Toyota Industry News Cars

Toyota recently announced an $18-billion investment towards electrification that showed the automaker’s commitment to the future. This even includes Lexus, which will be completely electrified by the end of this decade. A myriad of Toyota and Lexus concepts were also revealed – 16 to be precise – but there was one that caught our attention the most. This was the ‘Lexus Electrified Sport’, an electric supercar that could carry forward the legacy of the iconic LFA.

Toyota has ambitious goals for an all-electric future. The Japanese automaker plans to considerably expand its electric vehicle lineup over the coming years.

Akio Toyoda, the brand’s President & CEO himself was at hand to give us a glimpse into what Toyota has in store for their next decade, which is set to be dominated by EVs. In a mega unveil for the brand’s future EV strategy, he gives us a first look at 16 distinctive concept vehicles that the brand has been working on.

The small cheap fun car is not dead yet. There are several options to be had with a good amount of horsepower and a manual gearbox. However, the amount of brand new, rear-wheel-drive sports cars with a manual gearbox for sale under $30,000 is dwindling.

The Toyota Highlander has been a titan of sales to soccer moms and families for years. Now, there is a new version of the Highlander, the Bronze Edition, starting at $43,880.

To commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Toyota Supra, Lego has produced a working 1:1 size replica of the iconic Japanese Sportscar.

Toyota launched the 13th-gen Land Cruiser a couple of months back. Moniker’d the Land Cruiser 300, this new generation succeeds the Land Cruiser 200 that was in production for 14 years. It is, however, forbidden fruit in the U.S. as the company has pulled the plug on it here. Just as the hype of the new SUV was dying down, a report by Creative311 has brought it back to the headlines.

According to the publication, Toyota is asking the owners not to sell their SUV within 12 months of purchase, citing global security. In fact, the company is even making the owners sign the dotted line and make it a contractual agreement. How about that!

Toyota will discontinue the big Land Cruiser SUV in the United States after 2021. That’s the word from Road&Track, the outlet that received confirmation from Toyota that 2021 will be last year for its range-topping hauler in North America. The Japanese automaker will reportedly return with an all-new Land Cruiser that’s more modern and luxurious, but there’s no specific timeline for that.

A complete transition to EVs is inevitable whether we like it or not. When enthusiasts complain about moving to electric vehicles, it’s one thing; but when an automaker says the same, it isn’t exactly the right thing.

Toyota’s CEO, Akio Toyoda, recently said that electric vehicles are overhyped and could cost hundreds of billions of dollars to make the switch. This, coming from the CEO of a company that hasn’t been at the forefront of electrification sounds like a case of sour grapes, doesn’t it?

Back in January, we told you that thefour-cylinder Toyota Supra was coming for 2021, and it’s definitely the car you want. While the four-cylinder Supra will offer significantly less power – 255 horsepower vs. 382 horsepower – it will have better weight distribution (50-50), less weight (about 170 pounds less), and will have a more affordable price. In short, it’s good on its own or a perfect base for those that start to wrench and modify the second a new sports car is delivered. We haven’t had the chance to get our hands on a new four-cylinder Supra, but our friends over at Car & Driver did. As it turns out, we were definitely right – the 2020 Toyota Supra is as impressive as expected and maybe even better than expected.

For a while now, Toyota has been collecting some data via its “Mobility Services Platform” which the company claims helps it develop and deploy future data-driven mobility services in regard to safety, security, comfort, and convenience. This happens through the Data Communication Module on newer cars, and Toyota has now announced that it’s looking to expand that even more thanks to an increased collaboration with Amazon Web Services. There sounds like there could be some added benefits here, but it also immediately raises the privacy flag. Let me explain…

By the time February 2020 came around, we learned that the 2021 Toyota Supra would end up being better than the 2020, giving some buyers the shaft. Shortly after that news came about, Toyota tried to justify this move and explained how it was looking to improve the Supra year after year. Whether or not current owners feel shafted or not, the 2021 Supra is better, but there’s still one big thing it’s lacking – a manual transmission. That singular problem, however, may be solved in the very near future if a new report from Japan’s Mag X turns out to be legitimate.

My wife will be the first to tell you that I suck at math, but after reviewing Cars Direct’s findings of lease cost for the 2020 Toyota Supra and 2020 BMW Z4, even I can tell you things don’t add up properly – and that’s saying a lot. In short, the more expensive BMW Z4 is cheaper to lease than the Toyota Supra, even when you go for the Z4 M40i and compare it to the entry-level Toyota Supra. Yikes!

When Toyota unveiled the fifth-generation Supra most complaints were centered around the fact that it has a BMW engine. Purists consider that a BMW-powered Toyota can’t be a true Supra and that’s not necessarily related to how much power it delivers. BMW’s turbo six-cylinder engine is powerful enough for the Supra at 335 horsepower. The issue, according to the gearhead community, is that it can’t match the iconic 2JZ unit in the previous Supra. Well, at least an engine expert claims that the BMW-sourced engine could be better than the 2JZ in terms of aftermarket tuning.

