Did you know the new Toyota Supra is powered by the BMW b-58 engine that's
right!
Welcome back to the channel on your buddy mark with exotic car place and
today...
it's nice
because this was such a controversial discussion love Toyota to utilize BMWs
drivetrain for the new Toyota Supra the question was asked of Toyota's chief
design engineer Tatsuya tada who actually had a great response and it
came down to economics because when we talk about economics BMW actually is
providing not only the engine but the 8-speed automatic transmission as well
as a large part of the chassis from there cars are going into this new Supra
now that saves a whole host of dollars for research and development and that's
why Toyota elected to utilize something by BMW
now BMW had the perfect ingredients they had a performance engine it was six
cylinders inline and it was turbocharged and it also provided a hefty amount of
horsepower that was consistent with the brand it's consistent with the
expectations for a new Toyota Supra which will be of course hitting the
streets much much sooner than later of course now Toyota knew that they had to
sleeve in a six cylinder turbocharged engine into the Supra because anything
different than that would be heresy it would be frowned upon extremely by the
purist it was bad enough that they had we had to reach out to BMW already to
provide the drivetrain and gearbox for this particular car and as I mentioned
before Toyota utilized that not only the engine they used the 8-speed auto and
the chassis from BMW now fret not you purists out there of
course the engine was fettled slightly so that the Toyota
design engineers or the engineers at Toyota tweaked things so it is it
matched more of the Toyotas or the Supras expectation of performance it was
different it was a different power delivery then you would kind of get from
a BMW it was unique if you will now the 8-speed auto was as well tuned
specific and the chassis will be dialed in according to more the Toyota
specifications so ultimately we know it's economics and that was admitted to
by the engineer at Toyota but economics comes in three
fold there's three key reasons why a car company would consider economics when
designing a car and you guys all know already by now that Toyota and Lexus
have great cars great drive trains in their history and I know you're gonna
ask the question why would they not utilize an engine from say the ISF but
that's an 8 v8 how about the wonderful LFA drivetrain well see that's where
economics comes in because the LFA if you guys didn't already know was
scrapped a couple of times it was reworked the original prototype came out
with an aluminum chassis or aluminum shell and of course they quickly
realized that it was way too heavy with all the glass and the aluminum it was
still too heavy to be effective so they reworked everything and they created a
carbon fiber chassis or carbon fiber body shell to drop some the weight well
that reworking cost a lot of R&D research and development dollars and
unfortunately that put Toyota or Lexus in a place where they lost money on
every single car that they sold did you know that
so that is why largely Toyota is very sensitive to the research development
costs on a low production car such as the Toyota Supra so again before we get
into the top three reasons remember Toyota is no longer looking at
low volume cars they're not looking at especially car anymore as a matter of
fact Toyota is really large into the hybrid cars they're looking at their
mainstream stuff the cars that you know are the tried-and-true reliable you know
sedans and SUVs that cater to a large volume of people they're not really
focused anymore on the low volume cars like a Supra or LFA they really tread
lightly because they know the kind of dollars and economical implications it
has if you make a bad move so here's the three reasons to consider why Toyota
opted to go with a BMW drivetrain number one is the deliverables so
they designed a car the new Supra has been sitting in the wings for quite some
time now there's been a lot of debate about it there's been a lot of
discussion about what it's going to look like the performance the whole
attributes of the new Supra now unfortunately by the time they decided
to pull a trigger the deliverables needed to be there they needed to have
all the parts in place the research and development had to be not only in in
place it actually had to be completed they had to have an engine that was
strong enough as well as met the criteria that they were looking for for
that car and of course they didn't have the deliverables they didn't have an
engine suitable for the duty that they were expecting for the new Supra so they
had to go seeking for an inline six-cylinder turbocharged engine and
they found it at BMW the second reason why Toyota likely opted for a BMW
drivetrain and transmission is accountability
now I come from a business in my previous life where often you seek out
for contract help for building for designing as well as supplying of parts
and equipment now that not only is a convenient way to spec something let
somebody else handle it for you and design and worry about all the details
it's also a way to shed accountability now we know that some of these cars are
high-performance engines
high-performance cars the Supra the LFA BMW M cars all those cars are
high-performance and there's a risk of reliability concerns Toyota and Lexus
know already that they do not want to risk that reputation so what do they do
they seek out a third-party like BMW to provide that equipment the transmission
the engine part of the chassis they've sub that out for BMW so number
one it gets that deliverable which we already discussed but number two if
there in fact is a problem with the drivetrain supplied by another vendor it
is very very easy for Toyota to do a...and wash their hands of it and say well that
was actually provided by BMW number one we can shed some blame and number two we
could also chase that third party now for quality control deficiency repairs
and all those kind of things they can seek out BMW now for damages and
additional costs associated with that third party engine supply now the third
reason why they probably decided to go with a BMW drivetrain is experience now
whoa hang on guys I know a lot of you guys are gonna argue and say well Toyota
they're perfect they built a Supra they built several generations of Supra they
built the LFA the ISF they know how to build a car we know that that's not the
question when I say experience they've learned
not only from their own experience on losses economical losses they that that
they sustained with the LFA that's part of the learning that's part of an
experience and they know that a low production car is going to cost them
dearly to possibly create research develop that car and put it into
production lots of additional cost so they've experienced that now they're
going to learn from that they also understand that BMW is very experienced
in designing high-performance engines do you forget about a lot of the crazy cars
that BMW has created or created engines for we've got the m4 GTS
we've got the m5 e60 right here with the wonderful v10 we've got a lot of the
newer creations they also created monsters like the McLaren f1 do you
forget that animal over 600 horsepower and was legendary still to this date
they know that BMW is very experienced in high-performance drive trains and
they're going to tap into that experience bank and rely on BMW to
provide an engine that is tunable reliable powerful and most of all suits
the application that Toyota was looking for in the new Supra so everybody I
really really hope you enjoyed the video three main reasons why Toyota opted to
walk away from designing their own engine and subbed out an engine designed
by BMW and utilize that engine in the new Toyota Supra and I really hope you
guys if you have any other theories on this please make sure you drop a line
down in the comment section below I'd love to hear your opinion on this do you
think it's a bad move by Toyota to adopt a BMW engine do you think it's a good
idea that they did this and why I'd love to hear your guys's reasoning about that
and as well make sure you give my video a thumbs up like and don't forget to
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see you guys on the next one bye bye