In the quiet countryside outside of Madrid in Spain, Toyota is giving the global media a taste of their latest supercar. Yes, Toyota has returned to the supercar segment with a brand new Supra and this car is a joint venture project with BMW.
The iconic Toyota Supra has been revived and it will be Toyota’s new halo sports car. Residing under the long curvaceous hood is a 6-cylinder turbocharged engine and its code name is B58 and not the iconic 2JZ-GTE engine that the ‘drift experts’ have loved for years.
This is more suitable engine for Toyota since the end of the “2JZ-GTE” (Supra A80) which was retired years ago. BMW, who is an engineering partner in this project has just announced their use of the B58 engine which is a 3.0-liter turbocharged engine, quoted to have 340hp and an impressive 500 Newton meters of torque. By comparison, the Supra weighs just over 100 kilos lighter thanks to its tin roof, so it can probably dash to 100km/h from rest much faster. BMW gives an official figure of 4.6 seconds for the sprint to 100 km/h and Toyota leaves it for now at “less than 5 seconds”.
This Supra comes with a weight distribution at 50:50 and its centre of gravity is lower than a Toyota 86’s. Toyota engineers say that this new Supra’s body rigidity is greater than that of the Lexus LFA supercar, despite being made of steel and aluminium instead of carbon-fibre.
Brembo calipers assist in stopping this Toyota supercar and you get meaty 275 width tires wrapped around 19-inch wheels. For now, there is no version with a manual only gearbox and the given 8-speed semi-auto is quick enough, but Toyota’s chief engineer has remarked that a manual version could appear with a smaller capacity engine.
