BMW & Toyota to team up

FearNothing321 · Jun 29, 2012

Toyota and BMW to team up and build a sports car

http://blog.caranddriver.com/toyota...r-ties-adding-a-jointly-developed-sports-car/

BMW and Toyota announced relatively vague plans for further collaboration today. And yes, there was news about “exploring future collaboration” on topics as exciting as “fuel-cell-system technologies.” But by far, the bulk of Akio Toyoda’s short speech—he flew all the way from Japan to Germany to present it—was about how excited he is that BMW can help Toyota with sports cars.

“I believe BMW’s strength is developing sports cars. I get so excited thinking about the cars that will result from this relationship,” he said. That’s a strong promise from a CEO and an unusually candid endorsement, but Toyoda has been cavalier in the past. This same CEO, who is often credited with shepherding the GT 86/Scion FR-S and Lexus LFA (pictured above) to market, also has gone on the record about how much he wants to see a Supra. That said, Toyoda has cautioned in the past that his wishes for sporty cars don’t guarantee that such vehicles will see production.

Still, there’s reason to be enthusiastic. Toyota showed it can collaborate on a sports car when it did so with Subaru. Best of all, Toyoda’s enthusiasm demonstrates that there is, in fact, some passion left at the company that Car and Driver described in 1986 thusly: “Toyota seems to be run by a bunch of gonzo back-yard tinkerers who happen to have all the money and engineering resources in the world to pull off any kind of car that strikes their fancy.”

Other areas in which the two companies will “explore possible collaboration”: fuel cells, electrification, and lightweight technology. We know Toyota can ship hybrid tech to BMW, and that BMW in turn can offer Toyota its resources in carbon fiber. (You can read more about that part of the deal here.) On the German side, BMW’s i sub-brand stands to benefit most from this collaboration, helping it to amortize the costs of developing costly electric vehicles.

While most of the ties revolve around one company sharing its expertise in a specific area with the other, the sports-car program’s description, “joint development of architecture and components for a future sports vehicle,” suggests that both companies will get a vehicle or vehicles out of the partnership. Although this could work in a similar manner to the Toyota/Subaru deal, we expect the outcome will have much more brand-specific differentiation when it comes to styling, tuning, and available content.
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