It’s fairly well known that modern BMW engines than is advertised. And—I don’t know if you’ve heard this or not—the uses a BMW engine and chassis tuned by Toyota engineers. So when I drove the new Supra a few weeks ago, I figured it could be underrated too, since it certainly felt more powerful than its official figures let on.
Turns out I was right, like I always am, because I am a genius. The good folks at just did what may be the first dyno test of the Supra, and according to that test it has a more horsepower than Toyota claims and a lot more torque.
To recap, the Supra packs a twin-scroll turbo 3.0-liter inline-six BMW engine called the B58B30M1. It’s rated at 335 HP and 365 lb-ft of torque. But given that this sports cars weighs in at 3,397 pounds but can do zero to 60 mph in under four seconds, it certainly feels more powerful than that.
C&D’s dyno test, done at Livernois Motorsports and Engineering in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, appears to confirm this. Their Supra came in at 339 HP and 427 lb-ft of torque—at the wheels. It’s not uncommon for a car’s wheel horsepower to be less than what is claimed at the crank, but hot damn, is that torque figure a nice surprise.
Here’s how the magazine did the test:
We strapped the Supra to the Dynojet all-wheel-drive dynamometer, as the car’s stability systems only play nice when all four wheels are spinning. For this observation, we ran the test in the eight-speed automatic transmission’s fifth-gear ratio of 1.32:1 to achieve a full sweep of the tachometer. We experimented with the 1.00:1 ratio of sixth gear but were unable to reach the engine’s redline. The power output in sixth gear, however, matched our results of those in the higher gear.
C&D suspects the peak torque output could in actuality be a bit lower than that, but any way you spin it, the Supra’s more powerful than we were led to believe.
Numbers are one thing, but I can tell you in real world driving that the Supra is a very fast car, certainly quicker than the Porsche Cayman S it was benchmarked against—even if it’s not quite as tight on the race track. Anyone who thought it’d be slow is sorely mistaken.
I can’t wait to see what the tuners do with it.