If the market for the Supra is only nostalgia, then Toyota would be screwed if they marketed it to ex-Supra owners. Plain and simple. They only made 11000 of the MKIV (according to Google). Not many people. The rest of the people that claim they're interested don't even have a clue what the old one was like other than reading about them.
Would the Supra have been cooler if they had engineered it on their own, made a new 2JZ engine, and an entirely new platform? Of course. Doesn't sound like that was financially possible. Especially if the market is driven by nostalgic Supra owners, who by the numbers are a rare breed.
I don't really understand the Japanese nostalgia fascination. People said the same thing about the NSX, blah blah blah it's not the same as the old one. Of course it isn't, it's 20 years newer
. No one says this about Mustangs or Corvettes. No one says this about Ferrari's or Lamborghini's either. I don't get it. Perhaps that's because those cars I just mentioned kept being produced, and didn't have a 20 year gap in between where people made them into larger than life legends that the new versions could never live up to.
I do agree with Nelson though, not sure why they at least didn't use a DCT transmission. I can understand the argument for no manual if they are worried about sales, less and less manuals are being sold all the time. Maybe this car will get better as the model years progress, and Toyota just wanted to get it out there and stop messing around with it.