Parking Lot Chroicles: Toyota Supra

 

The 5th gen Toyota Supra is a car of gravitas and compromise. 

Sharing its bones with the BMW Z4, Toyota awkwardly nipped and tucked its gorgeous concept car, the FT-1, shown below, to fit a platform designed for a taller, sedan-based BMW.

 

The Toyota FT-1 Concept

To my eye, the production Supra, with its wound-like slits and gashes across bulbous panels turns it into a  bruised pear.

Toyota did its best, but without their own platform, the dramatic lines from the concept are weaker than the seasoning on the burgers at Braum's.

So we got something that has too much happening but also lacks the confident beauty of the concept. People can feel things like that, ya know, a lack of confidence. Maybe they don't have the words to point that out in a car's design, but they can see it. They can sense it. 

 

All that said, the car still looks good from a few angles besides the front.

Probably. I didn't check.

But as I snapped my photo, I found myself drawn in by the poorly resolved lines, but then I wanted to stay, because, "Holy shit, look, it's a Supra!" The idea of this car is much more than the sum of its parts.   

The name alone is over-the-top in that anime kind of way: Supra! And it's applied to a modern sports car with a manual, luxurious digs on the inside, and you can trace styling cues back to its earlier generations. 

 

Toyota reached beyond time into old copies of Tokyo Drift and Need for Speed, resurrecting a car whose legacy outshone the actual vehicle, and delivered a myth realized in metal and rubber.

 

In a world that despises sports cars, we should all be grateful.