Geeto67

Personal preference thing...I really like White cars. I feel like White is the perfect way to show off lines and design features. It's bright, easily seen and grabs attention without shouting "look at me" ( I already have a yellow and red car for that). Now couple that with the fact that our old M3 was white and there wasn't even a discussion on color at all.

 

I don't even think we would have chosen a different color if we had the whole BMW individual catalog available, which it's not for this car.

 

My GT3 would be white if I had my way...but after 9 months of searching I found the right car in yellow and caved. Our Turbo was destined to be Red but white was the second color on the list.

I get it, and I'm not judging. I happen to own an alpine white e90 right now and I despise the paint because it's thin, it scratches and chips easily, and I think it hides some of the more attractive contour lines of the car that a metallic would highlight. But if it is what you are into, then congrats on getting exactly what you wanted. I also feel like your M2 will probably be painted with more care than the churn and burn base model 3 series lease fleet special that I drive.

that black and orange interior though :masturboy:

fantastic car and congrats!

I am a little curious though....you are ordering it and could have had any color you wanted, and yet you went with BMW lease fleet white. Why? besides not showing dirt as easy was there some practical reason for it (easier to number for track events)? That Long Beach Blue and sunset orange are striking colors, I'm just curious why someone would pass on them for white.

um... Honda NSX anyone? volkswagen phaeton v12?

 

YES!!!! THE....COMPANY......NAME....MATTERS....100%

 

Why can't people understand this? Toyota is a company that is well known for making cars that will last longer then you or your parents, NOT for making "supercars". Why is this hard to understand? NAME BRAND MATTERS!!!

 

Apparently pictures don't work, so i'll come right back to my point from the get-go. Manufacturers created luxury brand names for this very reason, because their average customers would not buy them if they had their house brand name. Why does Honda not sell their Acura vehicles under the Honda name in the USA? Because no one wants to buy a luxury Honda... Slap a new name on it...and BAM!!! People buy it... even though it's a Honda at heart.

 

Hold on...

 

Quick google search... "Lexus Supra"

 

2020 Lexus RC F

 

DONE!!! CLOSE THE THREAD PLEASE!!! I've taken care of everything once and for all. The Modern day supercar version of the Supra is the "Lexus RC F". So, there you have it folks, if you want the Supra to FINALLY be a supercar, then hang a picture of the Lexus RC F on your wall and call it a day. As for the 1994 Supra, it was never a Supercar... but it will ALWAYS be a "super car"... Notice the space in there... I could add a comma if that helps to break of the structure... but I think we are good here.

 

Now, I need to go to the hospital and get treated for Malaria

Couple of points:

- Acura doesn't exist in Japan, only in the US, so the Honda NSX is how the rest of the world knew the car.

- by the logic of this argument the Ford GT40 and both generations of the ford GT are not supercars because ford is the brand known for the falcon, escort, and model T. Not exactly a supercar pedigree.

- what about startups with no pedigree? History is littered with them, some successful, like Shelby, some not, like vector, but before their car is introduced they are literally known for nothing. So they can't build supercars?

Mike your argument is deeply flawed and also a great illustration of exactly what I am talking about - you are going out of your way to make excuses as to why Toyota can't make a supercar when plenty of other examples of pedestrian car companies making supercars exist, because they are the stereotype Japanese car company.

Part of the problem here is also that you are an infant and don't remember when Toyota was the dominant force in off road and rally car racing, and a relevant in lemans and formula 1. Sure now we laugh at how TRD sounds like turd and that they run in NASCAR but once upon a time those red/orange/yellow racing stripes were the stuff of competitors nightmares

Ummm, that version of Need for Speed also included:

 

- a Ford pickup truck

- Ford Probe

- Pontiac Sunbird

- VW Jetta

- VW Corrado

- Jeep Wrangler

- Subaru Leone

- a tractor

 

I guess it turns out I went to high school with a bunch of supercar owners, since Groveport Madison's parking lot was littered with Probes, Sunbirds, Jettas, and likely at least one tractor...

 

Please stop using inclusion in Need for Speed as a criterion.

None of the cars listed above were drive-able as part of the regular game (there were a few fan made patches that laid those cars over the in game cars). They were selected as the boring traffic to further enhance the supercar experience against the backdrop. You are a smart guy, you know context it important.

