The recent “reveal” of the Toyota Supra at the Goodwood Festival of Speed was exciting but a bit disappointing. I say disappointing because Toyota kept the Supra covered in camouflage and didn’t officially reveal its styling. Still, new information keeps on trickling out and the latest in the info stream is the face that the Supra will be gaining an entry-level model with a BMW-sourced turbocharged four-cylinder engine.
Thanks to some digging by Road & Track, who looked into files from ZF, the maker of the Supra’s and almost all of BMW’s transmissions, noticed mentions of a 2.0 liter turbo-four. They then followed that up by asking Testsuya Tada, the Supra’s Chief Engineer, about it at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, who confirmed that the Supra would indeed be getting an entry-level four-cylinder.
The 2.0 liter turbo-four in question will likely be a tuned version of BMW’s B48 engine, found in basically every BMW with a ’30i’ designation. It’s said that the entry-level Toyota Supra will make 262 hp, which is more power than any of the B48-powered BMWs.
Tada also went on to say that the four-pot Supra will be the better balanced variant, with a perfect 50/50 weight distribution. He also mentioned that Toyota Supra fans that want to buy the new one to swap the engine with an old-school 2JZ Supra engine should buy the four-cylinder version as it will be cheaper. So it’s as if Tada already anticipates fans not wanting a BMW-powered Supra.
If Supra fans don’t want to tear their brand-new car apart to do an expensive engine swap, but still want some tradition to their Supra, then get the six-cylinder. That’s because it’s a BMW B58 inline-six engine and the famous 1JZ and 2JZ Supra engines were also straight-six engines. So the new one sort of pays homage to that.
[Source: Road & Track]
