6 things I hate about my Toyota Supra
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00:00G'day, I'm Paul. So a little while back I bought a Toyota Supra and we actually shot
00:04a video on the reasons I bought the Supra and a couple of the things that I've done
00:08to it and the cars that I considered instead of the Supra. Well, since then we've used
00:11it in a drag parison with the mighty GR Yaris. And today I thought I'd do a video on the
00:17six things I hate, well actually hate's probably a strong word, the six things I strongly dislike
00:22about the Supra and things that I've learned to live with while owning the Supra. So I'll
00:26go through that in just a second. Before we get stuck into the video though, I wanted
00:30to give you guys a massive, massive thank you for the support. Last year we grew the
00:33channel from zero subscribers to almost 70,000 subscribers at the time we filmed this in
00:39under a year. That makes me extremely happy and I love the fact that you guys are enjoying
00:43the content. As always, I would love your feedback. So if there's anything you're liking
00:46or not liking, let me know in the comments section below. Get in touch with us. We are
00:50really always open to feedback. We have a massive year planned with new types of content,
00:55different little bits and pieces happening as well. So really excited for that. And as
00:59always, if you want to get in touch with me, I'm on social media at paulmarrick on like
01:03Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, all that sort of stuff. So hunt me down, send me through
01:06any questions that you have, but let's get stuck into six things I hate about my Supra.
01:12Okay, number one, wind buffeting. You know when you're driving in a car and someone puts
01:18their window down and you've got someone else put their window down and you get this really
01:21big pressure buildup and it hurts your ears? Well, that's what it's like driving a Supra
01:25with the window down, except it's like all the time and it's at sort of cruising speeds
01:30as well. It is so frustrating when you put your window down, you just get this constant
01:34buffeting inside the cabin. It seriously does your head in. The worst part about this to
01:38me is that you can fix it with like a $10 part. You literally just attach a part to
01:42the leading edge of the mirror here and it solves the issue. Now we've got an overlay
01:48here of what it sounds like. You're probably not going to be able to pick it up. You've
01:51got to experience it in person, but hopefully it gives you an idea of what it feels like
01:54when you drive with the window down.
02:05The thing that frustrates me the most though is that they do hundreds of thousands of kilometres
02:08of engineering in these cars before they're released. Surely someone at some point during
02:13that time put their window down and realised that there was a big problem. So I think this
02:17is a big miss by Toyota. Normally they're pretty good with engineering things and I
02:21think this is something that they should have picked up during the engineering process.
02:24But further to that, they still haven't fixed it with the 2021 update. So the 2021 update
02:29still has the exact same problem, even though they knew about it when they released this
02:32because customers told them and then they still haven't fixed it. So yeah, not good.
02:36Moving on to number two. This one's small, it's a little bit trivial, but it's important
02:40to me because I love music. The sound system in this car just really isn't very good. So
02:44I bought the top spec. In Australia it's called the GTS and it comes with a JBL branded sound
02:49system and that includes two speakers behind the driver and the front passenger. The problem
02:54is that they distort when you turn it up. So you have to resort to turning the bass
02:58all the way down so that you don't have the speakers distorting. So a lot of owners have
03:01actually installed aftermarket sound systems into their cars because the standard sound
03:05system just really isn't very good. And it's a bit disappointing. It's kind of like that
03:08wind buffeting thing. It's something they should have picked up during that initial
03:12phase of engineering. It's almost like they focused all on driving dynamics and didn't
03:15think about the practical things that people are going to be living with day to day. And
03:20For me, a sound system is really important. If I had the option of paying extra money
03:24for a better sound system, I would have, but this is the best sound system you can get
03:28in the Supra at the moment. Moving on to number three, this is possibly the most random thing
03:33in the world, but the screen is just never bright. It is always super dim and it's just
03:39really hard to see it while you're driving during the daytime. I've tried adjusting this
03:43control off to the side that controls how bright the infotainment screen and the screen
03:48ahead of the driver is, but never seems to really do much. But the problem is there's
03:52a light sensor just in this cluster here. It basically picks up the level of light inside
03:58the cabin and then when there's more light, it increases the brightness of the screen
04:01so it's easier to see. Well, this is something else they didn't really calibrate during the
04:05engineering process because if I get my phone out and switch the light on and shine that
04:10onto the sensor, the screen goes incredibly bright straight away. And I pull it away and
04:15it goes dark again. Put it back on there and it's bright again. So this is just yet another
04:20thing that during the engineering process they were focusing on the driving dynamics
04:24and stuff like that, but didn't think of the practicalities. And again, if this screen
04:27was running while they were engineering the car, they would have seen how hard it was
04:30to actually see. And then the brighter it is, you actually need sun coming in through
04:34the side window onto that cluster to have the screen fully light up. So yeah, not a
04:40very practical thing and is pretty frustrating when driving this car day to day as a daily
04:45driver. Okay, number four. Now to some of you, this is going to seem super trivial,
04:50but let me explain. This is only really valid for Toyota in Australia where they sell the
04:54Supra. It may be valid in some other countries as well, but specifically Toyota Australia.