If you want to make a case of NFS not being a good yardstick you should have brought up the Rx7. The two other Japanese cars in the game are the Rx7 and the NSX. NSX is a strong case for a supercar, Rx7 is generally considered a sports car and not a supercar, and then there is the supra turbo right in the middle of the two.

the point of bringing up NFS is that it is a cultural reference point. They don't put ordinary cars in video games as playable cars with the word speed in the title - even ordinary sports cars. I am trying to make the case that the car was "special" enough because there are pop culture references to it, and appearing in one of the best driving games pre grand turisimo counts.

Well how did it compare to European supercars of the time?

If you mean supercar like the diablo:

delivered on performance and technology. Biggest gap was on price (you could buy two for what a ferrari or lambo cost), pretty equal on most other metrics.

Largest subjective gap is probably curb appeal, but's a matter of taste and whether giant shopping cart like wings do it for you or are tacky.

there isn't much of a case to be made for the diablo being a supercar and the supra not based just on price differential.

Lingering anti-Japanese sentiments!

You joke, but I kinda feel this is the case. One that is further bolstered by people being reluctant to call it a supercar, but ok with it being a "Japanese supercar" where Japanese represents some form or inferior version. "Its not a real supercar, it's a Japanese supercar - it's the best they could do at the time".

yeah except the best they could was pretty fucking great.

I will add here that I think the 2nd hand market and the image of the car after it went out of production do color people's opinion of it being a supercar. For a while they were cheap in the used market (why?) and a supercar isn't supposed to be cheap (nevermind that you can buy 1st gen vipers for less than a new camry). It also became associated with import tuner culture (because those seemed to be the majority of people who appreciated it for what it was - a supercar they could afford), and supercars aren't supposed to be the toys of youth culture.

We make a lot of fun of that "more than you can afford pal, ferrari" scene in Fast and Furious, but I think it is probably one of the most on the nose cultural statements about 1990's car culture that was made on film: A ferrari is just presumed to be a supercar because it's a ferrari and it's a status of the rich - nevermind that it's an F355 cabrolet hunk o shit that can be bought for less than a 1st gen viper and has a reputation for both engine failure and catching fire - and the Supra is the car of the people because that dude that looks like a vaguely Italian cue ball and the other dude that looks like a surfer but way hotter than any real life surfer are the heroes and the everyman in that film. the buster drove one, therefore it can never be a supercar. Image is everything!!!!

It came out the same year as the McLaren F1. $815,000, 600+hp, mid-engined center-seat exotic. That was a proper supercar. You just can't say that a Supra was "technologically advanced" enough, or "apex" enough, or "expensive" enough, or "visually distinct" enough to put it in the same category as the McLaren F1. It just wasn't enough of anything to earn that title.

 

The McLaren is one of the few cars that you'd get broad consensus on even calling a supercar in 1993. Personally I wouldn't call the ZR1 or a 911 Turbo a supercar, and as you can see from this thread even my emphatic inclusion of the NSX in that club isn't universal.

Well nearly every category exists on some kind of a spectrum and there are going to be extremes to that spectrum at either end, until a new category is invented to cover that. A Miata and a 348 ferrari are both sports cars, and yet that's all you can say about how similar they are since they represent different ends of the spectrum. Why doesn't a similar range apply for supercars?

The 1990's are a fascinating time because with cars like the Jaguar xj220, Bugatti EB110, and the McLaren F1, we started to see cars that took the far end of the term supercar to as far as it could possibly go. I wouldn't put the NSX in the same category as those cars, nor almost any 1990's ferrari or Lamborghini - many of the metrics are just too wide a gulf to cover. Those cars, and the subsequent challengers to their title spawned the term "hyper car" - cars that sit above the normal realm of supercars and now include the veyron, the 1: one, and the weird Pagani that I can't spell.

that's part of what makes this conversation so interesting: we are talking about a time and place where we started to see things in cars that had never been seen before. A car wasn't a supercar just because it was the biggest billy badass amount of HP you could stuff in the lightest chassis, it was super because it did something truly amazing and was special.

why is the TT supra not special enough? nobody here thinks it's ordinary, but what isn't it "enough" of to be supercar special?

Kerry you and your 12 followers can discuss this at length during CC&C. Clay can rope off your own section with a placard. The no fun car debate team. Parked 13 wide, only 4, 7, or 8 speed automatics erywhere, nothing larger than a 4.0L in a Jeep under any of the hoods. The vehicle equivalents' to ketchup stained sweatpants.

Nobody is paying you to be here Millz. This is an interesting conversation about cars, and there is a lot to be learned about how your fellow gearheads think about cars from it. I think even you could benefit.

If I cared more I'd start a thread about whether or not the LFA is a supercar. I don't think people care as much about the company behind a car as you think.

