Inside, the circular instruments sit within a plain expanse of plastic, and the leather upholstery is starkly monochromatic. Take those off with a hair dryer and this car looks better, and more contemporary, than it did when introduced. Production for the Japanese domestic market finally ceased in 2000, with the last two cars sold the following year. Bouncing against the ostensibly 155. Not because there's anything wrong with the car, but because there's so much right with it. Make that a lot of getting used to. But this one is swift enough to outrun that falling space rock in the first place.
Twin turbos abound at this contest, but the Supra puts its two compressors in a sequential line, hung alongside basically the same 3. The Camry is a serious family-hauler, the Tacoma is a serious cargo-hauler, and the Supra Turbo-well, the Supra seriously hauls ass. That's about 500 pounds more than the Corvette, even though it's just an inch longer overall. The steering can be balanced with throttle in a corner, but the torque band isn't as forgiving as in the torque-laden Corvette or Viper. The Supra's body seems melted around the cabin and mechanical elements; there's hardly a definable line on the car.
Not surprisingly, the great mass of the car tempers its on-track performance. Hustled hard, the big Mitsu will drift its rear, but at less frantic speeds, the natural tendency is toward understeer. Like every Toyota, the Supra feels as if it would continue to run after a direct meteor strike. After a year's absence, the Getrag six-speed manual transmission returns as a seamless complement that's easy to shift, featuring perfectly spaced ratios. The turbinelike whoosher has 320 horsepower and a stout 315 pound-feet of torque available. .
No other car in our group of exotic lust-objects could beat those figures. It hit a top speed of 181. And thanks to its rear-engine placement coupled with mammoth brakes and 18-inch tires, it stopped from 60 mph in a barrier-crash-like 104 feet. The horsepower peak comes at a relatively lofty 6000 rpm, but all 315 pound-feet of torque are available at just 2500. A driver has to deal with all kinds of new challenges at the Porsche's wheel, like learning how to make the shift to second gear before the rev-limiter intervenes it seems nobody gets it right the first time ; like the small-displacement twin-turbo flat-six that pulls like a huge V-8 through the midrange; like despite the all-wheel drive, the need to be ready for an entertaining amount of oversteer when the throttle position is abruptly changed in a tire-sliding corner; like having the road-going civility of a pleasant passenger car, coupled with the blistering performance of a race car.
This is, more accurately, a grand touring machine. There are 3737 pounds of dense-packed, twin-turbocharged, all-wheel-driven car here. Even when it wasn't leading the pack, the 911 was performing with mouth-watering distinction. That engine is a 3. While handling limits are high, the rear-drive chassis favors composure over communication. By virtue of its all-wheel-drive slingshot performance off the line all four tires spin for about eight feet at max acceleration , the 400-horsepower 911 got to 60 mph in a startling 3.
On the track, the car runs to 60 mph in 5. Put it on I-15 heading to Vegas, engage the cruise control at barely subsonic speeds, and no weather condition short of a chain-reaction ignition of the atmosphere will keep it from getting there. It pulled a monstrous 1. Although it beats the similarly powerful Supra to 60 mph by 0. It takes a high-rpm launch to ensure there's enough boost on hand to catapult this much mass, but once primed the car bounds forward with muscularity and pulls lustily through each of its Getrag gears except sixth, which is a radical 0. The steering is heavy and relatively uncommunicative, and though its disc brakes are capable, the nose dives more than the others while entering a corner.
Slower sales in the American sports car market led to a planned facelift for 1997 being abandoned in favor of minor cosmetic adjustments, including a new front bumper and rainbow shaped arched type wing. . . . . .
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