Will the New BMW-Toyota Car be an All-Wheel Drive Hybrid?

The BMW-Toyota partnership will result in two amazing sports cars that have been developed for years now. The one that will represent BMW will likely be a Z4 successor. In Japan, Toyota will probably unveil it as a new Supra model.

We don’t have much information at the moment, but there’s one thing worth noticing. The E89 Z4 production is about to end in August, which leaves an empty space to be filled. It would be a logical decision to fill it with the upcoming BMW-Toyota car, but we’ll have to wait and see if that happens.

Meanwhile, Autocar reports that the cars are both going to be all-wheel drive hybrids. The announced date for their unveiling is somewhere in 2018, which is still pretty far away. Here’s what Ian Robertson, BMW’s board member and head of sales and marketing, had to say:

The one thing we’re clear on now is that a platform for both companies can work. The cars in themselves don’t actually need to be positioned the same. The platform can spawn two positionings. The concept works, the platform can deliver and now we have two proud sets of engineers – one group German, one group Japanese – who are each fighting and arguing for the car they want.

He also claims that production details are still unknown, but that both cars will probably be produced in the same factory:

One part of the next phase will be deciding who builds the car – which company and in which country. We need to find out where the markets are and whether the biggest markets are the same for both companies.

As the rumor goes, the factory that will build the cars is Magna Steyr in Austria.