, Vince Pornelos, attended the Mk5 Toyota Supra press drive in Japan. During the event, he had the opportunity to briefly talk to the man who led the Supra program, Toyota Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada.

“You worked with Subaru to revive the 86, and with BMW to revive the Supra. Who do you want to work with to revive the MR2?” Pornelos asked Tada. “Porsche!”, he replied, with the journalist stressing that we should “take his answer with a grain of salt because it’s difficult to be sure whether Tetsuya Tada was actually kidding”.

Independent illustration for a future Toyota MR2 by designer Esa Mustonen

Apparently, Not Everyone Got The ‘Could Be Kidding’ Memo

While Tada may or may not have been pulling our leg at the time, his remarks were consequently taken out of context and obtained a life of their own, which brings us to today and Spyder7. Last Monday, the Japanese site published a story about having “obtained information” on Toyota re-starting the development of a “lightweight midship sports car” after having “seemingly” frozen the project.  A Google translation goes on to say the car is “rumored to be the successor model to the MR2.”

Beyond posing the question whether Porsche or Lotus could work with Toyota on the MR2, the site added that, since it’s currently difficult for automakers to “spend money on a sports car alone”, Toyota is working with a new partner. “It is possible that negotiations have already been started behind the scenes, but Porsche and Lotus, which has been supplying engines for many years, will be the most promising” said the author per Google’s translation. The story goes on to speculate that the MR2 could get a pure electric motor along with a hybrid version featuring a 2.8-liter or 3.0-liter V6 paired to an electric motor.

Read: No, These Porsche Patents Do Not Show A New Hypercar Successor To The 918 Spyder

It’s worth adding here that Spyder 7 has published many, many differing stories of an MR2 revival over the years, including one in 2018 when it claimed it was being developed in collaboration with Subaru. In that article they suggested the car could be powered by a 1.6-liter boxer engine hooked up to an electric motor with a scheduled release for “2020 or 2021 if development goes smoothly”.

How All That Turned Into Faketual Reports

It should be pretty clear by now that Tada’s wishful thinking / joking response – call it what you want – to a journalist’s offbeat question, provided fuel for speculation. I’m sure you’ve heard about the broken telephone game where a message is whispered by one person to another and so on until it is completely distorted in the process by the end.

That’s what this story sounds like as it appears Tada’s 2019 comment has morphed into baseless speculation at best and, at worst, false reports by certain outlets that took Spyder7’s conjecture and turned it into Toyota is working with Porsche on a new MR2. That’s simply not true as there isn’t any proof to back it up, but plenty of reasons to doubt it. While it’s technically feasible, so is the possibility of little green men landing on our doorstep tomorrow morning.

Here’s What Toyota Told Us About The MR2

We asked Toyota about the MR2, both regarding its existence as a future product and the supposed collaboration with Porsche. Here’s what a Toyota spokesman told us:

“I can confirm we have not announced any intention to produce a new MR2, and outside of that I cannot comment or speculate on a rumored new product. Same goes for your second question – I can’t speculate on any rumored new products or rumored partnerships.”

And there you have it.

And here’s Esa Mustonen’s design project for an MR2 in red. If Toyota were to make a new model, they should hit this guy up