Philadelphia Auto Show 2025

Enzo Ferrari once said “Ask a child to draw a car, and certainly they will draw it red.” Well maybe that means that Toyota is channeling their inner child in what they brought to the Philadelphia. It certainly was a trio of red from their sports cars.

Sitting in the 86 felt like home. It is a wonderful thing that an automaker like Toyota can give us an affordable sports car. Out of all the cars of the show the 86 felt the most connected to the true ethos of a sports car. The 86 was the only light weight sports car of the show. It would have been nice to see an MX5 in comparison but Mazda was a no show.

Entering stage left felt a bit German in a Japanese wrapper. It is no secret that the GR Supra sticks with its BMW partnership, but it is still a wonderful pairing. This particular Supra had the 6-speed manual transmission which is a wonderful thing to see in the Supra. A sad realization was that out of the entire show the Supra made up 1 of the 4 manual OEM sports cars. Despite the limited representation of the manual transmission, we were pleased to see the Supra displayed with a manual box. We were a bit surprised to find that the Supra had it’s hood unlocked. I guess we were not supposed to see the B58 or more accurately a bunch of plastic with BMW logos.

Stage right was arguably the most versatile GR… the Corolla. Toyota decided to display their GR Corolla at the show with their 8-speed automatic, a welcomed addition to the 6-speed auto. Sitting in the Corolla made us wish we could take it for a test drive and evaluate the automatic. Unfortunately, a test drive of the automatic might have to wait for later in the year.

Other sports cars of note in the show included the C8 Z06 which GM had unlocked (thank you very much), several Mustangs, new Doge Challenger, the Elantra N, and the Nissan Z. It was disappointing that Honda, Mazda, Acura, Lexus, BMW, Mercedes, and Porsche were not present. Hopefully automakers will continue to support auto shows, it is a great opportunity to compare vehicles back-to-back for the consumer. The C8 Z06 was swarmed the entire time we were there. It is a very cool car but a bit pricey for the everyday enthusiast which detracts from it a bit for us. The Mustangs were Mustangs, they felt smaller and better to sit in then we expected. The all-new Challenger seemed confused, Am I EV? Am I a muscle car? The confusion was clear and made us wonder who the buyer is. The Elantra N was actually the nicest surprise of the show. Out of all the show participants the Hyundai and the Elantra N was the only true interest we had other than Toyota. Wow…never thought we would have said that about a Hyundai. Nissan made the decision to rope off their Z and only allow access after a long line….a mistake in our opinion. The Z is a cool car but not line worthy.

Now for the modified portion of the show. This was an interesting year for the modified cars. There was a consistent theme of modified Toyotas and Japanese cars with a surprising amount of AE86 Corollas. There was a fair amount of modified GR86 and GR Supras to provide some modern representation. Several MK4 Supras turned out as well offering a big brother figure to the MK5s.

The show was not a drastic display of new offerings or even diverse offerings. It was quite similar to years prior showing that the auto market is healthy but a stretch to say it is thriving. None the less our interest and excitement from Toyota remains. We look forward to supporting GRs and owners in the year to come.