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Toyota, Ford decide to end hybrid collaboration before it starts

Not all so-called Memorandum of Understanding pacts end in actual collaborations. For instance, after a two-year "feasibility study," Toyota and Ford have just announced that they will not be developing hybrid systems for use in light trucks and SUVs as previously planned, and the two automakers will instead continue to develop their own hybrid technology independently.
The would-be collaboration was first announced in August of 2011, and would have seen a rear-wheel-drive hybrid platform that would "improve the efficiency of trucks and SUVs while still allowing them to be driven in the way customers expect," according to our initial post on the topic.
Keep in mind that this announcement isn't to say we shouldn't expect hybrid pickups and SUVs from the two automakers, but that they probably aren't coming very soon - Ford says it will have a system "before the end of this decade" and we haven't heard much from Toyota on the hybrid truck front since the 2008 A-BAT Concept (pictured above) - and that they will not share any components between them (and they never have, for what it's worth).

Alonso can do full WEC season after date changed to avoid F1 race

McLaren Formula One driver Fernando Alonso can compete for Toyota in every round of the World Endurance Championship this season after organizers moved the Japanese event to avoid a U.S. Grand Prix clash. They announced at a presentation in Paris on Friday that the Six Hours of Fuji had been brought forward to Oct. 14, ensuring that the Spaniard can feature for Toyota at the manufacturer's home track. Alonso wants to win the Le Mans 24 Hours endurance race in France as part of the "triple crown of motorsport" achieved only by the late Briton Graham Hill. Hill, like Alonso a two-times Formula One world champion, won Le Mans, the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500 in the 1960s and early 1970s. Toyota announced last month that Alonso, whose main focus remains Formula One, would be racing all the rounds of the endurance season that did not clash with his McLaren commitments. The Fuji race had originally been pushed back a week to Oct. 21 to avoid a clash with the IMSA Petit Le Mans round at Road Atlanta in the United States. The eight round 2018-19 WEC "super season" includes two editions of Le Mans as a move towards a championship that will start in the European summer and end with the French endurance classic. The top LMP1 category will have 10 cars, with Toyota the only factory team following the departure of reigning champions Porsche. Alonso will share a car with Switzerland's Sebastien Buemi and Japanese Kazuki Nakajima, both former F1 drivers. Reporting by Alan Baldwin Related Video:

Next Toyota Supra might be called S-FR

In the world of car-rumors, those surrounding the revival of the Toyota Supra are rivaled only mid-engine Corvettes and billion-dollar barn finds for Internet potency. Let's face it, we love them as much as you do. Entering stage right then is your latest Supra tidbit. The always-vigilant forum masters at SupraMKV.com have been spending caffeine-fueled nights combing through the US Patent and Trademark Office websites, it seems. The recent result of their efforts is a trademark filing for "Toyota S-FR," in reference to "automobiles and structural parts thereof." While hardly a smoking gun, Supra theorists propose that the May 28 filing could signal the way forward for a new sports car. The "S" might be Toyota's homage to the Supra nameplate, with "FR" obviously indicating a front-engine, rear-drive layout. We'd be surprised if Toyota was so wiling to throw away the brand equity built in to the Supra name – the company did re-up its Supra mark. Then again, we would've called the FR-S "Celica," too. Go figure. Of course, the trademark could be for just about anything else. A sub-FR-S model is one proposition, though it could just as easily be a concept car, or nothing at all. Sleuths, tell us what you think in Comments, below. Related Video: