BMW and Toyota to team up for sports car

BMW and Toyota have agreed to jointly engineer and produce a new sports car as part of a broad-reaching technical partnership that is also set to center on lightweight construction solutions, fuel-cell development and hybrid powertrains.

The announcement of the deal builds on an existing agreement for the supply of BMW diesel engines for various Toyota models, agreed to in December 2011. That was advanced with the signing of a memorandum by BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer and Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda in Munich, Germany, on Friday.

No official details of the joint BMW and Toyota sports- car project were revealed. But, the collaboration might provide the basis for the return of the Supra, possibly on the architecture used by the 6-series.

The Supra, once the performance spearhead of the Toyota lineup, was last produced in 2002.

Alternately, Toyota may seek to return the Celica to its lineup using a structure provided by the 3-series. The Celica was produced between 1971 and 2006 before being unceremoniously dumped from the Toyota lineup as part of a round of cost-cutting measures.

“Anything is possible,” a senior BMW manager told Autoweek. “We are looking at four key areas. The key factor is that the products of both companies retain their own individual character, despite jointly developed technologies.”

By Greg Kable