Not now, but back then it mattered. In this thread I have head the LFA been called both a supercar and not a supercar, as well as the spiritual successor of the MK4 supra. Someone even made the case in this thread that had the MK4 supra been badged a lexus back then it might have made the difference.

What do sales have to do with anything? We're talking about a colloquial definition here. You're saying that people didn't call it a supercar because of anti-Japanese sentiment, not that they didn't buy it because of that. Because, you know, Toyota did produce it and sell thousands of them, so somebody was buying them. They just didn't call them supercars.

one recurring theme in this thread is that supercars have to be rare. and TT supras are rare. there are years where they struggled to make 100 units of the car. Part of that argument is the reason for the TT Supra being rare is that US sales were sluggish - it's an excuse as for why the TT Supra doesn't really meet the rarity qualifier. In fact, if you look at it some of the reasons people have for the supra is because it doesn't meet an objective criteria even though on paper it does. "It's not really rare, because people just didn't buy them", "It's not really fast because it only has X hp", "Just because it makes 0-60 the same as a lambo doesn't mean it's a supercar because it's not just one metric that makes it a supercar".

To ask whether the TT Mk4 Supra is a supercar is basically to ask, what is the actual subjective criteria that makes it a supercar?

Objectively the car meets all the measurable criteria for the era:

- sub 5 second 0-60 time

- 13 second or quicker 1/4 mile time

- rare or low production

- over 170mph top speed

- over 300 net hp

- technologically advanced

- apex or halo car of that mfg

- Expensive to the point where it sits above the standard sports car range

- Visually distinct.

- Pop culture recognition

- recognition by automotive journalists and comparison with other supercars in their publication.

So what are the subjective criteria? "Because I said so" doesn't cut it - what makes people ok with a viper, a Zr1, a 911 Turbo, or even a 512TR making the cut but a supra doesn't make the cut? I'm genuinely curious.

The whole east coast is going that way, the people from New York move out because of the high taxes, high cost of living, and endless regulation. They bring all those issues to their new place of living by preaching he same things they left for. They also like to vote for people who bring all the same regulations and cost in the new place they live. Florida is a great example of that, and you have seen a first hand example right here. Just watch Live PD in Pasco county Fla and let listen to the east coast accents of 80% of the calls. Or simply read Geeto’s posts to confirm

You do understand that there are people born here in the Midwest that also don't share your extremist views, right? Ohio is a battle ground state and it's not because it's been invaded by "east coasters", it's because there are actually decent people here, not you, but they are here. If you think you are a majority opinion in this state, then holy shit is the bubble you live in isolating.

If you think the offices of Law enforcement in Ohio aren't doing the same thing that the NYPD is doing to waze, you are dead wrong. They are still members of the national organizations the Sheriff's Association and the Fraternal Order of Police, who are putting just as much pressure on Waze and Google. LEO's across the nation don't like it, just the NYPD is the 800lb gorilla.

I can't defend the NYPD, they are larger than most small countries armies, frequent human rights violators, horrifically corrupt, and for some reason international (?!?!) for reasons that escape me (why the fuck, do they have an office in Jerusalem or Toronto?). Most NY'ers hate them because even on their best behavior they are miserable and bureaucratic. There are legit things to be concerned about them, but their temper tantrums about things which have been found to be constitutionally protected aren't really anything.

McLaren Honda was literally dominating F1 at the time. I'm not sure where you're getting this notion that "one of the biggest complaints" about the Japanese was that they "couldn't build supercars." Who was complaining?

Go back through this thread and you will see more than one person make the argument that Toyota has never made a supercar because they are the brand that makes boring economy cars. How serious those people are I can't say, but it happened more than once so it's not just a one off fluke. I'm not saying it's a popular opinion now, but it ain't the first time I've heard it.

You're gonna need to start producing some actual evidence to back up this assertion that anti-Japanese sentiment factored into people's definition of a supercar in 1994. First of all, it's 2019 and 84% of people in this thread still don't consider it a supercar. Is that lingering anti-Japanese sentiment as well?

I don't know what evidence you want, There certainly was evidence of Japanophobia from that time, from the murder of Vincent Chin, to movies like Gung-Ho, Back to the Future II, RoboCop 3, Rising Sun, to backlash over japanese companies buying cultural icons like Rock Center and the empire state building, to late night comics cracking jokes about how various government programs should be taken over by Toyota so they run efficiently.

