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Toyota Has Developed A Manual Gearbox For The New Supra

With the new Toyota Supra taking an age to actually be released, our hopes for a manual gearbox in the car have slowly been dwindling. Add on the fact that the new BMW Z4, which the Supra shares the majority of its parts with, only comes with an auto, we have no reason to believe we’ll ever shift a gear manually in the Japanese sports car again.

This however, may not be the case. It’s been revealed that BMW and Toyota in fact haven’t communicated at all for years since the project began, which has meant they’ve mostly been left to their own devices when it came to designing and producing their cars.

On speaking to Car Advice, assistant chief engineer at Toyota Masayuki Kai confirmed that there is a manual ‘box in the works.

“We have developed it, yes, there is hardware ready. Right-hand drive? Yes, of course. It needs to be sold in Japan, which is a right-hand drive market,” he said.

Let’s not get our hopes up however, as the car not only needs to go through more testing, but much more market research needs to be carried out to establish that there is a market for the manual gearbox. Let’s hope the market shows that there is an opportunity for the old clutch and stick. So if a Japanese man wearing a Toyota badge asks you if you’d buy a manual… please say yes?

We can’t wait to see the Supra on the road, but until then, it will probably show its face at the Detroit Motor Show in January.

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