The arrival of the manual transmission is accompanied by various detailed changes to the Supra chassis designed to improve the handling: damper calibration is changed, rubber suspension bushing is revised and there’s a welcome drop in weight by around 40 kilos.
This remains a big, heavy car at 1577kg and we found ourselves preferring the lighter, defter charms of the brilliant GR86 also launched at Monteblanco in summer 2022. Manual gear control worked well on track and drivers can choose hero-mode rev synchro matching for perfect downshifts, or choose to do the rev-blipping on their own. Interestingly, they’ve made the gearknob heavier to create more inertia during the shift action, despite removing weight elsewhere in the 2022 Supra. They’ve had to re-engineer the centre console so that self-shifting drivers’ knuckles don’t knock the heating controls and the gearchange action feels pleasing enough, if not the last word in snickety precision. We had only a few laps of the unfamiliar Monteblanco circuit to the west of Seville in which to assess the six-speed manual Supra. Toyota expects the manual option to make up 46% of European sales. The manual Supra is available only with the straight-six engine, not the cheaper 2.0 four-pot which remains auto-only, and costs from £53,495 in the UK (a useful £1500 less than the equivalent eight-speed auto). Joining the excellent GR Yaris hot hatch and GR86 coupe, the new Supra manual means all three Gazoo Racing performance cars can now be had with DIY gears. Many supercar brands have stopped selling three-pedal sports cars, as the onslaught of paddle-operated transmissions has reduced global take-up of manuals – but nobody told Toyota.
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