The European fascination for manual gearboxes has never been understood in America. There they have preferred automatics for years, even when it comes to a sports car. But for the Toyota GR Supra, Americans like to make an exception.
When the current Toyota GR Surpra came on the market, you had no choice. The Japanese sports car was always equipped with an automatic transmission, one with eight gears. It was possible to switch gears yourself, but with flippers behind the steering wheel and not with the gear lever. With launch control you can blast from standstill to 100 km / h in 4.3 seconds, but purists simply want a manual gearbox.
Last year it happened: Toyota suddenly delivered the GR Supra with a manual transmission. In their own words because fans and customers from all over the world asked for it. The gearbox was developed by Toyota itself and has nothing to do with the BMW Z4 jointly developed with the GR Supra. It has six gears and is linked to the largest engine, the 3.0-liter six-cylinder in-line with 340 hp.
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Three instead of two pedals
The fact that the Toyota GR Supra got a manual gearbox has worked out well in the United States, at least, says jalopnik.com. Nearly half of buyers here (47 percent) have opted for the three-pedal instead of two-pedal version since market launch. In other sports cars, the ratio manual/automatic is more likely to be 5/95.
In absolute numbers, the sales of the Toyota GR Supra are not very high (jalopnik.com talks about 1216 units). But the fact that almost half opt for the manual version is remarkable for a country that popularly dislikes switching itself.
We are not surprised that the Toyota GR Supra with manual gearbox is more popular in America than the automatic version. Former colleague Remco drove it and returned to the editors with great enthusiasm. Leave that machine alone, was his conclusion: