It’s fairly well known that modern BMW engines tend to have more actual horsepower and torque than is advertised. And—I don’t know if you’ve heard this or not—the 2020 Toyota Supra uses a BMW engine and chassis tuned by Toyota engineers. So when I drove the new Supra a few weeks ago, I figured it could be underrated too, since it certainly felt more powerful than its official figures let on.
Turns out I was right, like I always am, because I am a genius. The good folks at Car and Driver just did what may be the first dyno test of the Supra, and according to that test it has a more horsepower than Toyota claims and a lot more torque.
To recap, the Supra packs a twin-turbo 3.0-liter inline-six BMW engine called the B58B30M1. It’s rated at 335 HP and 365 lb-ft of torque. But given that this sports cars weighs in at 3,397 pounds but can do zero to 60 mph in under four seconds, it certainly feels more powerful than that.
C&D’s dyno test, done at Livernois Motorsports and Engineering in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, appears to confirm this. Their Supra came in at 339 HP and 427 lb-ft of torque—at the wheels. It’s not uncommon for a car’s wheel horsepower to be less than what is claimed at the crank, but hot damn, is that torque figure a nice surprise.
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Here’s how the magazine did the test:
We strapped the Supra to the Dynojet all-wheel-drive dynamometer, as the car’s stability systems only play nice when all four wheels are spinning. For this observation, we ran the test in the eight-speed automatic transmission’s fifth-gear ratio of 1.32:1 to achieve a full sweep of the tachometer. We experimented with the 1.00:1 ratio of sixth gear but were unable to reach the engine’s redline. The power output in sixth gear, however, matched our results of those in the higher gear.
C&D suspects the peak torque output could in actuality be a bit lower than that, but any way you spin it, the Supra’s more powerful than we were led to believe.
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Numbers are one thing, but I can tell you in real world driving that the Supra is a very fast car, certainly quicker than the Porsche Cayman S it was benchmarked against—even if it’s not quite as tight on the race track. Anyone who thought it’d be slow is sorely mistaken.
I can’t wait to see what the tuners do with it.
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