How to prove that that translated into car sales I'm not sure how to do, but I remember the propaganda for "Jap Crap" and "Buy American" at the time, I remember being a kid at a biker rally where they set a stolen japanese sport bike on fire, and I know that these things just don't go away in an instant.

this is a pretty good article about american politics and anti-Japanese sentiment as a political tool from 1980 to 1993: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40464347?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Secondly, the Supra had been around since 1978. My dad had one. It was a known brand, and nobody had any reason to consider it a supercar because it just wasn't one. The 1992 Supra wasn't "not a supercar" because of anti-Japanese sentiment, it's because it just wasn't. And when the mk4 turbo came out, regardless of the performance, it was still just a Supra. Had Toyota rebranded the car and tweaked the styling maybe the story would have been different, but they didn't and it's not.

Just because an existing brand has a history of being an excellent sports car or a GT car doesn't necessarily mean the same brand can't churn out a supercar based on an existing platform. The corvette has been around since 1953, and Chevrolet built (or endorsed tuners with factory support) several "supercars" in their age based on that platform: the 1957 Fuelie Corvette, the 1967 L88 corvette, the 1969 ZL-1, the Greenwood Turbo GT and Daytona, the Calloway twin turbo aerovette (sledgehammer), and the C4 Zr-1. Because "supercar" is a partially subjective term and one that has evolved radically in the last 60 years, it's questionable whether the c6 and c7 Zr-1s meet those definitions, but they certainly make a good case for it.

It's kind of misunderstanding to assume the MK4 Turbo Supra is "just a supra" or rather, just an NA supra they stuck a Turbo on to. I'll give you that they start with a stock body and interior, but even the TT supras get a factory aero kit on top of the stock body work and 17" wheels. Mechanically, they are not the same cars, the engine, trans, dif, electronic system, fuel system, brakes, suspension, etc...are all different and very difficult to replicate on an NA supra. Plenty of people have built up NA supras to be turbo, but I can't think of anybody who has built an accurate TT clone out of an NA car because the only thing they would keep is the bodyshell and the interior to do it.

And by the way, who says supercars can't be built on existing chassis or leverage existing tech back in that time period? Ferrari built the 288 GTO on the 308 Chassis and I don't know anybody that doesn't consider it a supercar. Same with the 512TR and the 512M ferrari built at that time which were based off the aging Testarossa. Calloway built his sledgehammer aerovette off a stock C4, and then managed to get GM to let dealers sell them with factory backing. No supercar from that era doesn't rob something from someone's parts bin - even the vector used a GM transmission, Rodek Engine, and styling stolen from the Mercedes Cw311, and Lamborghini? robbed evry parts bin from Chrysler to Austin-Morris and reused the countach's v12 and the LM005's transfer case on the VT models - the chassis and body were probably the only new thing on that car.

If it went unnoticed, then I'm not sure how it can qualify as a supercar. You can't help but notice a supercar...

Eh...maybe....The press certainly noticed the car, it was included in almost every comparison they published. Pop culture noticed the car before the fast and the furious because it showed up in video games like the 1994 version Need for Speed where the field was all supercars.

The only people who didn't notice were the people who were in the market for a supercar, and I suspect that had more to do with lingering "anti-japanese" sentiment than it did with whether the car was worth the money. Even Dodge had the hemi cars to fall back on as part of it's performance image in selling the viper, but Toyota? they made corollas and once upon a time the 2000GT - which nobody ever saw outside of a james bond movie because they made like 300 of them. In 1994 who would buy a supercar from a company that was famous for making the corolla and bankrupting GM, Ford, and Chrysler?

This is a very well-crafted, eloquent argument. I totally agree. However, that's not what we're debating, is it? We're debating whether the Supra is/was a supercar. If the poll was "Can we give the Japanese their due for making cool/fast/awesome/unique cars?" then I think most people would answer "yeah, sure." So, maybe you're trying to sell us something we'd more readily buy if you packaged it differently.

Part of giving the japanese their due is recognizing when they started playing in the supercar field, and that happened with the NSX and the Supra. Of course in their first foray they weren't going to get everything right, the Supra had the power and performance but not the sparkle and the NSX had the sparkle and tech but lacked the performance to run at the front of the field.

There is another Toyota supercar built in the 1990's that hardly anybody in america has heard about: the Toyota GT-One. Toyota build 2 road cars for sale to meet FIA GT1 class homologation requirements. It's a twin turbo v8 road legal Lemans racing car. This car would not exist without the Supra campaigns in GT classes in sports car racing. One of the biggest complaints about the Japanese of that era is that they "can't build super cars because they are the company that built small, cheap, compact cars that killed the american car industry" but based on the supra and the GT-one, in the 1990's they knew a lot.

