The biggest contribution Toyota made in that project was in eventually making a manual gearbox available. A Getrag.
Otherwise, the Supra is basically a Z4 coupe with Toyota styling and suspension tuning (which is arguably better than its cousin's). They both roll off the same Steyr assembly line in Austria. Peel away the cladding and panels, and the guts would probably be much more familiar to someone who has wrenched on BMWs than Toyotas. No JIS screwdrivers or 12mm wrenches needed.
Before release, the model's final form was leaked…after someone found the entire vehicle logged in BMW's ETK parts catalog. Now, why would a Toyota badge need to be assigned a BMW part number, Dr. Zaius?
The Fiata 124 Spider could at least claim to have FCA's engine.
I know someone who had a first gen TSX, and spent a fair amount of time in the car. Very solid car (though the center stack backlighting was a common failure), and more European in sensibility than Japanese. But its steering did have that Honda trait where the effort would change mid-lock (also reminding me of the 2nd and 3rd gen Preludes I'd driven). Dunno whether it was by design, or a consequence of the geometry changes at certain steering angles, but it didn't have that full consistency in the controls like one expects on a European car. Or the old pre-EPS ones, anyway. K24 was decently sized, and liked to rev, but weaker down below, and having to rev it in certain situations acted to temper any luxury aspirations.
AWD can try, but cannot fully make up for the physics when a large mass is sitting on top of, or in front of the front axle line. Audi, which is not Japanese, and does have longitudinal engines has also still suffered from the laws of physics. I've also had daydreams about the S3 and RS3 and while I'm sure the trick torque vectoring rear differential is neat, and works well, can't fully get on board with the notion of a $65k Golf sedan, and handling so heavily determined by electronics tuning, not natural vehicle dynamics. But I'm old school. And in that price range, many options if one doesn't need to buy new.
Acura was originally created with the intent to provide Honda owners with nicer vehicles to step up to. They clearly weren't gunning for the Germans, as Toyota and Nissan did.
Problem was, that relied on owner loyalty to a large degree, and the company also hamstrung the brand by refusing to offer anything larger than a six, as mentioned.
They've reinvigorated the brand in more recent times, but were adrift for a long time, in the purgatory of near, but not fully being accepted as a luxury brand. The MDX kept them alive during the struggles, and CUVs became their bread-and butter. But I think its greatest sales success is still the Integra line, which were always "nicer" Civics at heart. That it took them so long to acknowledge that, and try again, was a bit delusional.