The fifth-generation Toyota Supra is pretty powerful at 335 horsepower, but there’s definitely room for improvement. Will Toyota release a beefed-up version soon? We don’t know that yet, but we do know for a fact that it could. According to BMW, the Japanese firm could borrow a more powerful version of its 3.0-liter inline-six for the Supra.

Ever since Car and Driver strapped the Toyota Supra to a dyno late last month, there’s been a lot of hand-wringing on how much power actually comes out of the sports car’s 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-six-cylinder engine. C&D discovered that the Supra’s engine might actually produce more power than Toyota advertised. A few weeks later, Motor Trend did the same thing and arrived at the same theory. As advertised, Toyota says that the Supra’s turbocharged inline-six cylinder engine can produce 335 horsepower and 365 pound-feet of torque at the crank. But as the results of these two independent tests showed, it seems like Toyota’s newest crown jewel is more powerful than we thought. Or is it? Either way, it’s hard to argue with the fact that since it debuted earlier this year, the Supra is still what everyone wants to talk about.

Five months after its debut at the 2019 North American International Auto Show, the Toyota Supra remains a news driver. It’s not entirely surprising given the hype surrounding the car, and while that hype gave birth to divisive reactions about the coupé itself, the Supra is still a trending topic, even when it comes to curious easter eggs about the Supra’s stylized font. Yes, we’re talking about a hidden tribute that Toyota put in the sports coupe’s name badge, paying homage to a specific section of the Nurburgring. Most of us didn’t notice or even realize it, but now that it’s out there, it’s hard to un-see. Production of the Toyota Supra is ongoing as we wait in earnest for the production model, beginning with the Launch Edition SE that will arrive this summer.

Toyota’s decision to team up with BMW in the development of the Supra was never a popular decision. It wasn’t back when it was announced in 2012, and it still isn’t seven years later with the Supra’s imminent production launch. But Toyota had its reasons, or, more specifically, Tetsuya Tada, the car’s chief engineer, and Toyota’s performance boss, had his reasons. It wasn’t so much about the convenience of working with BMW as it was realizing his vision for the Supra. This is, after all, the same man who was supposed to develop the successor of the MkIV Supra back in the ’90s before those plans were scrapped. But Tada eventually got his chance, and he wasn’t about to throw it away, even if it meant looking elsewhere — hello, BMW — for help in building the sports car he waited almost two decades to bring to life.

The Toyota Supra is making headlines left and right, and as the unquestioned star of the 2019 North American International Auto Show, it’s only fitting that we uncover more details about Toyota’s new sports car. In somewhat of a surprising twist, Toyota is limiting the Supra’s availability in Europe to just 900 units in the first year of the car’s production. It’s a small volume for a region that has a healthy amount of Supra fanboys, but the good news is that Toyota will also throw in access to an exclusive experience programme and money-can’t-buy rewards for those lucky enough to scoop up the 900 units earmarked for the market. In addition to the promised programs and rewards, Toyota will also offer the first special edition version of the Supra — the Supra A90 Edition — exclusively to the European market.

California is facing its deadliest wildfire in history, and so far, 42 people have lost their lives to "Camp Fire. The count would have been much higher if not for good Samaritans like Allyn Pierce. Pierce, a nurse by profession, drove his Toyota Tundra into the flames and evacuated patients from the intensive care unit that he manages. Although he came out unharmed, his Tundra bore the brunt, quite literally. When the Japanese automaker found out about this, it offered to replace his Tundra.

Like every automaker that’s worth its salt, Toyota’s bottom line is the most important thing the company has to take care of. And, with the U.S. car market experiencing a shift in demand the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time, the Japanese automaker is in the process of reviewing its entire U.S. lineup with the possibility of dumping nameplates or models that have become sales anchors on the market. A final decision isn’t expected to happen soon, but with the U.S. auto market getting dominated by SUVs and pickup trucks, Toyota’s model lineup could experience a dramatic shake-up in the near future.

Toyota is lending a helping hand to a team of paleontologists from the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis who are surveying an undisclosed site in northern Wyoming. The team of scientists, led by world-renowned paleontologists Dr. Phil Manning and Dr. Victoria Egerton, are in the area looking for fossilized dinosaur bones. Toyota is supporting the expedition by lending a pair of Tundra pickups and a Land Cruiser to help carry the scientists, their gear, and whatever fossils they dig up.

For the sixth year in a row, Toyota has been named the most valuable car brand in the world. The BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands report is conducted by Kantar Millward Brown consultancy group, and it identified Toyota as the most valuable automaker in the world with a valuation of $29.9 billion, ahead of runner-up Mercedes-Benz ($25.68 billion) and third-place finisher BMW ($25.62 billion).

Mercedes-Benz has been named the world’s most valuable auto brand while Ferrari takes the prize as the world’s strongest automotive brand in Brand Finance’s latest annual report. The valuation list is different from the one published by Interbrand, which put Mercedes in the number 2 spot in its last valuation report, behind only Toyota. The German automaker’s spot atop Brand Finance’s report was largely achieved on the back of a 24-percent year-on-year growth to US$43.9 billion.