Perhaps prematurely, the motoring media fed the narrative flames of BMW and Toyota’s sports car collaboration to somehow mean a resurrected Supra from the Japanese end and an all-new Z5 roadster from the German corner.
That’s because while it does make some sense to abandon the Z4 moniker given how different this new car is, that’s not enough to convince the people in charge at BMW. In an interview with AutoGuide, head of BMW Americas, Ludwig Willisch, flatly denied the new name, saying: “There will be a sports car, yes, but it’s not going to be a Z5. That’s something that someone else has made up.”
When pressed, Willisch revealed that BMW had little in the way of plans to deviate from a name that the brand has spend over a decade investing over two generations of cars, adding: “I would call it a Z4 [and] that’s no indication of the number of cylinders.”
The work being done collaboratively between the two automotive heavy hitters span a wider spectrum than merely sports cars, but that cross section does cover the primary reason for this partnership: alternative energy, hybrids, efficiency, and hydrogen fuel cells.
The next Supra and Z4 are speculated to share quite a bit under the skin, including a similar front-engine rear-drive layout powered by a turbocharged six-cylinder petrol-electric hybrid at the nose. While a straight-six in a BMW is par for the course, this same engine could find its way into the new Supra as well as a nod to the legendary twin-turbocharged 2JZ-GTE of the 4th-generation Supra.
It’s not clear yet, though, if either company will choose to offer either of these sporty models with a manual transmission, though Willisch does seem to hint at that being a strong possibility. For the sake of efficiency, a dual-clutch automatic could be chosen over an equivalent torque converter unit in standard guise. Should this be the case, BMW could supply transmissions for the Supra as well, as Toyota has yet to introduce a consumer-facing DCT.
For more on BMW and Toyota, check out our Showroom.
