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Coming Toyota Supra to forgo hybrid, get a BMW six-cylinder turbo?

For years, almost all of the talk about the Toyota FT-1 concept becoming a resurrected Supra envisioned a hybrid under the hood. And then the latest take on Future Toyota 1 showed up at the 2014 Detroit Auto Show and - although Toyota wouldn't say a word about any engine at all - horizons began to expand. Imaginary fancies were aided by the news that Toyota had partnered with BMW to develop a sports car on the next-generation BMW Z4 platform, which would necessarily mean an engine bay designed to accept an old-fashioned hunk of gas-burning iron-working solo. Car and Driver now turns the whole thing around, reporting that there will be an inline-six with forced induction provided by BMW under the hood. What about that hybrid, though? The report states, "there's currently no indication that the Silk Road cars will offer hybrid options" - 'Silk Road' being the codename for the jointly-developed vehicles. CD makes a point to note that said tidbit came from Germany, not Japan. However, designers at Toyota's Calty studio did tell Automotive News last year that they designed the body with an inline-six in mind, a nod to the Supra's history. Hybrid rumors aren't dead yet, though - remember, we were hearing about all-wheel drive and supercapacitors in May 2014. The coupe is predicted to be a 2018 model, making its appearance sometime in 2017, and be "about 10 percent" smaller than the FT-1 concept. Related Video:

Lexus eschews production in China over quality concerns

One of the more popular trends in the auto industry is setting up production operations in China. Mainstream manufacturers like Ford, General Motors and Volkswagen have done it, and even luxury marques like Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have or will soon have manufacturing ops in the People's Republic.
One company that isn't building cars in China, though, is Lexus. The Toyota-owned luxury brand still manufactures all of its vehicles in Japan (aside from a few RXs, which are built at a Toyota factory in Canada). According to Tokuo Fukuichi, Lexus just isn't ready to build cars there yet.
"The German Three have a brand image that they have cultivated over the past century in their long history, but Lexus is not in people's minds like that yet," Fukuichi-san told Reuters UK.

Toyota to shock with Supra concept for Detroit Auto Show?

We've written about approximately 187,000 rumors about a return of the Toyota Supra to the land of living cars. There are a couple of good reasons for this: first, Toyota won't stop dropping hints about a new halo sports car. Late this summer, Toyota sales guru Kazuo Ohara called a Supra successor "one of the options we have" - a comment followed by a hint that there would be "better news" on the subject in the future.
The second reason for all the Toyota tales is, of course, that we all have missed the Supra since its departure from the US market in 1998. So, when a member of the Autoblog team is party to a nudge-and-wink-filled conversation about a new Supra concept headed to January's Detroit Auto Show, we tend to listen up.
A 400+ horsepower hybrid sports car would match up pretty well with the upcoming NSX.