The Toyota was the cornerstone of the JDM movement back in the 90’s. It was THE Toyota every kid of that era aspired to buy when they grew up. It was a detuned racecar with infinite tuning scope and also was the star of many street racing movies all over the world. After 17 years the Supra comes back to production sporting the same turbocharged inline 6 3.0 liter engine format sitting in the front driving the rear wheel. Awesome, right?
Well, not according to some fans. A large number of diehards see the Supra as a rebadged BMW Z4, which itself in its previous iteration was considered to be a style statement rather than a serious performance car. So is it the Supra we know and love? Let’s find out.
New Supra = Rebadged Z4, is it bad?
No, it’s not such a bad thing. The latest G29 BMW Z4 is unlike the car it replaces, it’s been designed from the ground up to be a proper performance car. Evidence, it clocked a 7.55 minute laptime on the Nurburgring Nordschleife, which puts it faster than the previous BMW M2. Its not the entire story but that’s saying something already about the dynamic capabilities of this car.
Plus getting upset that your Toyota is similar under the skin to a BMW that’s faster than a recent M car, is like getting upset about your girlfriend being too similar in terms of structure to Scarlett Johansson.
It’s stiff about it
A good performance car has to have a rigid body, and the Supra does deliver. Its claimed to be 2.5 times stiffer than the Toyota GT86. Heck, its actually stiffer than the Lexus LFA. And that car’s made out of carbon fibre! This is good news because that tells us that this little Supra will be able to take a whole lot more horsepower before its chassis twists coming off the line.
Low CG and compact body
Another hallmark achieved by the Supra is its low center of gravity (CG). Toyota made a whole lot of fuss when the Toyota GT86 was launched about how low its CG was, and the new Supra takes things to new heights. Despite having an inline 3.0 liter engine, its managed to achieve a smaller CG than its boxer-engine sibling. Other highlights include a 100mm shorter wheelbase than the Toyota GT86. The 86 is far from being a big car, but the Supra now sports a shorter wheelbase than the 86 does. This is going to be truly helpful when it hits places like Janda Baik and Kuala Kelawang.
That engine
The hallmark of the Supra was the 2JZ engine. It was a tuners dream. Even a simple tune can release tons of tyre shredding, supercar shaming power. That could be the same case with the current Supra too. Its 3.0 straight 6 engine, which is the B58 BMW engine, is the upgrade from the N55 engine. Now BMW did turbocharge the N55 engine but it was never boosted past 340bhp. The B58 unit however is supposed to withstand a whole lot more power in stock form. Although the current car is only available with an 8 speed autobox, there are talks for a manual gearbox. The rest, I let your imaginations do the rest.
2.0 variants
The best thing and the least discussed detail about the current Supra is that it’s available with a 2.0 engine in two tunes. This is good news for the Malaysian market, because the 3.0 Supra is speculated to be priced at around the price of a Porsche Cayman 718. A 2017 Porsche Cayman 718 costs about RM450,000 in the grey market. The JDM only 2.0 Supra, which will come in either 258bhp / 400Nm or 197/326Nm tune could be significantly cheaper. It remains to see what type of price tag it will carry, but if it dips below the RM300,000 then this could be the car we wished the 86 would be.
Pedigree
The very reason we dare not speculate on pricing. The Supra, on paper at least seems like a good bargain, costing 2.0 Z4 money for the 3.0 version, without lacking in terms of performance. We have no doubt it would be a great car to drive given its RnD origins. However thanks to the name, it could also be expensive to acquire in the first place. On the bright side though, it will hold its value well. It does have a Toyota badge right?
