MKIV Fans Betrayed: Why the New Supra Disappointed

This thought hit me when I saw some people talking about the Supra Mk5. It seems like Toyota never really planned to keep the Supra going in the first place. Back then, it was just a regular sports car—kind of like a Corvette or any other performance car on the market. When the Mk4 was discontinued, Toyota probably didn’t see a good reason to keep making it.

What happened next is actually pretty easy to figure out: the Supra blew up in popularity because of the Fast & Furious movies, and suddenly everyone wanted one. At first, Toyota didn’t think it would be profitable to bring it back, but over time, they saw the demand growing. The problem is, designing and building a car isn’t cheap—and it sure doesn’t happen overnight.

Now imagine this: Toyota sees the hype around the Mk4 and thinks about bringing it back with a few updates—new design, faster engine, but still mostly the same car. To pull that off, they’d need to throw a lot of money at it. And maybe Toyota just felt the hype wasn’t worth the risk. When you really look at it, the numbers probably didn’t make sense. If there was a solid business case, Toyota would’ve done it. But the Supra became kind of a dream car for fanboys and broke teenagers who couldn’t actually afford one. Toyota wasn’t about to gamble millions on that.

Most likely, Toyota execs saw an opportunity when they teamed up with Subaru and probably thought, “What car can replace the Supra, but we don’t have to build it ourselves?” These days, there aren’t many Japanese manufacturers making RWD inline-6 cars—most sports cars now run AWD and V6 engines, like the Nissan GT-R. Mitsubishi’s pretty much out of the game, so that’s where BMW came in.

Enter the Z4. It had the right specs: RWD, inline-6, solid platform. All Toyota really had to do was tweak the design so it didn’t scream “BMW.” I’m guessing they didn’t want to sell a Supra that looked exactly like a Z4—or maybe there was some agreement that made that impossible. Either way, Toyota reworked the Z4’s design and sold it as the new Supra. Same basic formula: RWD, 6-cylinder, sporty vibes.

And it was way cheaper that way. Toyota didn’t have to build something from scratch, and BMW got more sales out of it too. MK4 fans might not love it, but hey—it’s a reminder that building cars isn’t as easy (or cheap) as it used to be.

There’s really nothing to redevelop from the MK4 anyway. The 2JZ-GTE is a cool and fast engine, no doubt—but it’s a late '80s design. To make it meet modern emissions standards, you'd basically have to redesign it from the ground up. And that means rebuilding the whole car too. That would take a ton of money and time, and I don’t think Toyota ever felt like it was worth the hassle. It was the JDM fanboys who kinda “pressured” them into even thinking about it.

Yeah, the MK4 is a cult classic, but Toyota never felt the need to recreate it exactly. Maybe I’m wrong, but most hardcore MK4 fans are JDM-obsessed kids who think the thing makes 1000 horsepower stock. Maybe they’re joking—but honestly, I think that kind of hype is exactly why Toyota didn’t want to bring it back. It’s just too much work, especially when there are already existing platforms they can use.

The truth is, what MK4 fans want is way out of touch with what’s practical. Toyota doesn’t see the need to redesign or rebrand the MK4 from scratch. Instead, they teamed up with BMW—kind of like what happened between Subaru and Toyota for the BRZ/86. The people who hate the MK5 were probably never going to buy it anyway, and the ones who do buy it don’t really care. So Toyota just stuck with something they knew could sell.

At the end of the day, the effort to revive the MK4 properly is just too much for a market that hasn’t proven it’s really there. That’s probably why Toyota chose to base the MK5 on a BMW platform—it gets them most of the way there without the headache. Long story short: there’s not going to be an MK4 reborn the way JDM fanboys imagined.