A Carrera engine would not accept compromise. 鈥淎ny preparation effort less than 100%,鈥?said Bruce Jennings, would mean 鈥渁 pussycat instead of a tiger.鈥?Jennings was a 100% man. This was his car, nicknamed 鈥淢ahidabel鈥? It is also the winningest Carrera GT Speedster of all time: three SCCA National Championships (1958 with 鈥淧up鈥?Pupilidy, 1960 and 1963 with Bruce) and a total of 67 National SCCA race victories. Its hallmark was outstanding speed: for some reason which Bruce could not explain, irrespective of any change in engine or transmission, 鈥淢ahidabel鈥?invariably turned a faster lap than any of his other cars. In the mid-fifties, Porsche claimed the Carrera to be the world鈥檚 first 1.5-liter 200-kph production car. Previous owner Pupilidy鈥檚 success with this car, Bruce insisted, was because Pup was the first driver to take advantage of the 6:31 ring and pinion. Himself a devotee of gear ratios, Jennings honed transmission set-up to a fine art. This Carrera Speedster was Jennings鈥?medium-speed course car. He had two more GT鈥檚, one each for short and long courses. Jennings found it was easier to switch whole cars than continually change all components on the car attendant to being competitive at different circuits. Modifications to this Carrera Speedster include Spyder gears, a full-race 1600cc RS-60 engine, external oil cooler, Spyder steering wheel, special shocks, heavy sway bar, front annular disc brakes and RSK turbo-finned rear drums. 鈥淢ahidabel鈥?was originally an all-steel panel car, but Bruce added lightness by substituting an aluminum hood and deck.
50,920 base price isn鈥檛 cheap, it鈥檚 still relatively attainable. 鈥淭o make the car so expensive would defeat the purpose of a Toyota sports car,鈥?he said. He said he wanted the Supra to be something that normal humans could possibly afford if they worked for it. I closed by asking Tada what aspect of the new Supra he was most proud of. He gave me a solid enthusiast answer: the noise. 鈥淭he sound of the engine,鈥?he said with a grin. 鈥淣ot just when you鈥檙e on the throttle, but when you鈥檙e off. There are very stringent sound regulations these days. One generation before, there were a lot of cars that had a really good sound. Being able to create the sound on the Supra, he said, 鈥渋s almost a miracle. For the first time ever, I buy a Toyota to get BMW reliability ? And there are very minor differences in some components used on the Z4 and MKV B58's.
For instance, the oil pump and turbocharger are Toyota designs exclusive to the Supra. Is the B58 as-is 100% equivalent to a 2JZ-GTE? No. However BMW engineers were required time and again to revise or redesign whichever parts from the B58 that Toyota's QC analysis teams deemed not up to Toyota standards and they complied. This requirement was further applied to the entire co-designed chassis, suspension, etc. and any part that applied to Toyota's version of that shared underlying chassis and driveline design. On another note the co-developed chassis DID see manual testing sometime during the R&D phase at least for the Z4's 2.0L 6MT model only slated for Europe. 170k in some trims the Supra MKV should also be doing exactly the same. The R35 is a magnificent supercar but it's already far more expensive that the original 2007 model and its a very different car than the 1998-2002 R34 GT-R and the R33 and R32 that preceded it.
Nissan decided to take it where they did and the car world is certainly better for it but it's no longer an attainable GT-R, nor does it offer the same style of involvement that the R32-R34's did. 50k car (not including a later GRMN which will command significantly more) is a lot closer to attainable while still offering most of what people expect from a Supra. Of course currently minus a manual transmission option. 100k with the VR engine family. But whatever. The R35 has already been a legend since it first arrived and that's that. 20k BorgWarner DCT transmission I'm happy that Toyota's Supra is roughly half that. 80k car. Ever check the actual monthly sales numbers for Nissan R35 GTRs? It's not many at all. Toyota wants to sell a LOT more MKV Supras than Nissan sells R35 GTRs. The R35 GT-R is all about using any technology necessary to produce the highest performance number benchmarks possible.
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