BMW and Toyota have signed a binding agreement to collaborate on a new sports car.
Last week we told you that Alfa Romeo and Mazda have joined forces to build the new MX-5 and now it seems as if another Euro-Japanese sports car is in the offing.
The two companies have agreed to 'define a joint platform concept for a mid-size sports vehicle' by the end of 2013, whatever that means. However, we do understand the firms when they claim that they hope to 'combine each other's technology and knowledge at a high level to maximise customer satisfaction'.
Whether or not the car is any good or not rather depends on the characteristics it inherits from its respective parents. In the 1980s, Alfa Romeo and Nissan teamed up to create the Arna, a car with Japanese levels of style and desirability and Italian levels of reliability, and as a result, it was a monumental flop. Beemer and Toyota will therefore need to make sure that they stick to what they're good at if the car is to be a success.
It seems likely that the Toyota-badged version of the sports car will serve as a more powerful and expensive sibling to the Toyota GT86, while the BMW version of the car could be sold as the next-generation Z4.
The two firms have also announced their collaboration on a range of new technology, including research into fuel cell systems, lightweight materials and lithium-air batteries.
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