2026 Toyota Supra MkV Final Edition First Drive: You All Were Wrong About This Car

When production of the Toyota GR Supra ended in March, it closed the books on what was the most controversial chapter in the Supra’s storied, five-generation history. It was a turbulent run burdened in part by the long wait for it, the German underpinnings, and the weight of trying to live up to the legendary MkIV Supra—a near-mythical beast often tuned with enough power to pull down the moon.

So, as the sun sets on yet another Supra, we booked ourselves into a 2026 Toyota Supra MkV Final Edition. First, we wanted to give the car a proper sendoff. And second, we set out to understand—objectively and away from all the online chatter—what exactly it is we’re losing.

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Long Time Coming

Between 1998 and 2019, we had no Supra at all. But we did get a great deal of teasers, starting with a trademark in 2010. Four years later, the automaker trotted out the FT-1 concept, a car that at the time was—but also sort of wasn’t—the Supra. In September 2016, we saw a camouflaged mule that didn’t really look like the FT-1 but in all likelihood was the upcoming Supra. The mule gained more FT-1 styling cues in November of that year.

More mule photography followed in 2017, along with a look at some taillights. With the car running around all over the place, surely it would appear at Detroit’s North American International Auto Show in 2018? Nope. That year yielded more spy shots, a GR Supra Racing concept, as well as a camo’d car that charged up the hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. By the time the production model finally showed up in January 2019, it already felt like the car was ready for a refresh.

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When it did, the reactions were swift and largely brutal. Everywhere you looked—forum threads, subreddits, comments sections—fans dismissed the MkV Supra as just a “rebadged BMW.” It certainly wasn’t the first time Toyota did powertrain sharing with another automaker. But this one just hit different.

Maybe it was also because since the MkIV is regarded as such an automotive demigod with a huge cult following, a successor never really had a chance in hell of making Supra fans happy—regardless of how good it was. And maybe because the MkV took so damn long to arrive, it became a victim of its own hype. It was probably a combination of all those things.

Understandable? Certainly. Unfair? Completely.

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A Precision Tool for Driving

The MkV Final Edition is essentially the same Supra we got in 2019, though it did gain more power and a six-speed manual over the years. The Final Edition itself gets a carbon-fiber ducktail spoiler, 19-inch matte black wheels, and red stitching in the cabin. The GR side graphic and matte black paint are optional, and we’d probably do without them; the graphic is just a little too racy for our taste, and the paint was impossible to keep clean.

Performance mods include an updated camber angle on the front and rear wheels, stronger rubber bushings for the front control arms and mounts for the rear subframe, suspension and chassis modifications for better responsiveness, a strengthened front stabilizer, and four-piston Brembo calipers clamping on larger, ventilated discs up front. The tactile differences between this and a non–Final Edition are relatively minor, so if you want to get your Supra fix before the 2026 model year cars run out, there’s nothing wrong with getting the normal one. The turbocharged 3.0-liter straight-six with 382 hp and 368 lb-ft of torque remains, here paired with a six-speed manual; an eight-speed automatic is also available.

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Final Edition or not, the Supra remains one of the most visually striking cars going. Virtually every piece of its sheetmetal is either bent or swept. There’s no shortage of lavish shapes to admire. Elfin and compact, it’s like utterly nothing else on the road.

Evaluated as a vehicle with which to enjoy the act of driving, the Supra has always delivered. How does one immediately tell that it’s a focused sports car? Ergonomics are clearly an afterthought.

The roof is so low and curved, you’ll constantly hit your head getting in and out of it. You can’t see much out of the windows once you’re inside, especially not traffic lights if you stop too close to them. Footage from the backup camera is low-quality. There’s no place to put loose items in the cabin. You knock your elbow on anything stashed in the cupholders when shifting. But as a cockpit-like cabin? Nailed it.

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Petite in the hand, the steering wheel connects with what is perhaps one of the most direct-feeling electric power-steering setups currently out there. A cobra before its charmer, the Supra noses low, in and out of turns with paring-knife precision. So lively is the steering, so flat the cornering, so joyful the car is to be doing this, it’s a dance you wish would never end.

