Toyota has a new NASCAR body and it's sorta Supra-shaped
While not the most graceful shape in the world of racing, the new Supra NASCAR gives us hope that Toyota is getting serious about performance once again.
Toyota pulled the wraps off of its new NASCAR Thursday at Daytona International Speedway and it looks like Goodwood won't be the only place we're seeing new Supra.
The Supra will serve as the replacement for the Camry-inspired stock car starting in next year's NASCAR Xfinity Series. Of course, in proud NASCAR tradition, this will just be a lookalike body placed on top of the spec tube frame chassis for the series.
The new Supra is going racing, and it's doing it in the last place we expected: NASCAR.
Toyota has been a participant in NASCAR since 2007 and while the series isn't known for the beauty of its racecars, this Supra is a whole other level of odd-looking. What was long and low in Gazoo Racing Motorsport Concept form is now upright and slab-sided.
It may not be the prettiest thing on track, but we're betting that it's plenty fast.
"When you talk Toyota and cool cars, Supra is the first thing that comes to mind for many auto enthusiasts," said Ed Laukes, group vice president of Toyota Division Marketing. "Supra's return in production form is huge news, but now we're also going to see this iconic sports car return to American motorsport. From a marketing perspective, it's important to have a race car that evokes the dynamism and character of its showroom counterpart. We're confident we've accomplished that with Supra, and we hope racing fans the world over will proudly cheer its success on track."
The good part of all this is that Toyota wouldn't be spending all of this money on stock car racing if it wasn't planning on doing something big with the Supra, so maybe we'll have a few more surprises in store before it hits production.