#revivals

In 1993, Toyota launched the fourth generation of its rear wheel drive sportscar (well, arguably a bit of a Grand Tourer, i.e. something more oriented to cruising than a sportscar) the Supra - which was born a quarter century earlier as a more upmarket, six cylinder version of the Celica, graduating from Celica Supra to its own dignified name with the third generation I talked about that one time I forgot to check what blog I was reblogging with.

But this time, things would be different. Most notably because the inline six the Mk4 Supra came out with was an absolute MONSTER.

Remember how I talked about the GT-R's RB26 engine being one of the greatest, most coveted production engines to ever come out of Japan? Well, the 2JZ-GTE is the other.

It was larger at 3 liters, no less powerful, and to reduce turbocharger lag it used two of them sequentially: first air goes in the smaller, more responsive turbo, then gradually some of it gets sent to the bigger turbo to make it start spinning, then when it gets going the two are finally used in conjunction. (Imagine the big turbo as a hung husband that takes a while to get it up and the small turbo as an eager stepson ready to take over until the hung one can join in for a spitroast. Or something. I don't watch porn with real people, but from what I gather the plots seem to resemble how sequential turbos work.) It even at one point got Variable Valve Timing, i.e. the ability to vary the time in which the valves open depending on engine speed, which allows to optimize tuning for performance and efficiency! (Cool thing to go over in detail if y'all want me to.) And also, the kind of things that engine is able to take make me wish I hadn't used up my porn analogy quota.

See, to chop off eons of nuance, an engine is just a big block of metal with a lot of bits attached, and the two main measures of an engine's potential are the slope of the line in the Bits Fiddled With / Power Output graph and how far up (It's up, right? The second axis you specify is the vertical one, right?) you can take it before the block becomes the weakest link - with another important point being when you need to start messing with internals, i.e. the components inside the engine, e.g. pistons (the things the boom pushes down), camshaft (the thing the pistons spin) and connecting rods (you can guess).

So for instance, just to make the point that an engine can be beloved without having much overall tuning potential, in one of Toyota's most beloved engines, the 4A-GE four cylinder illustrated above (yes, the one from that white and black car in all the eurobeat videos), some pin the block's limit as low as 250hp. The 2JZ, tho? It can take 800hp without even messing with the internals, and once you get your grubby hands on those you can keep pushing the line to some 2000hp. That is two Bugattis. That is 40 times my car. That is well above the power level where "tires that will at any point grip" and "tires that are in any way road legal" stop intersecting.

I am not in the slightest exaggerating when I say that this and the Skyline GT-R are widely regarded as the top of Japan's 20th century automotive production. The Messi & Ronaldo of the Japanese Domestic Market. It is absolutely no coincidence this was the hero car in The Fast And The Furious.

And then in 2002, as all things, its production ended, and given the abysmal sales and catastrophic recession, Toyota decided that would be that.

And then, years later, The Teasening began.

I want to stress, almost half of my conscious life (I choose to believe the stretch from birth to kindergarten is just run-up) the world was in some state of getting teased with talk of a new Supra. The trademark on the name was renewed in 2010. In 2014 they dropped the FT-1 concept, and of course that became speculation about what the production version would look like.

Because come the fuck on, it's not gonna look like that.

Or was it?

Only five entire years and much more teasing later would we officially get an answer, when after seventeen years, the Toyota GR Supra (and for those wondering what GR means, y'all should've clicked the Yaris link >:C) hit the streets.

You know what, good enough.

Good enough to earn itself a sea of words of praise, Jason Cammisa's "The most punch-above-its-weight sportscar ever made" just some among them.

It did have its share of problems at the start, like its power being 335hp and not 382, a lack of manual transmission, and the inability to spec it with a less powerful 4 cylinder engine - well, I don't know who considered that last one a problem, but Toyota's updates solved that one too.

The Supra has a much bigger problem than those though, one no little update can solve. That red car in the background.

See, the new Supra is actually a joint venture with BMW, who made a new model of its Z4 roadster out of the platform. And unlike with the other joint-venture sportscar Toyota sells, people are big mad about that. Why?

