Toyota News: Toyota Wants To Bring Back the Celica or MR2

[William Maley]

As the Toyota Supra continues its slow march to production, the automaker is considering adding another sports car that may revive an iconic nameplate.

"We want to have Celica back, we want to have the MR2 back," said Masayuki Kai, Assistant Chief Engineer on the Supra project.

The biggest was Supra. Supra was number one, the biggest demand from the market. Now that we've brought Supra back, what will come next depends on the market needs."

Kai suggested that nothing is set in stone, but did hint that the Celica could be an all-wheel drive performance coupe. The MR2 could keep its mid-engine layout if a business case could be made.

There lies within the problem for Toyota - making the business case for either model. Kai said that today's market makes it quite challenging  "to introduce niche, small-volume performance models."

"Sports car are becoming more and more expensive to develop. So a single company cannot afford to invest in all the tooling for parts and components, because the volume of sports car is quite small. A sports car requires a lot of specific components that you cannot share with other cars. The suspension components we're using on the Supra, you can't use on a sedan like Camry or Corolla. And as you know, all the homologation issues are also getting more and more complex and difficult," he said.

One possibility is for Toyota is to forge a partnership like they did with BMW with the Supra, or Subaru with the 86/BRZ.

Source: Road & Track

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[Drew Dowdell]

[Robert Hall]

Cool...more sports cars, more 2drs is a good thing...too many damn FWD CUV appliances coming out..

[A Horse With No Name]

Right...since the FRS/86/BRZ is seeing such high sales.

[loki]

mr2 with the 2L that has ~160hp. coo!

[smk4565]

First off, Toyota has billions and billions of dollars, they can build anything they want.  This isn't FCA.

I have thought for years they should bring back the Celica, when Scion died they should have done this.  It won't be that hard to make a Corolla based coupe, you have the platform, just have to re-body it and change the front and rear facias.  They could use the Corolla's 1.8 liter as the base engine, and offer a turbo for the GT-S with like 190-200 hp.  Or you could put the Camry's 4-cylinder in there that makes about 200 hp.  Would be so easy to bring the Celica back.

MR2 is a bit harder to make a mid-engine car, that gets into a new platform and stuff.

[daves87rs]

Would be cool...never happen though......

[Cmicasa the Great]

11 hours ago, A Horse With No Name said:

Right...since the FRS/86/BRZ is seeing such high sales.

Damn Bro.. didn't U just say the market for such cars is dying?

[A Horse With No Name]

10 hours ago, Cmicasa the Great said:

Damn Bro.. didn't U just say the market for such cars is dying?

That was sarcasm.