04:58Now the Supra, as you know, has BMW internals and it uses iDrive. BMW offers a service called
05:04Connected Drive and that brings with it maps with traffic. So you can basically put in
05:08a destination and it will send you around traffic if it needs to. It also gives you
05:12the ability to add apps to your car, such as smartphone mirroring, Apple CarPlay. Now
05:16Toyota doesn't offer that in Australia because even though BMW Connected Drive online services
05:21are available in Australia, Toyota for some reason hasn't signed up to that. They haven't
05:25put an embedded sim in any of the Supras. So in Australia, you don't have some of these
05:31services. Now where this becomes a problem is with navigation. So if I jump into the
05:35car and I want to go somewhere, I can put the navigation destination in, but it will
05:39send me the way that it thinks is the fastest without any traffic. So I often find myself
05:43just stuck in immense traffic around Melbourne because it thinks that's the fastest way to
05:48go, even though there's traffic that it doesn't know about. So it has no idea that around
05:52it there's traffic. So the alternative is to just use your phone, but you can't do smartphone
05:56mirroring onto this because you can't add that app to it. So you have to go and do like
06:00an aftermarket hack to make it work. And it's really frustrating. And you will understand
06:05how frustrating it is when you're in a massive hurry. You have no idea where you're going.
06:09You put the destination in and you end up being like 20 minutes late because it sends
06:13you down away with heaps of traffic. So anyway, a bit of a grumble, but as a daily driver,
06:18it really frustrates me that they don't have online services when you can get online services
06:22in the Supra virtually everywhere else in the world that it's sold.
06:26Number five is launch control. Okay. So this is an interesting one because we've done a
06:31lot of performance testing in the Supra. And just recently my car was in another video
06:35we shot. It was a drag parison up against the GR Yaris. You can click up here to watch
06:39that one. Heaps of fun to film. The problem is with launch control, this doesn't have
06:43a dual clutch transmission. So it has a torque converter and with dual clutch transmissions,
06:48you can dial up revs, it can drop a clutch and then bang it goes. With a torque converter,
06:52it has to stall up and then you let go of the brake and then away you go. This has a
06:57slightly interesting system. So to activate launch control, you've got to put it into
07:01like a limited stability mode that allows the rear wheels to spin. You then hold the
07:05brake really firmly and hit the throttle all the way down to the kickdown switch. Now
07:09when you're at the kickdown switch, it comes up with a little message that says launch
07:12control active. And it's at that point that you sidestep the brake and away you go. It's
07:16meant to manage wheel slip and give you the fastest time. I've never actually been able
07:19to achieve the claimed zero to 100 kilometre an hour time in my car. It's meant to be just
07:24over four seconds, but the closest we've got to is about four and a half, 4.6 seconds on
07:29a slight incline. Now someone did actually tell me in the comments section of that drag
07:33comparison video that once you hit the kickdown, you can actually release the throttle a little
07:38bit so that it doesn't launch with full fury. So I'm keen to give that a shot. But for the
07:43moment, that's one of my grumbles with the car. It really is quite difficult to get a
07:47clean launch out of it without having the traction control intervening and it cutting
07:51torque and just killing the whole experience. I just wish it was a little bit more flexible
07:55with the way that it launched and that the traction control was a little better with
07:58the launch control active. Number six, lucky last. Now this is going to be a little bit
08:02contentious, this one, and it is resale value. Now the reason this hasn't gone so well in
08:08Australia, and I don't know whether this is the same case overseas where the Supra is
08:11sold, but certainly in Australia, the resale value of Supras has been pretty horrendous.
