Is Anyone Really Buying The New Supra (A Jalopnik Article)

XtremeMaC

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The dealerships really are awful. I went into my local dealer up the road to see one, and nobody came up to me to talk about the car for a good while, just a bunch of sales guys standing around talking amongst themselves. When I asked a salesman if I could look inside and under the bonnet, he told me that he can't do that and only the store manager has access to the car. They didn't even seem interested in trying to sell the thing at all.
Show us the money first Steven! Wear a sign saying you're willing to pay $10K more :)

I'll have to go into the dealers nowadays and see how they react. During the summer with the absolute zero knowledge they had on the car plus the lack of actual physical car, as everyone knows, they couldn't and didn't offer much in terms of pricing to availability... Wonder if that changed a bit now.

I did comment in the Jalopnik article, always pending, I'll reiterate the biggest hurdle which is not how much BMW it has or whatever, it's simply the amount of struggle Toyota had in putting the vehicle in the showrooms this whole summer.
You can only expect a handful of interested people in forums like this to go out and pre-order or go into a dealer and sit through non-existing ordering process with colors you saw online unless you were lucky enough to be at VA/TX/LA. Personally I didn't exactly know which color I wanted to get. I was inclining towards a yellow, but couldn't make a well informed decision and I wanted to get my hands on LE, which yellow wasn't even an option and black/red for me didn't do it.
I don't know if the amount of dealer and availability f'up has been the same in Europe.
For one thing if you go to any Porsche, Vette or BMW dealer, you know the colors or at least given a color palette. Toyota couldn't even be bothered to send palettes to dealers. On the other hand you look at C8, all options, not just the coloring have been physically advertised in stores, there was an official launch date where people went in and actually placed their orders.
Supra is and, if not for nothing, at least due to such f'ups, will be limited to niche market hence lower volume.

I also highlighted that this is a sports car, meant for spring/summer and people getting their hands on the car late summer going into shitty rainy/snowy fall then winter isn't exactly the prime time for people to consider a car on summer tires.
On the other hand, on purpose or not, C8 (now perhaps 3 months further delayed) was targeted to come out in January, even better now with the strike it may come out in April and especially since it comes with a convertible, for sure will sell more in it's first year.

In short, timing and availability is, if at all, what's mostly causing lower sales volumes would be my opinion.
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A70TTR

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I've seen several of them outside of work around the world and have still not seen a single M2C as of yet lol.

I've also seen only a couple of Z4s.

Just shows that the experience varies widely depending on numerous factors.
 

Supra Guy

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I still havenā€™t seen a Supra on the road other than in the showroom at the dealer. Wife says she saw one on the road once so far.
 

CSUfiend

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Article is uninformed and humping to many conclusions. Writer lives in a small world maybe?

I live in a Top 20 media market in the US (on the west coast) and I can tell you that I have seen no Supraā€™s on the road (seen 1 Z4 only), and there are currently 7 listed in my area, and none of them are selling at or below MSRP.

but unlike the person who wrote this article, I wonā€™t project my market conditions as a fact for the entire country like this guy did:rolleyes:
 

Paolo

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Donā€™t agree with the article but agree with some in the comment section.
Itā€™s a car Iā€™m keen to buy but the attitude of the Toyota dealers here in Australia sour the whole experience.
The car is usually in a roped off section. No test drive is allowed and some dealers wonā€™t let you even sit in the car.
Iā€™ve started looking at a Lexus RCF.
The Lexus dealers throw you the keys and tell you to enjoy the test drive.
That's insane.

What's the point of selling a car when it's all a show pony and roped off?

Looks like Toyota Australia thinks its some sort of supercar at a motor show.

Terrible terrible marketing.
 

2JZ-No-Sh*t

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I mean he isnā€™t wrong.
Iā€™ve personally looked for a Focus RS on order and a type R, in addition to the the new Porsche GT4.
The first two, never even landed in my entire local region. All the sold units went directly to previous allocations. The cars were hard to buy, but easy to see on the streets.
Good to see you back on the forum. :thumbsup:

Idk if that is a fair comparison. All three of those are higher tier versions of their base counterpart. Let's see how long the rumored track and GRMN Supra stays on the lot. ;)
 

DesmoSD

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Why do people get so worked up on Jalopnik. "If it's not positive press, I don't want to hear it."

