Blast from the Past

You sit low in an evocative front-engined sports car driving position, rear axle just behind you

DIFFICULTY STARTING conversations? Need an ice-breaker? Try driving a Toyota Supra. Everybody wants to stop and talk to you about it. ‘So much better than it looks in the pictures!’, the gent walking his dog down Bala high street proclaims, telling us he’s been considering one as a replacement for his TVR. ‘Does it still have the 2JZ engine?’ the knowledgeable-beyond-his-years lad in Ffestiniog wants to know. And most others are simply curious to know what on earth it is. ‘I haven’t seen many Toyotas like this,’ the middle-aged biker in Betws-y-Coed murmurs. Which sums up this new sports car’s purpose and its challenge: to stir interest in Toyota as a brand, while also being considered the right stuff by the cult of fans still in thrall to the Supra name, even here in north Wales more than 20 years after a car wearing it was last sold in the UK.

So, 300 miles (483 km) to find out. And there are few better places to work out if a sports car cuts the right sort of mustard than north Wales. For every flowing dream driving road there’s a mid-corner cattle grid, suspension-rocking divots, an awkward uphill junction to test visibility, and, usually, four seasons in an hour, let alone a day. But first there’s the stint to get there, across most of the Midlands.

The Supra’s surprisingly good at this bit. Rolling refinement is top-drawer; standard-fit adaptive