I want to at least try and go to Norwalk for the last day in the C10. I think I would enjoy long hauling with someone if it wasn't my car/truck. Im sure that sounds lame. But at least I think Id want to start that way.

No I totally get it, and it was something I considered as well. The more unreliable factors you add the greater the chances of failure.

I'm doing this in a 29 year old car that hasn't had a long road trip in about 15 years. the only good thing is that this car only has 25,000 miles, has been serviced religiously, and has a reputation of being the "toughest" performance engine GM ever installed in a corvette. The amount of planning and anxiety that comes just for things that can go wrong with the car has not gone unnoticed. One of the things that convinced me to do this and try long haul is that all except 2 stops are 3 hours drive or less from cbus so if something goes pear shaped in the worst way I could always rent a trailer and truck from U-haul and get the car back here without mortgaging the house.

Something that I never considered, but every Power Tour veteran has mentioned to me is to expect traffic. There will be traffic getting into the venues (sometimes as much as an hour delay), all the chain restaurants will have long waits, and the single lane back-roads on the official tour route will sometimes become congested due to accidents or breakdowns. To that end, make sure your cooling system is up to snuff, that you explore alternate routes and have a plan for getting to them, and your breakdown kit is packed with up to date items (no 30 year old spare tires).

I would have loved to do this by dipping my toe into it - go to a few stops on last years tour, maybe do it in a rental car or a new car first, just to get the lay of the land, but I didn't, I jumped in with both feet because I wanted to do the 25th anniversary tour to make up for wanting to do the first tour and being talked out of it by my parents at 17. Plus, how can you have an adventure if there isn't a little risk.

Good idea, my dad passed away when I was 13 and I often think of the things we could have done together if he was still around.

yeah, although we spend most Sundays as a family, I didn't spend a lot of time with my parents growing up because they worked long hours. He didn't teach me to work on cars or bikes although we did share some projects much later on. After his health scare last year where he almost died, I figured this is my chance to start doing things with him so that I can say I knew him well at his eulogy when it comes (hopefully far off in the future) and have a lot of positive memories to share.

Sounds like fun! I plan to attend a tour in the future.

You should at least try to make the last day since it's at Summit in Norwalk Ohio. the Second to last stop in Ft Wayne, Ind is also a similar distance, but that isn't a track so it might just be a car show.

We are long hauling with a decent sized group. You are welcome to roll with us !

Awesome. I have to go to NY to pick up the car and will be heading direct to the first stop from there, but I'd love to roll with you guys from stop to stop. Are you on any of the facebook power tour pages? There is an Ohio one and a Long Haul one.

Jenkem is an inhalant and hallucinogen created from fermented human waste. In the mid-1990s, it was reported to be a popular street drug among Zambian street children. They would put the feces and urine in a jar and cover it with a balloon then let it ferment out in the sun, then afterwards they would inhale the fumes created. In November 2007, there was a moral panic in the United States after widespread reports of jenkem becoming a popular recreational drug in middle and high schools across the country, though the true extent of the practice has since been called into question.Several sources reported that the increase in American media coverage was based on a hoax and on faulty Internet research.

So what you are saying is a bunch of uninformed, frightened, easily swayed people, with preconceived biases panicked for no reason based off something they read in the paper?

(looks up at all the NY LOL comments in this thread)

Ok, that checks out.

The NYPD is one of the largest Law Enforcement organizations in the country (even bigger than the FBI) and as such sometimes it throws it's weight around to try to bully private citizens/companies into helping them out, even where there is no legal standing for those individuals/organizations to do so? Why? because every once in a while it gets some public support, and then a local politician gets elected on that local support, and then a law gets passed. It's playing the political game. Most NY'ers hear the NYPD griping about something and just roll their eyes and say - "yeah well maybe if you guys weren't such pains in the ass, people would feel more sympathetic to what you are trying to do".

Occasionally it makes national news, and people in other states (maybe conservative ones) point their fingers and say "look at NY, they hate freedom!!!!" when in fact their own state's LEO's have been complaining about the same thing for years and are part of the national groups like the Sheriff's Association and the Fraternal Order of Police who have been making this same argument for years: https://www.ohio.com/article/20150129/NEWS/301299202

If you guys want to discuss it - the most interesting part of all this is that warning people of speed traps and police blockades has been considered a protected form or free speech in some cases. this goes back before the time of smartphones and apps to when people would flash their lights to warn oncoming motorists.

