Toyota GR Supra 2.0

Look again – our old 3-litre Supra long-termer hasn’t returned. Meet our new 2.0

WHEN YOU THINK OF THE TOYOTA SUPRA, you inevitably think of a muscle-bound front-engined GT car that is Japan’s alternative to the Ford Mustang V8. With a couple fewer cylinders, a couple more turbos, a fair bit more technical sophistication and, in real terms, a good deal more useable performance.

My dad owned one of the few official UK examples of the previous, A80-generation twinturbo Supra and it had the all-important manual gearbox. Unfortunately, he sold it before the values went nuts, but he loved that car to bits during the ten years he owned it, having owned all sorts of crazy stuff beforehand, not least because it never really missed a beat mechanically but also because it was quick, well built, practical and categorically not a Porsche.

Since then, the Supra has been reborn, of course, and although I’ll never regard the latest J29 version in the same light as the more legendary A80, it’s still a worthy addition to the legacy, even if it’s little more than a heavily re-engineered

BMW Z4. At its core, and despite not being entirely home-grown, the J29 Supra still contains most of the key values that have distinguished Supras since the very beginning.

Or at least it did until Toyota decided to slot a seemingly rather puny 2-litre, 254bhp, turbocharged four-cylinder engine beneath the bonnet and keep everything else about the car virtually unchanged from the 335bhp turbo 3-litre version we already know, and mostly like. Same chassis, same steering, same everything really, except for the absence of two cylinders and a sizeable chunk of the 3.0’s performance.

There is one key stat in the 2-litre Supra’s favour, though, and that’s how much it weighs. At a mere 1395kg it’s exactly 100kg lighter than its bigger-engined brother, which should go a fair way towards offsetting its deficiency of grunt.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect when our GR Supra 2.0 arrived. The exterior looked great, with the Lightning Yellow paint covering its curvaceous bodywork making it appear all-but identical to the bigger-engined model we ran back in 2020, only the inch-smaller wheels (18s here) giving the game away. But when I climbed in, clocked how spartan the interior seemed then pressed the starter button and listened to what happened next, the disappointment was hard to contain. The car came to life in much the same way that a hired 1.6-litre Focus just sort of starts running when you press the button. There was zero drama, and nothing memorable about those first few seconds behind the wheel.

Since then, however, I’ve learned to like our new Supra rather more than I did during those first few moments. I like its ride and steering quite a lot, and

‘The 100kg saving should go a fair way towards offsetting its deficiency of grunt’

the extra lightness of touch it has compared with the 3.0 is a real plus point – it just carries less inertia around with it, which manifests itself in all sorts of good ways on the road. Except perhaps for its brakes, which feel great under big loads but are too punchy under lighter applications.

But the engine, well, I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to its so-so nature, or the sheer ordinariness of its character and delivery, not when experienced within the context of a car that otherwise looks, and indeed in most other ways is, a proper Toyota Supra.

Give it time, as they say, and maybe I’ll come round to the ‘sheep in wolf’s clothing’ philosophy behind this car. Especially if it continues to average 33mpg plus on longer journeys.

Date acquired December 2021 Total mileage 2358 Mileage this month 2002 Costs this month £0 mpg this month 31.4