What are BMW & Toyota up to?

BMW and Toyota are currently working together, but better yet, they’re working on producing a midsize sports car. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please check out our previous article about this amazing project.

Most of us think that Toyota is pretty good at making cars for the average Joe, the nine to fiver, essentially taking people from point A to point B. However, Toyota is really good at making sports cars. Remember the early Toyota 2000GT in the 1960s? (shown below):

To the Supra in 1980s and 1990s:

and the most recent: Toyota’s first supercar – the Lexus LFA.

For BMW, we all know it’s famous for its sports oriented car...

The upcoming 2015 Lexus NX200t is equipped with the first turbocharged engine within the whole Lexus history. This engine has the Toyota internal code name “8AR-FTS”.

The 8AR-FTS has an 2.0L displacement with an open-deck, midi-skirt type aluminum cylinder block. It also has a fully balanced forged steel crankshaft, cast-in iron cylinder liners.

On the Lexus NX200t, the turbocharged 8AR-FTS makes 235 hp at 5,600 rpm with 258 lb-ft of torque available from 1,650-4,000 rpm. On the paper this engine sounds just like a normal modern 4-cylinder turbo engine, which has similar performance (2...

Toyota and BMW have signed a contract recently regarding a joint operation to design and manufacture some car models.

Today the Japanese media – Nikkei, reported that as the first step, the two companies are currently working on a sports car platform. This platform will be used in the next generation of Z4 for BMW, and the revived Supra for Toyota.

This news further confirmed the previous news that Toyota is putting the FT-1 concept into production track. The next Supra will look like the FT-1 concept shown below.

Toyota brought the FT-1 concept to the 2014 Detroit Auto Show earlier this year.

In the automotive industry, the purpose of a concept car is usually for testing the interest expressed from the public, which can assist the auto maker management to evaluate the business case for a proposed new model. If the public interest is high, then the developement will proceed to the direction of mass production.

Obviously, not all concept cars can gain enough public attention; actually statistically speaking, more than half of the concept car project will not be green lighted for production.