A Totally Non-Biased Review of the MKIII Toyota Supra

By Don Caven

This is sort of a played-out concept— a random guy on the internet does review of their own car, driven by some sort of overzealous fantasy of launching a youtube channel into a fabulous hundred-thousand-subscriber empire. I mean, that worked for some people: David Patterson, Mr. Regular, that guy from Vehicle Virgins, and if you wanna get technical with it you could say Rob Dahm too. I’d love to get to review all kinds of different cars, but for now, I’m gonna stick with this: my car.

The 1989 Toyota Supra, sport package.

Naturally aspirated.

Automatic.

Those last two phrases tend to disappoint most people thinking about Supras, or even performance cars in general. It’s so common that I’m at a Cars and Coffee or a weekend meet, and I’ll see someone walk up to my car, check it out, because “hey, Supras are cool,” then look inside, realize it’s an automatic, and walk away with shattered hopes and dreams.

That’s the thing though- Supras are some of the most overhyped cars on the road, thanks to a few cheesy one-liners performed by the Iron Giant and a dead guy whose image has been milked harder over the last four years than any cash cow deserves. Not only are Supras overhyped by a series of high-budget, low-plot films, but they’re horrendously overpriced because of it, similar to the AE86 Toyota Corolla’s “Initial D Tax.” MKIII Supras saw a dip for a few years, but prices of good condition cars are surging back into the realm of unreasonable, and MKIV Supras in any condition have been demanding higher-than-MSRP prices for the last fifteen years. Turbo cars of both generations demand an absurd premium, with MKIV turbos taking the cake around $40,000 at minimum for a running car. A running twenty year old car. That’s right— every Supra sold in the United States was built at least two decades ago.

Get ready for that hype train to derail though— most stock Supras are NOT fast cars by modern standards. A stock 2JZGTE MKIV Supra takes somewhere between 4.6 and 5.1 seconds to get to 60mph, making it almost as fast as its distant cousin, the brand-new Lexus LC500; a stock, naturally aspirated MKIII Supra is rated closer to the zero-to-sixty time of a brand-new Honda Fit, between seven and eight seconds. Turbo supras are also amazing modding platforms— a few thousand dollars into reliability mods and a good boost controller can almost double your wheel horsepower on a MKIII or MKIV.

This is not the case with the naturally aspirated, automatic MKIII.

Essentially, this car has the worst power-to-weight ratio of any third-generation Supra you could buy in the United States. It wasn’t the heaviest Supra available, that honor went to the turbo-automatic cars, but it’s up there; This one hasn’t been weighed by me or anyone else I know, but as equipped I believe it’s somewhere between 3600 and 3800lbs, WITHOUT people in it.

So the Supra is a boat, but what drives it? A lovely little not-so-little engine called the 7M, a 3-liter inline six with a block designed by Toyota and a head designed by Yamaha. The official designation was either 7MGE for the naturally aspirated models (7th generation M series engine with performance wide-angle DOHC head and multi-point fuel injection) or 7MGTE for the turbo Supras (all of the above, plus a TURBOCHARGER!). The 7M is mocked by the masses, notorious for being the most unreliable Toyota engine ever built— oddly enough, the 7M’s constant head gasket failure isn’t a design problem like the Ford Focus RS’s Ecoboost engine, it literally was an issue with how it was built: across every manufacturing, the head bolts on the 7M were never properly torqued from the factory. While turbocharged versions made a hearty 230 horsepower and 250 lb-ft of torque, naturally aspirated versions made 200 horsepower and 200ish torque either at the crank or at the rear wheels, depending on who you talk to and how big they need to pretend their schween is. I choose the former though, which means that 200 horsepower and 200ish torque at the crank translates to roughly enough power to spin stock-size tires once it’s gone through the A340E automatic transmission.

Speaking of the A340E, let the record state that I’ve only driven two manual Supras, but I’ve driven a decent number of manual vehicles. The notchy R-series transmissions offered in Toyota’s higher-powered vehicles are some of my favorites, and are definitely better than an automatic in the vehicles I drove.

But in this configuration? I think I’d prefer the automatic.

