Toyota GR Supra 2019 first drive

But actually, you just want to know what it’s like to drive. From the outset the signs are good, perhaps maybe even a little too good. You’ll notice first the ride quality: we’re used to cars like Caymans and Alpines riding well, but to achieve such plush comfort with a sizeable motor sitting on the driven wheels is a different challenge and one to which the Supra rises with ease. It positively glides down the road in a way you’d be happy to find in a soft-bottomed GT car, let alone one billed to be as sporting as this.

That six-cylinder engine is terrific, too. Not an M Power marvel, true, but certainly far more charming in both voice and power delivery than anything you’ll find under the engine cover of a 718 Cayman. There’s essentially zero lag and so wide is the power band you can deal with almost any decent road in third and fourth alone. You’ll like the way it handles, too: its steering is quite quick while avoiding the off-centre aggression engineered into some rapid racks to make cars feel more sporting than they really are. Lateral grip from the fat Michelins is impressive, longitudinal grip in the form of traction more impressive still. It’s a very easy car to get into a corner and an even easier one in which to power away.

So all good, then? Yes, and if this car has an issue, that’s it, right there. There’s goodness here, lots of it, but not so much that you’d more readily identify as being truly great. Which in this small but highly select class, is problematic.

Whatever Toyota’s engineers say, the eight speed auto is not the right gearbox for this car. It’s quite quick, but it doesn’t rip through its ratios as would the double-clutch transmission it needs. It can seem a little slow to take up downshifts too. Toyota says it was ruled out because of weight, but the Cayman and A110, both lighter cars (the latter considerably so), are so equipped.

But the real reason the Supra falls slightly but significantly short in the all-out sports car role chosen for it by its creators is the way its chassis is configured, and in three key areas. First there is that suspension softness: standard adaptive damping means the body’s never going to flop about, but there is still too much movement when you start to drive it really hard. The car is always stable but it needs guiding down a great road, where either one of its mid-engined rivals can simply be lobbed. Its body movements need a degree of anticipation and management that theirs do not. It resists understeer commendably well and will only oversteer on a dry road if provoked, and that’s impressive, but its angle of attack is less throttle sensitive than the mid-engined cars’, lacking as it does their near-balletic, on the limit grace.