Sports cars seem to have lost their allure since the global recession, giving way to SUV and crossover models in Europe and North America while not catching on in developing markets, BMW's head of sales said in a recent interview.
"The sports car market is roughly half of what it used to be," BMW's Ian Robertson told Bloomberg News. "Post-2008, it just collapsed. I'm not so sure it'll ever fully recover."
While BMW Group isn't sure the market for sports cars will ever return to what it was in its heyday, the company has decided to partner with Toyota for a new midsize sports model.
The German automaker's luxury brand should boost the car, while partnering with Toyota allows the companies to share development costs.
The new BMW-Toyota project, a midsize sports car, has successfully completed a feasibility study to move on to the concept stage. The two automakers agreed to work on a vehicle together in 2013; while a new car is their biggest collaboration, BMW and Toyota have have also partnered for fuel cell and technology projects.
Toyota and BMW confirmed earlier this year that they were developing a common platform for a sports car model, according to Motor Authority. Possibly a new generation of the Toyota Supra based on this year's FT-1 concept and a replacement for BMW's Z4, the new offerings could appear by 2017.
The duo is also said to be collaborating on a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
If hybrid technology comes into play, BMW can benefit from Toyota's experience, while the Japanese carmaker can gain from BMW's luxury vehicle expertise.
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