I’m probably horrendously biased, because I’ve owned this car for over three years now as a daily driver, but the automatic transmission works, and it works well. The Toyota A340E is a 3-speed torque converter automatic with overdrive, and it does its job smoothly and quickly if you leave it alone. But if you really get into it, and you’re a nerd like me who doesn’t want to spend the money to swap to a manual transmission, there are ways to get the most out of your automatic Supra. Leaving the gear selector in “2” will pseudo-lock you in second gear, but actually give you first and third when necessary (if you’re at Wide Open Throttle under 20mph or if you run 2nd all the way to redline at Wide Open Throttle), which is convenient for spirited driving in canyons or back roads, as just 2nd gear at redline will have you at speeds that are illegal on pretty much any highway outside of Texas.

A few hundred pounds of this car’s near two-ton curb weight come from the “sport package,” and unfortunately, not much of it is actually functional weight. The biggest gain comes from the extra chassis reinforcement added for the “sport roof,” allowing four long-thread allen bolts to be painstakingly loosened to enable the removal of a targa top— one of the most important structural components of the car. This resulted in a need for additional bracing along the bottom of the chassis. Even with the additional bracing, when you take the roof off, the chassis flexes like al dente pasta— just enough to make concerning noises, while not affecting handling performance more than a good bit of extra weight. The actually performance-oriented stuff involved with the “sport package” includes a 4.1:1 viscous limited slip differential to facilitate tire smoke and oversteer, an adaptive suspension damper setup named TEMS [Toyota Electronically Modulated Suspension] that effectively negates body roll as well as lift and dive under acceleration and braking, and an optional rear wing that supposedly did something for drag reduction (bets are out on that one).

This all amounted to a performance gain of almost nothing as far as lap times, but serves to increase driver experience immensely. Compared to the base model, with a fixed roof, fixed dampers, an open differential, and a five-speed manual transmission derived from the system in Toyota’s pickup trucks (two-piece driveshaft and all), the premium level trim is massively more enjoyable and accessible in the 2010’s and was likely even nicer to own and to drive fresh off the lot in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

While it may not appeal to drivers intent on knife-edge handling and a lightweight, chuckable chassis, the Supra caters directly to casual sports car enthusiasts: it’s fast, loud, comfortable, forgiving, and has a fuel tank that will take it from home to work every day of the week and then up into the canyons on Friday night. Drivability is perhaps its greatest strength— the steering is still direct rack and pinion and feels like it, but it uses a fluid powered setup enabling smooth one-handed operation in any circumstances; the 7M’s powerband is smooth and well balanced, thanks to a variable length intake manifold that creates an amazing roar at its crossover at 3500rpm; while its zero-to-sixty acceleration is hampered by super-short low gear ratios, taller high gears make 50-80mph a smile factory every time. It’s outpaced in a straight line by every new econobox-turned-hot hatch on the road, but as a filthy casual enthusiast, that shouldn’t matter; if it does matter, there’s no reason for you to stay stock, or for that matter to start with a naturally aspirated Supra as a platform.

The third generation of the Toyota Supra is a misrepresented great; It’s like making an effort to win the class vote for “most likely to be boring and get a high paying desk job,” but being celebrated like you won the homecoming crown, and being expected to also be a Super Bowl-winning quarterback. It’s not the hero you want, but the hero you deserve. It’s an exotic travel destination with a Motel Six’s continental breakfast. It’s an effective, well-designed GT car. On top of that, it’s a Toyota, part of a dynasty stemming from the 2000GT, one of the fabled Three Brothers, a doppelganger for the Nissan 240SX and Mazda RX7, and an all around enjoyable and usable vehicle. The MKIII Supra, in its naturally aspirated form, is one of the best ‘80s cars you can buy, with its striking vaporwave-aesthetic looks, an easily-entertained price tag, and a drivetrain straight out of some of the most reliable vehicles on the planet (save for the head bolt torque, of course). You should buy one. Your friend should get one. Your parents should share a driveway with some. Everyone should experience the MKIII Supra.

Actually, don’t get one, that way mine will be worth more when the inevitable “young Brian O’Connor” Fast and Furious prequel happens.