Toyota Supra GRMN On The Way With An M3 Engine And A Manual

Unless you’ve spent the last five years under a rock, you’ll likely have a strong opinion on whether or not the Toyota Supra being so heavily BMW is a good or a bad thing. Regardless, it seems that has paved the way for an M3-engined GRMN to be on the horizon - and with a manual at that. Exciting.

A development mule assumed to be the GRMN has been spotted testing at the Nürburgring by CarSpyMedia, complete with Toyota’s trademark GR-coloured camo wrap on the bumpers.

Hiding under the wrap appears to be a revised, much more aggressive front bumper complete with a set of canards. There’s no hiding the huge fixed rear spoiler at the back either, with the wrap on the boot suggesting a couple of other changes around the area could be afoot.

It’s believed the mule, and the eventual production car uses BMW’s S58 3.0-litre twin-turbo straight-six as seen in the M3 and M4 Competition. If unchanged, that’d give the Supra GRMN 503bhp and 479lb ft of torque at its disposal. It'd make for a significant increase over the base car’s B58 with 335bhp and 369lb ft.

Power is set to be sent to the rear wheels through a manual gearbox, most likely the unit Toyota itself developed for stick-equipped versions of the regular Supra rather than the BMW unit found in base M3 and M4s in some markets.

Other changes can only be speculated for the moment, but expect a significant reworking of the Supra’s suspension setup, along with uprated tyres and potentially additional chassis bracing.

Expect the Toyota Supra GRMN to be sold in limited numbers, and there’s always a chance it won’t come to Europe. Only one under the moniker has found its way to this content - the Yaris GRMN of 2018, with just 400 of those sold.

Japan has had a healthy share of uprated GRMN models over the years. These include the GR Yaris, GT86 and Mark X saloon. A Century GRMN even exists - with only one made for company president Akio Toyoda.