Interviews with Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada

[greaseman]

couple weeks later?

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[A70TTR]

No idea, but I feel like probably months at the earliest, but I'm just guessing based on what I have.

 

[Prius_F_Sport]

I say lots of carbon fibre. Modern sports car, and coming out of none other than Gazoo Racing, the same group that built two looms to weave CF into the LFA's pillars.

 

[Prius_F_Sport]

Maybe more than just a couple of months. Remember how long we waited between the '14 C7 Stingray and the '19 C7 ZR1?

 

[MA617M]

How long after the RC unveiling was the RC F debuted?

Similarly, LC 500 vs LC F? That's a bit more exclusive though.

 

[Guff]

Anyone speak Japanese?

Chief engineer Tetsuya Tada Talks about the new Supra! May 25 at 21 o'clock

Okay, so I have a quick and dirty translation/synopsis for about 20minutes worth of this interview, from none other than the OG, @ichitaka05. We'll try to get the rest of it out soon, it's a long interview!

-When Tada-San was at in Spain for 86 media press, he got the call from Toyota to fly to Germany ASAP to talk w bmw.

-Before 86 project, he was Working w Daihatsu to collab w Toyota to make a car, so Daihatsu & Toyota, Subaru & Toyota, so he assumed Toyota thought its a best to use him for those collab project, cuz he have an experience in those things.

-There was a chance that someone else was going to take Supra project, cuz Tada-San was already busy w 86 project, but in the end, they decided to go w him.

-At first “Supra” wasn’t the first thing to come up as a bmw collab project

-Due to a lot of huddle to go through w bmw

-Tada-San thought collab w Subaru was so damn hard & never do it again. He thinks Subaru thought the same.

-But after working & collab w Bmw, collab w Subaru was nothing, so damn easy.

-Biggest thing that was struggle was cultural difference between Germany & japan of building a car. Germany, they build cars cuz they just wanted to, vs Japan they build car for purpose. So understanding both side was hard

-Bmw engineer didn’t like & admit Toyota engineer. Bmw taking pride of their cars & looking down on them.

-So to get both in the same boat took over an yr

-First private event between Bmw & Toyota, they both bring their sports car & trade them to help understand each other’s car, concept & ideas.

-When that day came, Toyota crew got there hr or so early. But sadly it was raining, so they tried to go inside the building, but Bmw crew told em that, they’re not allowed to go inside the building, due to all the top secret stuff. Bmw crew told em to wait in the outside tent

-When event happened, all the Bmw engineers drove Toyota sports car, they said “they drive decent.” (In insulting tone) They’ve never driven Toyota car in their life.

-“Bmw engineers weren’t trying to be racist or anything, just they never heard or thought of Asian cars can be good.”, Tada-san states.

-Highest compliment came from Bmw engineers driving the 86. They really admired how 86 drove

-Lil over a yr collab w Bmw Tada-san department hired a staff who was born in Germany. When he came to work on the project, he made a big difference & Bmw crew start to open up more & Toyota crew started to understand a lot more how Bmw crew were saying previously

-While working w Subaru, they debate in Japanese... but Tada-san said “it’s Japanese, but somehow it’s not Japanese.” (As sarcasm way)

-When Toyota decided to make a sports car w Bmw, their reaction was none/not interested. “Oh okay”, “that nice” & so on.

-Bmw crew asked Toyota crew “What kind of sports car you wanna make?”, Toyota crew responded “sports car that even Porsche will be surprised!” Bmw crew replied “we’ve never made a sports car to surprise Porsche or care to surprise them.”

-So in short Bmw crews have high pride in their car.

 

[DevonK]

It's a credit to the Toyota team that they got past this stuff. (But then we are only getting one side of the story here...)

 

[Jdmuscle]

It's a credit to the Toyota team that they got past this stuff. (But then we are only getting one side of the story here...)

Agreed. However we can always say that Japanese folks are more submissive in nature and Germans have more of a crude way of expressing themselves. That’s the culture shock that he seems to be referencing here. I don’t think either of the teams were deliberately rude to the other. However you can see ... Germans having a superiority complex given that Toyota hasn’t built a proper sports car besides the LFA and GT86 in 20+ years. So they could’ve easily dismissed toyota’s Know how’s in this segment of vehicles.

 

[Patchaaron]

It's a credit to the Toyota team that they got past this stuff. (But then we are only getting one side of the story here...)

I kinda imagine the other side being along the lines of: These strange Japanese engineers showed up and wouldn't leave for 9 years. kept complaining about how the engines need to be "reliable" and "efficient". then said kept saying this annoying phrase TSS 100 times a day... eventually we realized they weren't going to leave so we let them work with us on the new Z4 that probably wouldn't sell well anyways. We figured it would help cut down on development costs since we weren't paying them, kind of like intern.

 

[CantEven_Supra]

Agreed. However we can always say that Japanese folks are more submissive in nature and Germans have more of a crude way of expressing themselves. That’s the culture shock that he seems to be referencing here. I don’t think either of the teams were deliberately rude to the other. However you can see ... Germans having a superiority complex given that Toyota hasn’t built a proper sports car besides the LFA and GT86 in 20+ years. So they could’ve easily dismissed toyota’s Know how’s in this segment of vehicles.

I kinda imagine the other side being along the lines of: These strange Japanese engineers showed up and wouldn't leave for 9 years. kept complaining about how the engines need to be "reliable" and "efficient". then said kept saying this annoying phrase TSS 100 times a day... eventually we realized they weren't going to leave so we let them work with us on the new Z4 that probably wouldn't sell well anyways. We figured it would help cut down on development costs since we weren't paying them, kind of like intern.

Wasn't there some information floating around somehwere that when the two prototype cars were lapping that the "Supra" demolished the "Z4" and Toyota had to help BMW figure out why their car was so slow? I understand one is being developed as a pure sports car and the other is a luxury convertible but they made it sound like the difference in time was even more than just "two different feelings" path of development

 

[Prius_F_Sport]

Especially as they have basically the same drivetrain and platform.

 

[A70TTR]

Wasn't there some information floating around somehwere that when the two prototype cars were lapping that the "Supra" demolished the "Z4" and Toyota had to help BMW figure out why their car was so slow? I understand one is being developed as a pure sports car and the other is a luxury convertible but they made it sound like the difference in time was even more than just "two different feelings" path of development

yes that did happen lol; I was the one that spoke about it.

 

[HKz]

Anyone speak Japanese?

Chief engineer Tetsuya Tada Talks about the new Supra! May 25 at 21 o'clock

at around 39:00 it sounds like the host wanted to discuss the transmission options though Tada-san couldn't reveal any info...but I think he made it clear that he did not previously say or confirm that the manual option is off the table.

 

[SupraFiend]

1380kg is roughly 3043lbs and that aint bad at all for a 350+ base model. Wonder what kind of weight savings magic Gazoo can come up with.

That is the almost exact weight of an 85 mk2 Supra PType with a manual tranny. Sounds good to me!

 

[Modal170]

at around 39:00 it sounds like the host wanted to discuss the transmission options though Tada-san couldn't reveal any info...but I think he made it clear that he did not previously say or confirm that the manual option is off the table.

This shit ain't going to die until the last car of the generation rolls out the factory will it?

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