Acting as the perfect partner is the BMW-sourced six, its hammer of power delivered in a satin-smooth fashion. Floor it, and the rear wheels light up, shoving forward intent down the short wheelbase until the front end shivers to a stop as the tires catch up. Excellent six-cylinder howling becomes excellenter past 4,500 rpm; we just wish the 6,500-rpm redline was higher so the engine’s chorus could reach truly operatic levels.

Frenetic energy crackles throughout the car; you might mistake it for anxiousness, but it’s potential awaiting permission. At cruising speeds, mischievousness lurks just below the surface, always ready to be summoned. The ride, no matter the setting, stays harsh lest you forget what the Supra would prefer to be doing. It’s not a complete boor, though: The seats are quite comfortable and supportive, with Alcantara trim and cloistral bolstering to help secure your attack position.

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Ironically, the only chink in the Supra’s armor is the very thing we all yelled about from the jump: its manual transmission. You get used to it, sure, but that doesn’t change the long and rubbery throws and rather vague clutch engagement point. We know it’s easy to pick and choose as a critic, but can you imagine this car with the Toyota GR86’s manual? Yee.

Sitting in the last of the MkV Supras, our closing thought is that a Supra refresh wasn’t ever in the cards, was it? After seven years on the market, this 2026 model-year car retains a small screen, physical climate buttons, and only wireless Apple CarPlay. Android users (me, owned) get nothing.

But that’s extremely fitting, too, because creature comforts were never really the point.

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Can the Supra thrift? Discerning minds want to know. (Answer: Yes.)

Expectation vs. Execution

Over the course of its life, the A90 Supra sold around 29,700 units here total, per our math. By comparison, Chevy sold more than 24,000 Corvettes in 2025 alone. The Supra wasn’t meant to be a volume seller, and Toyota probably knew that. The big question is: How much did “The Discourse” negatively impact Supra sales? How many talked themselves out of buying an objectively good sports car over what it wasn’t, and not what it is?

Why was it such a big deal that Toyota sourced its interior and powertrain from elsewhere? What was wrong with the B58 engine? It makes big power, sounds nice, and makes a smooth job of everything. A good engine is a good engine, regardless of who makes it. Together with Toyota’s chassis, suspension, braking, and steering geometries, it made for a truly lethal sports car.

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If Toyota had built this thing from the ground up, would it have still been the relative bargain it is? Probably not! Then no one would have been able to afford it, and that’d be a separate reason for the hive mind to get big mad over.

In fact, let’s wipe the smudginess from those rose-tinted glasses for a second and look back on a road test review of the MkIV Supra from the March 1993 issue of this very publication. Ron Grable wrote: “This sucker is seriously fast for a street car. It’s everything the old Supra wasn’t: light, nimble, responsive, and chock-full of Dan Gurney’s influence (at least as much as the lawyers could be talked into). There’s a wealth of things to like about driving the Supra, but two really stick in my mind: the Oh-God-I-Love-It rush of the sequential turbo’d engine, and the precise feel of the six-speed—exactly like a hand-assembled racing gearbox. Surprisingly, it’s also a good-looking piece. Surprising because I feared the designers would emulate the melted-candybarlike Celica, suitably pumped full of steroids. They resisted, for the most part, and the result is a finished, aggressively modern look.”

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Save the bit about the transmission, this sounds a lot like a MkV Supra review. The MkIV gained notoriety later in life as a beloved tuner darling, immortalized in an automotive film franchise that has since gone to space, but if we’re to compare what came from the factory, it sounds like the MkV is more similar to the MkIV than most remember.

We at least know there’s a next-gen Supra coming, we just don’t know when. But you can almost certainly rest assured that when it does, it’ll arrive in a shifted market where a manual, rear-drive, non-electrified straight-six coupe is no longer a guarantee. Sick of sports cars with no personality? The MkV Supra has it. Gobs of it.

The tragedy of the MkV is not that it’s going away. All cars go away eventually. It’s that it was a good car that was never given the chance it deserved. It became a prisoner of expectations that ignored its execution. If you were able to see beyond that and picked up a MkV regardless of the online noise, then you and I saw the same thing.

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