Sorry, Toyota purists, but I just love the manual Supra – Jalopnik so much

The Toyota Supra is not a real Toyota Supra. It’s actually a BMW, and most importantly, it doesn’t even smell like a new Toyota. I don’t care either because I absolutely love it, and if you’re still sticking to the ‘principle’ then I don’t know what to tell you. You’re missing out on a good time just because you don’t like the way Toyota went about building a great sports car, and the manual transmission makes it so much better that I’m still a little mad Toyota didn’t offer it right away.

Usually a car does not need a manual transmission. Automatic cars get better gas mileage and don’t come with the horsepower they used to have, so there’s really no reason to offer them in cars intended for economical transportation. And unfortunately, because companies treat employees as a cost to be minimized, the majority of cars are now purchased with simple, economical transportation in mind. You’re also not going to set lap records in a hardcore sports car equipped with a manual transmission, so I completely understand why carmakers are going the dual-clutch route for their Serious Track Cars.

But the Toyota Supra is not a serious track car. It’s a daily-drive sports car that people buy because they want to have fun, and manual transmissions are more fun. The Supra demanded a manual transmission the first time I drove it, and now, some three and a half years later, I finally got the chance to spend some time behind the wheel. In fact, that time was on a race track, and as long as I waited my turn after each lap so that other journalists had a chance to go too, I could lap the cars Toyota had on the track until the wheels fell off.

Full disclosure: Toyota wanted me so badly to drive the new Supra that it flew me to Fort Worth for the unveiling of the new RAV4, put me up in a hotel, rented out a track, and provided gas and tires, as well as food and drinks. Then most of the other journalists who were there went off to do something else, which gave me the freedom to make almost as many laps around the track as I wanted. And before you ask, yes, that all happened a while ago, but the Supra has been on my mind ever since.

Yes, the one lap per session restriction was annoying, but there were a lot of people who needed their time on the track, so I understand. Fortunately, after a while, most of them succumbed to the need to eat food and disappeared before lunch, leaving only a few of us behind, leaking cars again and again. I may not be anywhere near the best driver in the business, but I know track time when I see it, and I wasn’t about to let that go to waste, especially when there are sports cars to drive. Sports cars with manual transmissions, actually.

And after a few laps in the manual Supra, I couldn’t bring myself to care about the BMW bones. Yes, the shift action felt very BMW, and the engine is a BMW engine, but it just felt right. The turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six sits in that happy middle zone where there’s enough power to make things fun without being so fast that you get into trouble, and the transmission’s shifts felt good enough that I quickly forgot about the comparisons with other automakers. All I could really focus on was having fun and finding ways to go faster every lap.

Better drivers probably have more complaints, and I’m sure they’re all valid, but I think what impressed me most about driving the manual Supra was how forgiving it was. When you switch between cars every lap, you don’t know how much grip the next car’s tires will have, and that made the first few corners a total guessing game. One car could be crisp and grippy, while the next could be super slick, and there was only one way to find out. But whether I was in a slippery car or one with a lot of grip, I never felt like I was in danger of losing control.

Of course I made a lot of mistakes. I missed top marks. I didn’t always brake hard enough. And yes, maybe my laps would have been faster if I hadn’t driven manual, but would I have had just as much fun? Not at all. And unless there’s a real race (or at least someone keeping track of lap times), isn’t fun more important than squeezing out the last possible tenth of a second? Not that I ever lapped so fast that tenths of a second would even matter.

These days, power and acceleration are cheap. You can buy a used EV for under $20,000 that will wipe the floor with some serious new performance cars, at least in a straight line. But how many new cars are actually fun to drive? How many feel like they want you to push them harder, yet still slide predictably and safely when you mess something up? Heck, how many of them are even available with a manual transmission?

There are also plenty of cars that can beat the Supra, but was I thinking about those cars on the track? No. I was just focused on how much fun I was having, doing my best to clean up my laps and enjoying a car that rewarded me for learning to drive it better. And if it had been my car, I could have just driven it home at the end of the day, because that’s one of the great benefits of buying something that isn’t a super hardcore, serious track machine.

Is the manual Supra the car I would buy if I had the $58,695 budget to buy one? I honestly don’t know. I never really cared for the styling, and $60,000 can buy a lot of used sports cars. But would it at least be shortlisted in this purely hypothetical scenario that will never happen? Absolute.

It’s not just the manual gearbox either. That’s part of it, but actually it’s because the whole package comes together. It’s balanced, comfortable, not too fast, practical and reliable enough, while also being fast, engaging, rewarding and feeling better than any BMW/part Toyota should feel. Of course the manual gearbox helps. It is a sports car after all. Sports cars deserve manual transmissions, and so did I like the automatic, it was the manual that I fell in love with.

Sorry, Toyota purists.