Kerry, thanks for not writing a book with your correction to what I posted. I had not looked into this since my dad told, and hell that could have been 15 years ago when he drove through there all the time, in a commercial truck. But this is just showing one more stupid thing about over regulated NY. Not running a radar detector in a commercial vehicle is a federal law, but NY wants to make sure they have it in their books too.

States having copies of federal law are extremely common, and the reason is jurisdiction. Federal crimes can only be tried in federal courts and states are not obligated to enforce federal crimes (that's why we have an FBI). By having a state law version of the federal law, a state LEO can just issue you a ticket for having a radar detector in a commercial vehicle instead of having to arrest you and await trial on a federal docket.

Ohio has the same state law version of the federal law that New York has. It's not a sign of over regulation.

NY isn't "over regulated" for the most part it has the same laws we have here in Ohio (thanks to the adoption of uniform commercial and criminal codes), it is however sometimes overzealous in enforcement of different things. But that's a different conversation.

NY is a no radar detector state, so disconnect your radar or pay a ticket if caught.

That's not accurate. NY state prohibits radar detectors in commercial vehicles and any vehicle with a GVWR of 18,000lbs or over, i.e. Trucks. Detectors are perfectly legal in passenger cars and private vehicles under 18,000 lbs.

The argument the NYPD is trying to make is that there is no permissible purpose of alerting people as to police checkpoints other than to allow people to get away with breaking the law. It's kind of a bullshit argument because there are plenty of legitimate purposes for knowing the location of a checkpoint, and as was pointed out they are often a matter of public record. I don't think they will be successful, and so far they have not taken any legal action. They dig up this threat against waze, Google, and literally anybody who reports on the location of police action every couple of years and it never goes anywhere because it's not illegal.

Which BMW? Would a 95 E36 M3 be on that list? What's the performance and technology gulf between the Supra and the 320hp high revving M3? Is the M3 a supercar?

If you were asking in the early 1990's, There would still be people around who remembered the BMW M1, the orphan child of a deal between BMW and Lamborghini that fell apart.

Mid 1990's, it would be the alpina B10-Bi turbo, a car maybe 5 people in the US heard about through the buff books, but in germany was kind of a sensation with 355hp worth of water cooled twin turbos and variable boost control that was sold through BMW dealers with a warranty. Although it wasn't a sub 5 second 0-60 car it was good for sustained and tested 180mph (and still as fast as a testarossa). Costing somewhere between obscenely expensive and mildly filthy lucre and being rare at 507 units produced it really was something that set its sights on supercars on the autobahn.

I suspect those same germans might also consider the AMG hammer which was still in production into the early 1990s as a supercar as well considering its 385hp, wide body stance, and bank account draining price tag.

However these two Bavarian cream puffs bring up an interesting point....can a sedan be considered a supercar when it isn't a sports car? The Alpina B10 Bi-turbo was the fastest production sedan in the world when it was introduced in 1989-90. They were built specifically to fill the rearview mirrors of supercars on the autobahn, and they were factory endorsed and sold with warranties through dealers, despite being "tuner" cars. Seems a shame to exclude them just because they have more doors.

No I don't think the E36 M3 makes the cut, despite nearly everyone loving that car in the 1990s. It just isn't in the cross shopping list of someone looking to buy a supercar in 1994. Also the E36 M3 had 240hp in the US and 282hp in europe during the time we are talking about. The Euro E36 320hp didn't happen until very late 1995 (as I think 1996 models). Even still it isn't about one metric - although it has comparable hp, it just doesn't have the timed performance delivering 6 second 0-6 times and 14 second 1/4 mile times. The E36 M3 Evolution GT2, (of which there were approx 200 made and cost way more than a std m3) might be considered in that realm by some germans, esp with 5.3 0-60, 171mph top speed, and 13.7 1/4 mile times....who knows, I was in italy at that time, not germany and although I did speak to some germans, most of them were obsessed with Harley Davidsons (go figure).

Oh come on, the NSX came out in 1990 and EVERYONE considered it a supercar. Maybe not the fastest, maybe not the coolest, but Winston Wolf was driving a supercar.

Go back and read this thread from start. There is more than one post calling it an accord with the engine in the back. Maybe they didn't see pulp fiction. Or maybe it was the wrong wolf - maybe they needed a Walter wolf special edition like the lotus esprit:

If you stopped anyone in the 1990s and told them to name 5 supercars, I bet no one would say Supra.

that depends on a lot of factors. In the US, you are probably right because the supra mostly went unnoticed by the American public. they have to know about it to name it. If you asked the same question in Japan at the same time you might have gotten a different answer. If you asked 5 random people at a motor industry event, I betcha 1 would at least mention it. If you asked 5 people in germany, I betcha there wouldn't be an american can on the list and BMW and porsche would both be there.

