The fifth-generation Toyota Supra has effectively come and gone, and there are no expectations of a direct replacement for it in the near future. And that feels a little strange to say, because as Caleb pointed out a few months ago, it really doesn’t feel like the car was with us that long.
We sat down with Alex Shen, studio chief designer at Calty Design. Calty is Toyota’s California-based design studio, and it is the organization that (among many other things) was responsible for the concept car that eventually became the MKV Supra, which helped explain the differences between the concepts and their modern production counterparts. And in the process, they gave us some insight into how modern customer demands are shaping new design trends.
Calty handles a lot of exploratory design. With that direction, it stands to reason that its concepts would push the boundaries – often beyond what is possible from a production standpoint. The team produces what Shen calls “preliminary studies” – vague designs meant to suggest stylistic elements and not necessarily indicative of a final product.
“We’re an advanced design studio so a lot of our work isn’t really for public consumption,” Shen said. “Maybe those ideas aren’t quite finished yet, or they’re still being worked on.”
Naturally, not every design created by the studio will be showcased by the brand, let alone produced. So when something moves all the way through the pipeline, the way the Toyota FT-1 eventually became the new Supra, it leads to immediate reflection.
“Time always tells how well you’ve designed a product,” Shen said.
Each year, Calty designers choose a project they want to explore. The Supra (not yet called that) was one such selection, and the team decided that the best way to introduce a new design would be to give the brass the opportunity to actually experience it.
At the time, sports cars were viewed as a money-losing company, Shen said. It never seemed like it had a chance of getting approval, and Toyota wasn’t struggling with the traditional appeal issues that might normally prompt an automaker to roll the dice on something exciting.
He said, “You know, we haven’t heard anything about any future production plans.” “Our image was already quite good at that time.”
Shen said, “The thing that kept it a Supra was kind of a sense of what it should do, right? Version by version, this Celica transformed from a Supra to a pure sports car.”
Naturally, this led the team to ask an obvious question: “What should happen next?”
The result was the FT-1. But considering the adverse conditions of this segment, mere appearances will not seal the deal with the company. Calty decided it needed to take a more sophisticated approach.
“You should be driving these sports cars. This should be the interior,” Shane said. “Just putting the car there isn’t enough, right?”
There was just one problem. At that time Calty had nothing even remotely Like A real car to show; He just had a design. This is where Polyphony Digital comes in.
“So we put it in the machine. We put it in the Gran Turismo,” Shane said.
After just a few stints at Digital FT-1, Akio-san was sold. News came quickly from Calty leadership that the team had been given approval to build a show car – something automakers are less willing to do these days – and no one had yet come even close to green-lighting production.
The joint platform with BMW and all the complexities associated with it were not even on the radar of Calty’s team. They had to reconcile their design with both the physical constraints of shared hardware and the financial constraints of a program that – perhaps not in so many words – actually expected to make any money.
Given all this, it’s a wonder they built this thing at all, isn’t it?
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