this is a celebration of toyota shoehorning in one of the world's few remaining
naturally aspirated v8s into its compact lexus sedan
and a look back at the 2jz yesterday's world's greatest straight six together with today's
keeping in mind that today's world's greatest straight six is made by bmw
say hello to eight cylinders 4 969 cubic centimeters and 472 horsepower
but don't arrive until 7 100 glorious rpm this is a big v8 in a little sedan
and one blip of the throttle that's all it takes to remind us of what's been lost
and go
something lost but something gained the supra just showed us what we got in exchange
for the v8s noise a winner it makes 90 fuel horsepower but weighs almost 600 pounds less
so the cars have similar power to weight ratios and the supra 8-speed has gear ratios 25
shorter than the lexus's eight speed all that translates into a win but
flat foot them both from a stop without break torquing the super to build boost
and they're dead even so keep that in mind if you're ever racing an is-500 it's quick
launch them both magazine style and well it pulls a six-tenths advantage to 60 miles an hour
which he keeps the whole way through the quarter mile and finishes almost 100 feet ahead
this is a familiar story with bmw's b-58 straight
six it's an over-achieving psychopath regardless of what you put it in
it's what powers the toyota supra and the all-new all-wheel drive m240i and also the m340i
which accepting the m3 is the fastest and most powerful 3 series you can buy and now we race go
oh here they come ready for this
oh it's close you would better not blink
rewind
hang on hang on wait a second there's something i don't understand look the bmws make the same
amount of power and weigh the same so i expect them to be close because they work
i expect the m240i to get a jump off the line because it has all-wheel drive which it did and
then i expect the m340i to be identical the rest of the way down the track which it was
my question is what is the supra doing here
it has the same 382 horsepower engine as the bmws and the same quick shifting zf 8-speed
automatic gearbox but with shorter gears it has a 315 rear axle instead of the bmw's
281 so it should be quicker shorter gears mean quicker acceleration
and that's before you start calculating the big problem which is that it weighs 480 pounds less
than the bmws they should have never been able to keep up with that supra
and i have absolutely no explanation for this though i do have a conspiracy theory
clearly bmw's not giving toyota the full beans i guess that's what happens when one car company
builds a car on behalf of another company that's also why the supra doesn't have the s58 in it
bmw's m4 does this is the brand new
m4 x drive competition which pairs all-wheel drive with bmw's most powerful straight 6.
the s58 is a different animal entirely not just a b58 with an extra turbo it has lower compression
ratio to tolerate more boost a bigger bore and shorter stroke to trade efficiency for revs
and forged pistons to hold up to not only the 503 horsepower this thing is rated at
but the thousand horsepower that tuners get out of these things
that sounds a lot like something else that's very old but we still love anyway ah don't be so hard
on yourself buddy you still got a couple good shows in you hmm thanks randy but i was talking
about that because that's also a three liter turbocharged straight six that's a 2jz this
one makes 1250 horsepower at the wheels wow i've only ever seen that on youtube this is youtube
um
but now we're going
with three times the horsepower you'd think the super would have absolutely annihilated the m4
but it barely eked out a victory and that's for two reasons first the m4's all-wheel drive shaves
three quarters of a second off the rear drive m4's already outrageous three and a half second run to
60 putting the m4 in the two second range where bugattis and laferraris live even with anti-lag
and drag radials the supra can't match the m4's hole shot second speed is all about area under the
curve and the s58 is a big flat plateau of brute force everywhere the 2jz is the opposite it's dead
but once the turbo finally spools its slingshots past the m4 like the bmw isn't even running do
that through a couple of gears and well eventually the super crosses the line just before the m4
but going way way more quickly oh my god you know that's the first drag race i ever really
liked i mean i've never driven something that was so exciting in a straight line
do you believe that a stock m4 just almost kept up with a thousand horsepower supra
through the quarter mile well such is the march of progress such as also the
march of progress that the two oldest engines here sound by far the best can i get an amen
but where power is concerned bmw's b-58 and s-58 are in a league of their own
this engine is a future icon kids so enjoy it now because we all know what's coming next
you