08:16And part of the reason for that is this car was launched, we had to wait to get it in
08:20Australia. Typically we have to wait like six, 12 months to get a car finally landed
08:24in Australia. So when I had my car delivered in November 2019, it was only a couple of
08:30months before Toyota announced, hey, there's a new Supra coming with some different engine
08:35components, more power, different suspension. Now you can see immediately that this will
08:40then cause the value of your car to go down because people know there's a new one coming.
08:44The problem in Australia though is the new one's still a little while away. So you take
08:48the resale hit, even though the new one still isn't going to be coming for a little while.
08:52The second part of the problem in Australia was that while the initial supply of Supras
08:55was extremely limited, they still had a whole stack of Supras with dealers and dealers were
09:00told that for six months, they weren't allowed to sell Supras as demonstrator stock. Demonstrator
09:05stock is a car that has some mileage on it that they sell for a discount. What happened
09:10at that six month period, all of the dealers just flooded the secondhand market with their
09:15demonstrator stock. Now a dealer is a business, they get to depreciate their car, they get
09:19to claim a lot of tax offsets for having a car sitting on the floor that's used by customers.
09:24And as a result of that, they're happier to sell their car for cheaper than any other
09:28car on the secondhand market. And that inevitably drives the price of these cars down because
09:33all of a sudden you have all of this dealer stock on the secondhand market that is worth
09:37far less than what a regular person who paid more money can actually afford to sell their
09:42car for. And to put a lot of this into context, I actually did a comparison between the Supra
09:46that I bought and also the Tesla Model 3 that I bought. And I looked at all the used secondhand
09:51Supras on the market in Australia and the secondhand Model 3s in Australia. These two
09:55cars were roughly around the same price. I paid about $110,000 on the road for the
09:59Supra and then about $103,000 on the road for the Tesla. And I found that the Supra
10:04had depreciated by more than 20%, whereas the Tesla, depending on which side of the
10:09market you looked at, whether it was an approved used car through Tesla or just a used car
10:13on one of the used car sites, the difference was absolutely massive. And you can click
10:17up here to read that story. And it showed you that even though the Supra was way more
10:21limited than the Model 3 when it arrived in Australia, the influencing factors with
10:25the dealers and Toyota then announcing a new model really pushed the price of it down compared
10:29to Tesla, who's been fairly consistent with the Model 3. So it's good for me as a motoring
10:34journalist because I get to write about all the new Toyota models that Toyota is going
10:37to be releasing all the time and the updates that Toyota says they will have for the Supra
10:41each year. But I think as a long-term strategy, it's actually not going to work that well
10:45for Toyota because if you're like me, you don't want to lose a whole stack of money
10:48on a car because you don't want to drive it because you don't want the K's to go high
10:52and you want to just sell it for as close to what you paid for it. People are going
10:55to stop buying the Supra because if they buy it and they know that within a year there's
10:59a new model coming that's completely different to theirs, you're less likely to want to go
11:02buy a brand new one because you know that you're going to lose a stack of money on it.
11:06So I'll be keen to see whether that strategy works for Toyota long-term and whether they
11:10have to have a bit of a rethink and perhaps hold these models together for longer before
11:15they announce significant updates to them. So yeah, not too sure about that one.
11:20So that has been six things I hate about my Supra. Now, don't get me wrong, I actually
11:27really like this car. I've enjoyed it far more than I've hated it. These are just things
11:31that stand out that I really haven't enjoyed about owning it. I'll be keen to hear from
11:36you in the comments section below. Do you own a Supra? Am I talking out of my ass here?
11:40Or do you experience some of these things as well that you wish they could have fixed?
11:43And what are your thoughts on Toyota updating the Supra constantly? Do you think it's a
11:47good strategy or do you think that over the longer term you're going to have less people
11:51buying these because they're worried about it depreciating massively each time a new
11:56announcement is made? Really keen to get your feedback. And if you do want to watch the
11:59video we initially shot on the reasons I actually bought this car to start with, you can click
12:04up here. Now, if you did enjoy this video, make sure you share it, hit the like button
12:08and also subscribe to our channel. Have a look at the rest of the videos we have. We've
12:11got fun drag races and other sort of car reviews and bits and pieces, explainer videos
12:16and that type of thing. But until next time, take it easy.