The BMW Z4 has reached the end of its life cycle, which means it’s time for a replacement, and Toyota inexplicably forgot to conceive a successor to the iconic Supra when that model was discontinued a decade and a half ago. It’s good, then, that both of the automakers have teamed up on new sports cars?but they won’t exactly be Japanese or German.
BMW and Toyota have remained admirably officially silent on the progress of their joint venture, but there have been looser lips at Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung, which has reported that both the Z4 replacement and the reborn Supra will be built by the Canadian-owned Magna Steyr operation near Graz. (There, the cars will use capacity once assigned to the Mini coupe, Paceman, and Countryman; the first two models are dead, while Countryman production will move to the Netherlands in its next generation.) The paper insists about 60,000 of the two-door sports cars will begin rolling out of the plant annually in 2018, which means there isn’t much time left in the cars’ gestation. While information on the Supra is thin on the ground, we do know that the BMW carries a G29 internal code name and is slated to wear a Z5 badge. Our insiders tell us the new roadster is larger than the Z4, hence the new name; the increase in size has been made, we’re told, in part as a compromise with Toyota’s needs for the Supra?and because BMW desires to leave a slot open beneath the Z5 for a possible s...