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bballr35

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Great news from Bloomberg!

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) and Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) are moving closer to putting jointly developed sports cars on the road.

Cooperation on the underpinnings of the vehicles “has moved on to the concept phase and is running according to plan,” Munich-based BMW said in a statement to Bloomberg News. A technical feasibility study that began in January 2013 has been “successfully completed.”

The midsize model is the most visible project within a broader partnership the manufacturers have said will last until at least 2020. The two companies have been tight-lipped about details, including the targeted introduction date, after announcing the plan early last year. Toyota today confirmed that the project has moved beyond the feasibility stage, which was initially due to be completed by the end of 2013.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, needs sports cars “to put that energy back into the brand,” Europe Executive Vice President Karl Schlicht said last month at the Paris Motor Show when asked about the cooperation with BMW, which this year started selling the racy $135,700 i8 plug-in hybrid.

In January, Toyota showed the FT-1 coupe concept at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The company said the rear-wheel-drive sports car’s design drew from past models including the Supra, 2000GT and Celica.

In addition to the sports car, Toyota and the world’s biggest maker of luxury vehicles are cooperating on research into fuel cells, lightweight technology and lithium-air batteries. The two companies agreed to work together on lithium-ion batteries in 2012. Both companies declined to comment further on the new sports cars.

Automakers tend to look for partners to limit costs of developing new technology and small-scale vehicles. Other tie-ups include Daimler AG’s cooperation with the Renault SA-Nissan Motor Co. alliance, which has been gradually expanding beyond projects such as new versions of Daimler’s urban Smart cars and Renault’s Twingo subcompact.
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Faxanadu

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So we getting another FT1 concept then? Hope they don't dumb down the design. And BMW will come out with a concept too? This joint project thing is kinda wierd..
 
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bballr35

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It's a little confusing what the whole Toyota-BMW relationship is in this and what car or cars will be made by each company. From the reports and rumors out there it sounds like they're working jointly on a modular platform that can be used for sports car models and so far Toyota seems like theyll use it for the FT1/Supra and BMW will use it for some Z4 successor - Z3 or Z5.
 

fox body

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It's a little confusing what the whole Toyota-BMW relationship is in this and what car or cars will be made by each company. From the reports and rumors out there it sounds like they're working jointly on a modular platform that can be used for sports car models and so far Toyota seems like theyll use it for the FT1/Supra and BMW will use it for some Z4 successor - Z3 or Z5.
So we won't get a rebadged Toyobaru situation? Thank god.
 
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bballr35

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So we won't get a rebadged Toyobaru situation? Thank god.
Right I don't think the goal was ever to jointly develop a shared car, just a shared platform for its cost saving efficiences so that each co can build lower volume sports cars for cheaper.
 

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Whatever bmw makes a concept car wont hold be anywhere as nice as the FT1 concept.
 

Nadeshot!

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Whatever bmw makes a concept car wont hold be anywhere as nice as the FT1 concept.
Might be true but the BMW concept will be a accurate preview of what the production version will look like. Toyota doesnt have as good of a track record with concepts. The eventual FR-S design looked a lot different than 2 of the 3 concepts Toyota showed before making the car.
 

Scuba Steve

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Right I don't think the goal was ever to jointly develop a shared car, just a shared platform for its cost saving efficiences so that each co can build lower volume sports cars for cheaper.
Make sense. Sports cars are a hard business decision to approve for most manufacturers (except if you're talking Porsche) because they don't sell in huge numbers, are expensive to produce, and lose their popularity (i.e. sales) quickly after the first few years. So Toyota going out and finding partners to share costs with when building a sports car like the FR-S and now FT-1 totally makes sense. Targeting BMW was very smart since they have that huge carbon fiber plant and can now produce and use the material in their cars for cheap. Check out the BMW i3 that has a full carbon monocoque and costs only how much. A full carbon monocoque 10 years ago was only something you'd see on a F1 race track.
 

Ren

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It's a little confusing what the whole Toyota-BMW relationship is in this and what car or cars will be made by each company. From the reports and rumors out there it sounds like they're working jointly on a modular platform that can be used for sports car models and so far Toyota seems like theyll use it for the FT1/Supra and BMW will use it for some Z4 successor - Z3 or Z5.
It's not really clear exactly what each company's specific role is from the official press announcements. They just say that they're working together on things.

I'm curious to see which co is the engeering/technical lead on the project or for which aspects.
 

black-supra

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It's not really clear exactly what each company's specific role is from the official press announcements. They just say that they're working together on things.

I'm curious to see which co is the engeering/technical lead on the project or for which aspects.
I hope theres a single chief engineer for the project and it should be Tada from Toyota the man who managed to bring the FR-S to market. He brought a lightweight fun sports car unlike the stuff BMW has been pushing out.
 

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So we getting another FT1 concept then? Hope they don't dumb down the design. And BMW will come out with a concept too? This joint project thing is kinda wierd..
You can bet on another FT-1 concept. The project supposedly just moved into the "concept" stage so I think that means we'll see an actual engineer developed concept design eventually. The current concept was designed without engineers and product managers involved. It was purely a design exercise that Toyoda told CALTY to do.
 

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It's really no wonder BMW decided to go in on a sports car platform development together. They think that the sports car market hey day is over and may never recover to its heights.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...ar-heyday-over-as-super-rich-eyes-wander.html

So this is a way of bringing a new sports car to a smaller market without the crazy R&D costs of doing it along without a partner.
No wonder all they build now are ugly SUV/Wagon type cars :rofl: Well the M4 is pretty cool I guess but the Z4 was a failure. Should have just kept it the Z3 at least that was a fun car.
 

Ren

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Any chance Toyota doesn't introduce another concept FT-1 and goes straight to introducing a Supra Concept?
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