Toyota

With the Nissan Z about to go on sale, the Japanese company finally handed out press cars in order for us to find out how it stacks up to its competitors. Hagerty was lucky enough to get two cars – a manual and an automatic - and pit them not just against one another, but against a GR Supra, a Mustang Mach 1, and as a bonus, a 2010 Aston Martin V-8 Vantage. The results are as much surprising as they are not.

The second-generation Toyota Venza was announced in May 2020 and went on sale for the North American market for the 2021 model year. Of course, no major changes were announced since then, but for the 2023 model year, the Venza will offer a special Nightshade Edition.

This is not the first Toyota model to get a Nightshade edition, as in the past few years the package was offered on pretty much every car, ranging from small cars like the Avalon to bigger ones like the 4Runner.

Toyota’s most famous three-row budget SUV, the Highlander, is set to arrive with a new turbocharged 2.4-liter inline-four engine, dual 12.3-inch displays for the driver information and infotainment, and a handful of new standard features. The Highlander is receiving constant updates since the fourth-generation came out in 2020, and the automaker is making it a lucrative offering with every new update.

If you are a car enthusiast, there’s a good chance you’ve, at least, heard of Initial D. The Japanese anime was first released in 1998 and focused around a Takumi Fujiwara – a young boy, delivering tofu in an old Toyota AE86. The story, which was divided into a few “stages”, is being continued by a new series, called MF Ghost, which seems to be picking up where Initial D left off.

The Land Cruiser is Toyota’s longest-selling car. It was launched in 1951, and, at the end of 2019, the production had surpassed 10 million units. It is true that in the States, the model does not enjoy the same success as it does in other markets. The fact that the new LC300 generation didn’t make it Stateside says it all. But, everywhere else in the world, the Land Cruiser is actively used and enjoys great success.

Inspired by this success, Khann International came up with a very cool Expedition package that will literally take your Land Cruiser everywhere.

By now, there isn’t a single car enthusiast that hasn’t, at least, heard of the Fast and Furious franchise. While the series has transitioned from street racing to a super-spy gig, it all started in 2001. The original Fast & Furious movie features, arguably, the most accurate tuner cars of all the series, and few are as iconic as the orange Toyota Supra, driven by Paul Walker, at the end of the movie. The people at Just Driven have decided to recreate the iconic ride and they have F&F advisor, Craig Lieberman on-site, to give input.

This video by TheCarKraze on YouTube is a compilation of a bunch of other tiny clips put together that should give you a good idea about what the Toyota GR Supra and the Nissan Z sound like. This is a sound comparison of the two cars at idle, using launch control followed by a full-on drifting scene.

By now, you are probably tired of seeing 1,000-horsepower, Supras with a big single turbo and a fully built 2JZ engine. If so, this video by AutoTopNL will be surprisingly refreshing as it showcases an EU-spec Toyota Supra Mk IV. Instead of being fully modified, the car has been restored to factory specifications. As you will see, this Japanese classic looks and goes like it just came off the assembly line.

Rumors of a manual transmission for the Toyota Supra have been floating around since the car was launched, but they really started to pick up steam in early 2022. We first learned that there might be a catch and/or limited availability, and then a leak exposed a little more information about it. By the time April 2022 came around, Toyota revealed that the manual transmission was coming, and by the end of the month, it revealed the new 2023 Toyota Supra with the availability of a manual transmission. Of course, with the Supra being so closely related to the BMW Z4, which is available with a manual transmission, it seems a little silly that Toyota would take so long to add it to the options menu. As it turns out, though, there was a damn good reason.

The Toyota GR Yaris is one of the most bonkers hot hatchbacks to come out in recent times. This Japanese pocket rocket is, actually, a homologation rally car, and although Toyota hasn’t managed to go racing with it, just yet, the GR Yaris already proved quicker than some of the most iconic cars, ever made. Its small, turbocharged, inline-three has one of the highest specific outputs, but, what you didn’t know is how it sounds with straight pipes.

Track battles are where performance cars are really put through the test and Driving Line has staged another one. This time it’s an all-JDM track battle between a Toyota GR Supra and an Acura NSX. Both cars are mildly modified and run on the same Nitto NT01 tires to make it as fair as possible while lapping the Chuckwalla raceway.

Toyota was recently caught putting serious development effort into a high-performance automatic transmission, and we speculated that it could be just what the GR Supra needs to take things to the next level. As it turns out, though, that doesn’t matter because Toyota just announced something even better.