Right up front, I ain’t a car guy. Although I did get to drive my Auntie Di’s Toyota Supra circa 1986-ish and that thing was super fast. I was a kid, maybe 17 & Auntie Di let me drive that thing… a few time? Hmmmm…. questionable judgement? Maybe. But I like to think she loved me and trusted me and wanted to give me a break from showing up for dates in my Ford Pinto or ‘67 Chevy Truck.
So maybe only one time first time driving it I punched it. Not sure the Aunt was in the car with me or not. But the back end slid sideways from all the torque and horsepower and I backed off… okay, ain’t doing that again.
Then there was the time going to pick up Karen Martine for a date. I wasn’t trying to impress but my Aunt let me borrow her sports car!!! You can’t pass that up. Only ticket I ever got in High School was in that car. I don’t think I drove any different for the most part in the Supra than the Pinto but oddly no policeman ever stopped me in the Ford Pinto. Weird!!
Maybe there’s car people out there, I dunno. But I think the average person amongst has an appreciation for incredible design and engineering. There are some things that are so far ahead of everything else & were designed to be relevant for an awful long time. It seems like magic doesn’t it? Well that’s a whole lot of brainpower and artistic design quite frankly. Higher level of what us humans are capable of.
This sounds impressive:
All of that was mostly because of the MkIV Supra’s factory turbocharged 2JZ-GTE powerplant—an inline-six-cylinder engine so ready to make sobering sorts of horsepower that, even 28 years later, pro motorsports teams of all sorts still seek out the early ’90s 3.0L just as they did decades prior. And for good reason. Few production engines before or since are capable of the sort of outlandish horsepower the 2JZ-GTE’s good for with so few modifications.
So most of the stuff I can find on this engine is written for the audience that understands all the specs, how engines work, and loves the numbers and what they mean. I can’t understand it quite frankly. But here’s the thing. I car that was designed and built in the late 70’s / early 80’s is faster than many modern era street sports cars. That’s impressive. It reminds me of the design of the U-2 spy plane, the C-130 cargo plane, and the SR-71. These are my Fave Air Force planes in the inventory along with the A-10. They each seem like design miracles!!
The Toyota 2-JZ engine, way ahead of its time and if you ever got to drive a Supra it was obvious as the acceleration punched your back against the seat and that thrill was there. A good thing!!
ZandMe's 999 Good Things 