I have a very hard time believing the premium won't affect the Supra. Considering all the stories we've heard about how difficult of a partnership this has been for Tada-san and his team, it would seem very illogical for BMW to also let them sell the Supra with their tech for thousands less...unless they limit the Supra's HP so that they don't step on their own toes which I believe is happening either way but to what extent will be interesting.
Everyone seems to view this partnership through the lens of Toyota being some sort of pauper beggar company knocking on big BMW's door. Toyota is the bigger and better company. Sports car technology is neither lucrative nor sought after because it doesn't make companies enough money. I'm sure Toyota is giving them some sort of hybrid technology or agreement/future partnership on some technology in return for BMWs i6. It's really not that special of an engine. The only thing that makes it special is that Toyota wants it. BMW has plenty of other engines. We all know the future isn't petrol anyway, no reason to hold onto this i6 like its the messiah of engines.
Hybrid technology has always been the heart of this partnership
The 45 minute German English review said 75k euro German fully loaded
um...your point? They may be a bigger/better company but what has that resulted in because they still needed to get a partnership. The hybrid talk is still all talk, not a single hybrid concept has come out since the announcement years ago and I'm pretty sure Toyota has virtually stopped selling their models in EU with BMW diesels..this was an exercise in laughing all the way to the Bavarian bank.
Unless there's $10K worth of options
None of us are exactly privy to the specifics of this deal. From what I got from the interviews I've read, Toyota has either traded something (hybrid tech) or outright paid BMW cash for a portion of the development of this car, the split not necessarily (or even likely) being 50%. And by the sounds of it, the next gen Z4 wouldn't have even happened without a partner like Toyota. I'm sure its a good deal for the both of them. Why Toyota didn't just build a new car with Lexus, who knows. Seems kinda dumb to partner with your child\sibling companies biggest competitor.
At the same time,Lexus seems to be in a rebellious phase with Toyota
why does it matter what goes on behind closed doors when we can all see whether things are being released or not...ever since the partnership was announced back in 2012 or w/e, there have been zero concepts between BMW/Toyota featuring any hybrid tech, whereas Toyota has used a couple BMW diesels on the Avensis and RAV4 for just like 3 model years with 2018 being the last year before it all gets dropped...and on top of that Toyota has moved much further along in their partnerships with Subaru and Mazda, most notably providing Subaru with the Prius Prime PHEV system for the Crosstrek.. Seems like BMW was just wanting Toyota to pay up in order for them to share their stuff as opposed to sharing tech..
