Toyota Motorsport and Gazoo Racing will sell a Supra GT4 race car
Compared with other GT4-class cars, it'll be a bargain too.
Toyota's new Supra is going racing, and to help get it ready, Toyota Motorsports in Germany and Gazoo Racing have done a little tinkering. The end result, according to an announcement Tuesday by Toyota, is called the Toyota GR Supra GT4, and we're into it -- even if we saw the Supra GT4 in concept form six months ago.
To help kick-start its transition from road car to race car, Gazoo Racing boosted the BMW-derived six-cylinder engine's output from 335-horsepower all the way up to 430 hp. That's still a long way off of Steph Papadakis' planned 1,000 hp, but the GT4 isn't meant for the drift course or the drag strip.
Next, they slapped a fancy new, lightweight exhaust system from those Slovenian wizards at Akrapovic and filled the car up with fluids from German supplier Ravenol. Other changes include a great big rear wing and front splitter, both of which are made from some kind of "natural fiber," and those help to get the car's curb weight down to a svelte 2,976 lbs.
It's not quite as iconic a shape as the JGTC Supra of decades past, but it ain't bad.
Being a race car, the Supra GR GT4 will need better-than-average brakes, and that's precisely what it's getting with a set of six-piston calipers up front and four-piston calipers out back, clamping on 15.35-inch rotors in the front and 13.97-inch rotors in the rear.
Now is where we get to the exciting part. See, this being a GT4 car, it's meant to be sold to privateer racing teams and friends, and it's pretty cheap for what it is. The cars are going to be built by Toyota Motorsport in Germany and sold for around $194,400.
While we realize that that's not chump change, in race car terms, it's pretty damned reasonable. For comparison's sake, an Audi R8 LMS GT4 will set you back over $230,000 and a new-old-stock McLaren 570S GT4 is around $225,000.
Toyota Motorsport and Gazoo Racing are planning to offer the car in Europe beginning in March of 2020, with the goal of selling it here in the US and in Asia a little later.
