Toyota has dropped plenty of hints about electric sports cars in the past couple of years, and now it’s finally backed up the teasing with, well, a proper old-fashioned teaser.
At a press conference convened so a load of people in suits could hear other people in suits get excited about numbers on spreadsheets detailing Toyota’s financial performance, the automaker let slip something else performance-related, and far more interesting.
In the presentation, which we’ve already covered in a wider story about the automaker’s electrification strategy, Toyota showed a slide illustrating how it would expand its BEV lineup by 2026. And contained on that slide were three silhouetted models, the most intriguing of which was categorized as a ‘sports’ car.
Related: The Lexus Electrified Sport Concept Embodies The Spirit Of The LFA In The EV Age
The ‘coming soon’ slide (pictured above) jumbles Lexus and Toyota cars together so we can’t be sure whose badge the mystery sports EV will wear. But the wheelbase and cabin dimensions look like that of a four-seat fastback, which is exactly the kind of car that flashed up on the screen during the video presentation, again in profile view (see gallery below), but this time with a little more detail, including a Lexus badge.
A Lexus ‘L’ is just visible in the corner of the rear side window, and the location of the B-pillar makes clear that we’re looking at a four-door coupe, rather than a two-door, two-seat sports car. Toyota and Lexus have both shown sporty two-door electric concepts in the form of the Toyota Sports EV concept, a reborn MR2 that could target the upcoming Porsche Boxster and Cayman EVs, and the much larger, Electrified Sport concept. Maybe one or both of those cars will still eventually make production, but to us, it looks pretty clear that a more pressing priority is for Lexus to take on the Porsche Taycan.
Building a sexy four-door coupe makes a lot more sense than chasing a couple of thousand annual sales in the rapidly shrinking sports car and GT market. Even hamstrung by supply problems, Porsche sold almost 35,000 Taycans last year, but only half as many Boxsters and Caymans. And going the four-door route doesn’t necessarily mean the production car will be boring to drive. We already know from patent applications that Toyota is working on a simulated manual transmission for EVs that could give an electric sports- or supercar the kind of driver appeal delivered by older combustion models.
Would you like to see Lexus take on the Porsche Taycan, or were you hoping for something a bit smaller and sportier from your 2026 mystery Toyota/Lexus sports car?