See, the interior is engulfed in BMW switchgear and the drivetrain is all BMW (the manual gearbox took until this year to come out because BMW did not have one for that engine so Toyota had to modify another BMW transmission to fit), giving people the impression that this was less of a joint venture and more of a BMW project that Toyota tacked its design on top of, which is a problem whether true or not.

See, a range-topping sportscar is supposed to represent what the brand is capable of - having it done by someone else (or so the criticism goes) is a bit like performing Hallelujah in playback.

Actually, a better musical analogy: You know "I'm back bitch" singles? When a humongous artist drops a new record with a humongous lead single about absolutely nothing but reaffirming they're the biggest fucking deal in the universe? Without Me, Bad, Gimme More, so on. Well, think of SexyBack - one of the most monumental phenomenons of its decade, most incontrovertibly proving Justin Timberlake sat atop the goddamn world. Now, imagine if, after all the years that went by between that record and the next, when he finally came out with Suit And Tie all the verses were Jay-Z. Going from a humongous statement about having the power to reach the top of the game and stay there to having to get absolutely carried by what in this logic is essentially a competitor. Basically, that's the critics' complaint: the supra went from 2JZ to too much Jay-Z.

And therein lies the other problem of the Supra: the Supra.

See, any time you evaluate something, you do so relative to its context - and when you give it a nameplate, you make that context include where else that nameplate has been. An undeserved name may not just be stupid, but even outright kill the car in some's eyes, see the case of the Dodge Dart, or get me to talk about the Ford Capri prototype recently spotted if you want to find out what I'm like when I lose my cool. (I'd liken this phenomenon to undeserved Grammies but I already used my music analogy quota too.) So the Toyota Supra does not just need to be good, it needs to deserve the name. And some argue it doesn't. But why? This thing is no less powerful, no slower, hell it's not even any bigger or heavier and we've gone over how rare that is these days! So is it the lack of backseats and a targa version? No, no one gives a crap about those. It's something deeper.

Sometimes, the problem with a revival is people base their expectation not on what the original was like in the context of its time but what it's like in the context of today (for example, I've heard people call the latest GT-R "too computerized, too assisted, far from the pure driving experience of its predecessors", when its predecessors had some of the most technologically advanced driving assists of their time and could only be called "pure" and "analog" by comparison with cars decades newer). But of course, that'll only be some people - so if what the original car looks like to modern eyes and what the original car represented at its time are two different enough concepts, any revival will receive some criticism for not being one of the two.

But for the Supra, this compounds with another problem: the original Supra (as in the previous generation, since no one gives a crap about the first three), to modern eyes, looks like a thousand-horsepower flame-spitting beast, because that's what all Supras have been turned into, and that's why you know of Supras in the first place (it sure isn't because people bought it!), and that, consciously or not, exacerbates the problem of misplaced expectations to a level akin to hearing an NBA player is about to have a brother and expecting the baby to be a 6'4" three-shooter.

But I wasn't asked about the controversies, I was asked about my take. And my take is: no realistic expectation of what a Supra would look like today was disappointed - at least not by where the car stands today. Well, unless the expectation involved backseats.

"But it was made by BMW" and so? This is a new Supra, and a good one - what does it matter how it got here? Especially when this is an upgrade over the Z4 in every way - looks way better, drives better, and now has a manual that the Z4 doesn't.

Okay, almost every way: the Supra's roof won't get out of the way. If only though, if only. Could you imagine a Toyota product that looks this good, sounds this good, goes this fast, and has a drop top? ...and maybe backseats?

Well, I can.

Yes, the badge and core concept may have some people consider it from midlife crisis mobile to old man's car. (though we know it's not a car bought by old men because if that was the case someone would be buying these). But just try to imagine sitting in this thing.

Take a couple of seconds to take in that picture and truly immerse yourself. You're in a Lexus LC500 Convertible, with a V8 at your right foot's command, its spectacular sound ready to battle the perfect sound system serenading you with your fanciest CD, because of course Lexuses still come with CD players.

Are you immersed? Okay: Someone just called your Lexus a midlife crisis car. See? You don't give a shit either, do ya.

Automatic only though. The pain. Oh, and it kind of costs as much as two Supras. But, you know, neither of those Supras will be convertibles!