Too bad this is completely speculative and can't be tested.

If you stopped anyone on the street today and told them to name 5 supercars, I would bet a large sum of money no one says Supra.

Are you asking them to name 5 supercars of the 1990's? or 5 supercars today? Either way, it's a loaded question since nobody here says a 20 year old car is a supercar by modern standards. Even BMW and Toyota acknowledge that the new supra is not a supercar but a sports car for a niche market. Their goals in the 1990's and goals now are very different - they built supercars like the LFA, the supra doesn't have anything to prove nor is it a flagship.

Go to a random car meet and ask car people to name some supercars, I bet no one says Supra.

We can actually test this one. Come out to CCC this summer and we will walk around together and ask people. I'll take your bet, the stakes are who buys lunch.

Go to a Supra meet, ask same thing, and I still bet no one says Supra.

Is there such a thing as a "supra only" meet? How about we go to a Supra forum and ask the same question and see if it causes the same debate. My money is on that it will.

While I am still betting on stuff, I bet no one used the term "supercar" in their response to seeing the Supra commercial during the Super Bowl.

Agreed, but that's not really relevant.

Sure, give me a list of criteria, use some nuanced definitions, and throw in a little bit of wordsmithing and I'll find myself agreeing that a Supra (or whatever other kind of sports car you want) seems to meet the criteria of a "supercar." That same kind of word play and fancy talk leaves me agreeing that somehow a hot dog is a sandwich when I know it isn't.

 

The Supra isn't a supercar.

It's easy to blame "word play" when the word in play has a constantly evolving definition, is contextually dependent on time and space, and a set of examples that exist on a spectrum.

What's at stake is whether people are ready to give the Japanese their due for making really far out, weird, and tech advanced performance cars when in their time weren't recognized as such because of lingering anti-Japanese sentiment left over from the 1980's, and Japanese industrialization of America and the shrinking of the american car industry. how long are we going to allow linger 1980's xenophobia and anti Japanese propaganda color how we look at Japanese cars of the past?

In terms of performance and technology, what's the gulf between a mk4 Supra and a 4th gen Camaro?

Pretty significant. Let's compare a 1994 Supra Turbo with a 1994 Camaro Z28:

Engine:

Supra: DOHC I6, with twin sequential stainless steel turbochargers. Iron Block Aluminum cylinder head. 3.0L making 320 hp and 315 ft/lbs torque.

Z28: Pushrod, Iron block and head 350 ci (5.7L) LT1 engine making 275hp. About the only thing technologically advanced was the FI system for the LT1 engines, otherwise the LT1/LT4 was the last of the original Small block chevy architecture in use since 1955, and was only significant because of the reverse cooling that cooled the heads first.

At the time even the Ferrari F40 didn't use Sequential Turbochargers, to be honest I am not sure any other turbo cars in the market did - maybe the RX7 and the 3000GT VR4, but that's it.

Performance:

Supra Turbo: 0-60 4.6 seconds. 1/4 mile: 13.1 seconds, Top speed: 177 mph tested (155 restricted by computer). As tested by Car and Driver in March 1993.

Z28: 0-60 5.6 seconds, 1/4 mile: 14.0. Top speed: 152 mph (restricted by computer to 110).

In term of performance the Supra Turbo was faster than the contemporary Vette L98 and LT1 versions. The nearest Chevrolet equalivent was the corvette Zr-1, which boasted a similar hp number (385hp in 1990, 405hp in 1991-95), was an all aluminum DOHC engine developed by Lotus and Mercury Marine, ran a similar 0-60 and 1/4 mile time (4.6 seconds, 13.4 1/4 mile, 185 top speed).

The Zr-1's status as a supercar is somewhat debated as well, mostly by people who are unfamilar with the car and judge it off it's looks. While looking like a normal C4, the whole car is actually 4 inches wider than the standard corvette. The engine was designed by lotus and built by mercury marine, and is considered one of the most durable engines ever put in a GM vehicle. Instead of the usual Tremec, Borg Warner, or Doug Nash transmission in standard vettes, it used the ZF 6 speed unit similar to what BMW used in the euro E34 M5. Only the suspension and interior was out of the corvette parts bin, and every ZR1 came with the ZX3 adjustable suspension, a top tier option on the standard corvette. In terms of Exotic cars, it was probably the most "exotic" production car GM ever built considering the number of nations that contributed to the build, the advanced tech in the car, and the exotic materials used. It was also on par with most italian supercars of the era, cost as much as a Porsche 911 turbo (twice as much as a fully optioned std vette), and even gave the F40 ferrari a run for it's money in those multi supercar tests done in the era. It also had the nickname "Corvette from Hell" and "King of the Hill" and was the fastest production american car from the big three until the Viper came out.

