Australian tuning for new Toyota Supra

When the all-new Toyota Supra launches in Australia around October 2019, it'll have a little bit of Aussie DNA inside it.

And the two-seat sports car could also come with a more macho exhaust note following local requests to chief engineer Tetsuya Tada.

The final leg of the A90 Toyota Supra’s worldwide development schedule took place Down Under, on the Great Ocean Road and in the Yarra Valley, in order to test the car’s ride and handling on rutted Australian roads.

Toyota's chief sports car engineer, Tetsuya Tada – who masterminded the Toyota 86 – and Toyota Australia chassis guru Paul Diamandis spent a week behind the wheel of the new Supra on Aussie roads to fine-tune the chassis… And maybe more.

"After completing our program today, we will sit down and analyse the data as part of our kaizen, a process to continually improve," said Tada-san.

"It also allows us to make fine adjustments right up until production, which begins in the first half of 2019."

The 2019 Toyota Supra coupe makes its world public debut in early January at the Detroit motor show.

It will be built alongside the new BMW Z4 roadster at the Magna Steyr factory Austria, ahead of first customer deliveries mid-way through 2019.

Toyota’s new flagship sports car comes Down Under in the second half of next year; Toyota Australia execs say in the third or fourth quarter, meaning by around October 2019.

And when it finally arrives, the new Supra’s louder voice may be the result of Aussie input.

Asked what changes he is seeking in the new Supra, Diamandis told carsales.com.au there weren't too many.

"There's always been things in the past that needed recalibrating but this car has hit the mark pretty well," he said.

"We're talking about minor stuff, for example in the sports mode we think it would be nicer if the exhaust note was a little bit louder, especially in the interior.

"If you're on the race track and you're wearing a helmet, it further muffles the exhaust sound. Things like that we're looking at improving," he said.

Having driven prototype cars in Europe on road and track, we can report that the Toyota Supra sounds like, well, a BMW.

Translation? It's refined and sonorous and there's a bit of a burble here and there, but not what you'd call agro.

Diamandis said Tada-san was "very responsive" to changes flagged by the Australian vehicle dynamics team, which has worked on previous global projects including the Toyota HiLux.

"He really wants to get everyone's thoughts and look at what we can change now, and perhaps what we can change later," he said.

Toyota still hasn't confirmed the price or exact specifications of the new Supra, but it's widely expected to pump out around 250kW and 500Nm – the same outputs as the new BMW Z4, which is powered by the same BMW-built 3.0-litre turbocharged straight-six.

While the rear-drive coupe will hit 100km/h in around five seconds, the five-day Australian development drive was more about ride and handling than flat-out fanging, as both Tada and Diamandis explained.

"It's vital the driver feels confident during rough-road cornering and that the car is very stable under braking. Speedo accuracy is also very important," said Tada, referencing the unending number of speed cameras in this country.

Diamandis stated that the fifth-generation Toyota Supra has impressive high-speed stability at around 200km/h, but that "not everyone around the world has the opportunity to have that 200km/h autobahn experience.

"Unless you're on a racetrack you can't do that in Australia. That small derestricted area of the Stuart highway in the Northern Territory – even that's gone, so the car has to be nice and agile and engaging at lower speeds and especially on rougher corners that we experience here in Australia," observed Diamandis.

"Some high-end sports cars struggle with our rough corners, where you're always doing steering corrections and the back-end is trying to overtake the front-end. It gets a bit hairy, so the Supra has to accommodate for that too."

The local vehicle dynamics program took several benchmark cars along for the test and Diamandis said the new A90 Supra is like a scalpel compared to the sledgehammer ethos of its predecessor, the A80 Supra.

"The A80 Supra was my previous favourite sports car, but it's a very different beast to the new one. It's quite a raw, powerful machine -- not as precise as the new A90 Supra."

Toyota's Australian chassis dynamics chief said he's stoked with how the Supra drives and that the car is "pretty well sorted".

"The early conversations we were able to influence were executed well. We've seen some improvement in steering connection feel as it's travelled around the world.

"It's got here at its final level and I'm surprised how pristine its dynamics attributes are on our rougher roads.

"As a car enthusiast, it's impossible to wipe the smile off my face."