The article makes sense. There are a lot of MKV's for sale and in San Diego, even though TJ Hunt bought his MKV from SD and one member here is hosting a SD meet, I have yet to see one on the road. I've literally only seen one and that was the RR one roped off at Poway Toyota.
 

YungMercureal

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Why do people get so worked up on Jalopnik. "If it's not positive press, I don't want to hear it."

The article makes sense. There are a lot of MKV's for sale and in San Diego, even though TJ Hunt bought his MKV from SD and one member here is hosting a SD meet, I have yet to see one on the road. I've literally only seen one and that was the RR one roped off at Poway Toyota.
Xtrememac a few posts up gave a perfect explanation of actual reasons why the car hasn't sold as much. The article just seems clickbait based on how it's been written and the supporting evidence they try to use.

The best part of the article is one of the comments that talks about the Supra being only famous among car people. It's a car that isn't really able to be marketed to non-car people, but the lack of manual and the BMW collab turned away alot of Supra faithfuls. I think that people are fine with the negative press because people are jaded at this point, but it sometimes seems like these articles are expecting the Supra to come into the market and sell like hotcakes when that's simply not the case.
 

Jeff Lange

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I think I've seen probably 8-9 in person but only 3 were random "out and about" sightings, the rest were places I would maybe expect to see one (Toyota dealer, car show, etc.).

Sat in, started one up and rev'ed it up a bit, but have yet to drive one. One of the problems is that with cars like this, you'll get a lot of people that want to come in just to see it and/or drive it but with no intention of ever buying it, and when you were only allocated 1-2 for the first little bit, it can be hard when an actual buyer comes in an sees that the car already has 300-400 km on it or more. At a BMW dealer, you're less likely to get these types of people and the Z4 is frankly not that "special" in the BMW lineup compared to the Supra at Toyota.

It can be very frustrating for potential owners though, and you never know when that person who just "popped in" changes their mind and actually wants to buy it.

Jeff
 
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supraboi

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Why do people get so worked up on Jalopnik. "If it's not positive press, I don't want to hear it."

The article makes sense. There are a lot of MKV's for sale and in San Diego, even though TJ Hunt bought his MKV from SD and one member here is hosting a SD meet, I have yet to see one on the road. I've literally only seen one and that was the RR one roped off at Poway Toyota.
I think it's because they didn't use any sale numbers. If we're just looking at sale figures than the Supra is doing pretty well. At the end of the year they may sell as much Supras as Z4s despite BMW having a 4 month head start advantage.

It's also worth nothing that Supra sales aren't that far off from the 718 when it was first released in 2016. I'm curious to see how many were just Caymans but I can't find any numbers that don't include the Boxster as well.

https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/porsche-718-sales-figures/
 

DesmoSD

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Xtrememac a few posts up gave a perfect explanation of actual reasons why the car hasn't sold as much. The article just seems clickbait based on how it's been written and the supporting evidence they try to use.

The best part of the article is one of the comments that talks about the Supra being only famous among car people. It's a car that isn't really able to be marketed to non-car people, but the lack of manual and the BMW collab turned away alot of Supra faithfuls. I think that people are fine with the negative press because people are jaded at this point, but it sometimes seems like these articles are expecting the Supra to come into the market and sell like hotcakes when that's simply not the case.
I agree with Xtrememac and Toyota marketing was non existent for the Supra launch.

If you remember the 90's, Toyota was anywhere and everywhere. What made Toyota interesting was their clever marketing, their demo drives and movement to get new buyers into a Toyota. They were great in the 80's and 90's but since they went through their dry spell with sports cars and moved out of SoCal, they forgot how to stimulate the market.


I think it's because they didn't use any sale numbers. If we're just looking at sale figures than the Supra is doing pretty well. At the end of the year they may sell as much Supras as Z4s despite BMW having a 4 month head start advantage.

It's also worth nothing that Supra sales aren't that far off from the 718 when it was first released in 2016. I'm curious to see how many were just Caymans but I can't find any numbers that don't include the Boxster as well.

https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/porsche-718-sales-figures/
I'm not sure how accurate these sales figures are but here are both values. If 2019 Supra sales numbers can meet the 2016 Cayman numbers, do you really consider that a win-win? 2016 was a one night stand for the Cayman and the honeymoon staged slowly faded when they realized that there were driving a 4 cyl turbo. :rofl:

http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/toyota/toyota-supra/

Supra MKV
July 320
August 643
September 514

Cayman
2016 3,590
2017 2,800
2018 1,101

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