Here is an interesting question: is the 1996 Camaro SS a super car? While not "technologically advanced", SLP did up the HP to 305 hp and pushed the 0-60 to 5.2 and 1/4 mile to 13.6. Since they were built by SLP, they technically fit the definition of "tuner car" and the SS was a $4K option on top of a loaded Z28. I am kind of torn on this question, and kinda leaning toward not because it came in 2 years two late and by 1996, the ZR-1 was out of production, the viper was debuting the GTS, and any other cars like the supra it was "catching up to" were aging out of supercar territory. The 1990's were interesting because we saw a shift in supercars from brute HP to high tech. Porsche abandoned air cooling for first oil cooling and then water cooling, Ferrari was taking what it had learned in the F40 further with the F50 and other cars in it's line, Lambo was playing with AWD, and an old tech iron block pushrod "merican v8 didn't really fit the market anymore, esp since it was neither technologically advanced nor brute strong enough to fill the hole left by the ZR-1. LAter versions would go to 330hp in LT4 and LS1 trim but that's in the early 2000s and not even close to the field.

Does the word "Super car" have any real meaning in the modern era? or has it become basically synonymous with "Exotic car"?

Once upon a time (the 1960's) Super Car was what journalists used to refer to muscle cars - pedestrian cars that the factory had stuffed big engines into to make "fast" and hence "super". Prior to that ad agencies had used it as a description for anything from high quality cars to highly technologically advanced cars regardless as to top speed or 0-60. To call something a supercar is to try and hit a moving target blindfolded. Esp when so much "image" becomes associated with a term, to the point where the metrics may cease to matter entirely.

Again, in the context of the mid 90's I think the supra Turbo met a lot of the qualifications to be considered a supercar at the time, most of them performance and technology based, but people are reluctant to call it, or anything japan made at the time, a supercar, not because the cars aren't super - but because the cars are Japanese. Cars like the NSX and the GTR also carry the same kind of debate, and there is always some "excuse" for why the car isn't a supercar despite in some ways exceeding the super car staples from Italy or Germany.

Was a 1969 camaro with a 427 a supercar in 1969? Sure it was (heck Don Yenko put it in the name SYC badges on the car stand for "Yenk Super Car"). Was a ferrari 365 GT4 BB a supercar in the 1970's? Sure, even though a dodge durango SRT has more hp and just as good handling. The point isn't to say it's a supercar by modern standards, it is to recognize that the car met the criteria in the time and place when it was new. I legit thing the japanese made supercars in the 1990's, and the Supra Turbo was one of them and deserves it's due. I think its exclusion then and to a certain degree now has a lot more to do with anti Japanese industrialization in America than it does with whether the car "not being special" enough.

your opinion my vary though.

Been 20 years since I have been but I've been 3 times......

When in Rome, go see the roman ruins. Also eat blood oranges off the tree in one of the groves there. Def go to a nightclub. Visit the Vatican, go to the sistine chapel just so you can say you've seen it in real life. Either be moved or disappointed at the ceiling. Marvel at the enormity and wealth of the greatest criminal organization in the world: the catholic church.

also see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capuchin_Crypt It's like being on the set of a horror movie.

Naples is the architecture city. It's also known for it's porcelain and it's food is what people think of when they think of "italian food". It's also a good place to get a suit because of neopolitan tailoring, but if you want off the rack haute couture go to Milan instead. If you want a steak go to florence for it, if you want to see what olive garden aspires to be but will never reach - eat anything in naples.

Florence: See all the art. The David is there in the Galleria dell'Accademia as is a large collection of work from the renaissance ninja turtles (Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo). It's also a leather and blown glass city, so if you want those trinkets, it's good to pick them up there. The best leather shoes I ever owned were hand made for me when I was in Florence (20 years ago), plus Prada et al are based there. Most of the small shops have places where you can watch them blow glass or make leather goods, It's fun to watch (and not the same as you see at the renn faire).

Carry lots of small bills in cash. Europe in general works on the grift, so be prepared to grease palms. To that end, be wary of scammers on the street - way more wiley and friendly than you find in the US, downright charming if you ask me, but you'll lose your shirt. try not to be places where there are lots of street urchins or pickpockets.