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WE GOT OUR GRUBBY MITTS ON THE MOST HYPED
CAR OF RECENT YEARS, THE 2019 TOYOTA GR
SUPRA, AND GAVE IT A GOOD OL’ THRASH-TESTINGT
he worldwide car community has been damn lucky in
recent years, with automaker giants heeding calls to
break open the design vault and get busy working to
continue numerous cult-classic bloodlines despite
the challenges faced by the ever-tightening emission
culls; some have even gone so far as to revive their biggest
nameplates from the dead. We’ve all been lapping up this new car
goodness as if the tap could be turned off any minute.
While there’s been plenty of excitement surrounding each
launch, few have enjoyed the amount of airtime that has been
afforded to the latest offering from Toyota: the 2019 Toyota GR
Supra (A90). From the second that the big-wig boardroom decision
makers at Japan’s biggest automotive manufacturer allowed the
slightest hint of what they were doing to slip outside of the company
— putting the long-awaited successor to the famed Supra Mk4
into production — the next-generation car’s impending arrival has
had the world acting like little kids catching wind of what they are
getting for their birthday. The Supra fraternity near-on broke the
Internet speculating what this new incarnation would encompass,
and news sites were swarming with daily cannon-fodder updates
as more snippets of information were let loose.
In turn, this new Supra was put on a massive pedestal and
expectations were sky-high — fans recalled its predecessor with
rose-tinted glasses: a hulking 2JZ-powered monster that was
capable of running 10-second passes straight out of the box. A
reality check highlights the fact that the Mk4 was really a heavy
grand tourer made for comfort cruising, albeit with a ton of
unlockable potential.
So, to see if this next-generation would live up to all the hype
and expectations, we wangled one for the day and subjected it to
our signature thrash-test.WORDS: JADEN MARTIN PHOTOS: NZ PERFORMANCE CAR