Anyone that has every uttered the phrase, “Less is more” clearly wasn’t much of a gear head. Maybe if we’re talking about adding cinnamon to coffee, or garlic to pizza that might make sense, but when it comes to fans of fast cars and power, “more” is just a good place to start for the Toyota GR Supra 3.0
When Toyota resurrected the Supra for its fifth generation after a hibernation of nearly two decades, every car fanatic rejoiced — a new sports car built by Toyota and powered by BMW? How could life get better? Well, we don’t have the official time stamps, but we’re willing to be that probably somewhere around 36 hours after the new Supra came to life that someone asked, “How can we make it go faster?” And it seems that some of those comments came from the halls of the Toyota engineering, because for 2022, we got just what we asked for.
The new Toyota Supra and the car it replaces are almost identical except for one big difference – the new car is 47-horsepower more powerful while being 42 pounds lighter. to put that in human terms, it is essentially like gaining muscle while losing fat, which is the Holy Grail of bodybuilding, and hot rodding. The new Toyota GR Supra 3.0 starts out with the same BMW built 3.0-liter DOHC turbocharged inline six cylinder engine, but thanks to a new exhaust manifold and new pistons, not only is heat down, but airflow is up while also dropping compression to a much safer 10.2:1 versus the older cars sky-high 11:1. High compression can be bad for naturally aspirated cars, but when it comes to boosted cars, having compression too high can be catastrophic.
That revised engine makes a whopping 382-horsepower at 5,800 rpm and 368 pound-feet of torque at just 1,800 rpm. Now for those paying attention, you’ll notice that the horsepower peak comes higher in the rev range, but so does peak torque, more on that later. That power is then routed through a slick-shifting ZF eight-speed automatic and on to the rear wheels. Why Toyota doesn’t offer this car with a manual is mind-boggling, but hopefully with enough outcry, they’ll listen to us, just like they did with the power increase we see here.
This car rips from 0-60 mph in just 3.9 seconds, which, ironically is exactly the same time as the previous car. How can that be you ask? Well, consider this a brief lesson on torque versus horsepower. Torque is the ‘get-up-and-go’ part of the engine output, while horsepower is the “go-and-go-faster’ aspect of things. So, as we mentioned earlier, torque is essentially unchanged and comes on just a bit later, so at the lower end of the speedometer, this car will be almost identical to the previous model. But once it gets moving, that extra power and lower weight show up in spades. The quarter mile rips by in just 12.3 seconds at a blistering 115.8 mph, which is five full mph faster than the previous Supra 3.0.
Thanks to that reduced weight, now tipping the scales at 3,304 pounds (53/47% front/rear), as well as new bumpstops, updated adaptive dampers and added strut tower braces, the Supra can hustle around the skidpad to the tune of 1.01 g, while it can scrub off all that speed and drop from 60-0 mph in just 105 feet. That extra power doesn’t even cost you at the pump either, as the new car’s fuel economy is essentially the same as the older cars at 23/30/25 city/highway/combined mpg.
Thankfully, despite having more power, the new Toyota GR Supra 3.0 doesn’t come at much more of a cost than before. Base price checks in at a reasonable $55,485, which is only about a $500 premium versus the older car. So, all in all, we think that the Toyota guys did a great job at understanding that ‘less is more’ is a phrase best saved for the kitchen, while out on the track, the ideology is more like “too much is never enough”, and we couldn’t agree more.
