#GIMS: After All Of This Waiting Toyota Says It Will Be Another YEAR Before The Supra Debuts

Shades of the LF-A with an extremely long gestation period.

Long delays tend to hurt a car's chances for success and be a death blow if they get the price point wrong...NSX case in point.

Just another case of TESLA disease - IE - announcing something long before it will actually be available.

Must be something wrong with the car for it to be in its production body--now for some time--and still be a year from introduction.

This is utterly ridiculous. As an engineer by trade in this industry, I will admit that the OEM I worked for was nowhere near as good as Toyota in terms of reliability and solidity, but even at that, I observe others (OEMs) and can see glaring issues with this car's gestation.

Not many may know that, although the FT-1 Concept was commissioned in mid-2012 and completed in November 2013 for Jan 2014 showcase, just months after that, Toyota approved the final production design for this A90 Supra in September 2014. Yet here we are, in March 2018 and the car is STILL NOT ready.

I have not heard of an OEM, taking 5 years to go from FINAL design approval to market launch on a production car in years. There are people that have corrected me and said the final design ready parallel to reveal of the FT-1, that September 2014 was design freeze.

Even MB of yore, still managed to deliver products in the R129 SL and W140 S-Class cars in that timeframe and we all know the technical complexity of those cars, that required such extra time from late 1984 to March 1989 and December 9, 1986 to April 1991 respectively.

I don't see why Toyota needs 5 years to settle on the production specifications and launch it in 2019. This at WORST should've taken 42 months from that point in September 2014, meaning it should've been on sale right now. Not another year from now. What are they going to do, when the car is 5 years old and basically a vehicle they dreamed up in concept, over a dozen years earlier?

There is a reason why cars are not developed 15 years in advance of release, partly due to the fact they can grow stale during development and not correctly predict changes in market trends around the corner.

They better hope they've had enough foresight with this programme or it will end up like the 86, with no successor on schedule anymore. The LFA had to have many design revisions during development to freshen it up and meet targets, until the final iteration was frozen in August 2008 (2.5 years before spring 2011 launch).

What is finishing being designed today in styling studios, is for model year 2021-2022. Not for MY2024-25!

By comparison, the previous generation A80 Supra came out by June 1993, after production styling being locked-in by the end of 1990. Why should this car take roughly double that time, when prospects may not even be that great against its predecessor?

From what I've known, it has been a done deal (production design) since spring 2015. Some on the inside have said (or very close to insiders), it was even 6 months earlier in 2014. Yet now it is spring 2018!

I refer to the design completion aspect, as that is when the real work can start in regards to development for production.

On another note, truth is, Toyota execs (except for Toyoda), typically hate such sports car projects and never wanted the 86 nor this car. Hence, the BMW partnership to shoulder some of the costs.

Even vehicles like LS and LC have lost favour with them, against the likes of Prius, Camry, ES, and RX for pure obsession over Yen/Dollar (despite the need for halo and flagship offerings).