Let’s face it, the 2020 Supra is a polarizing car. Not only does it have little to do with the Two-Jay-Zee Mark IV before it, but the fake vents rub the proverbial salt into the proverbial wound. As a matter of fact, some tuners don’t think much of it.
Shinichi Kobayashi of Matchless Crowd Racing said “it really sucks” yet that isn’t 100 percent true. The Supra has its good points, including the B58 inline-six engine from BMW and endless tuning potential if your pockets are lined with cash.
The 2021 model year – just like the one before it – has impressed on the dyno on multiple occasions. Car & Driver, for example, reports 388 rear-wheel horsepower (393 PS) although the crankshaft output is rated at 382 horsepower (387 PS).
Run the Supra on E50 and you’ll also whoop a Ford Mustang GT with an E85 tune and rear-wheel drag radials. The question is, how does the Japanese sports car built by Magna Steyr in Austria fare against an almost stock C8 Corvette Z51?
Briank03’s Racing Channel - known as texassupras on Instagram - has the answer to that with a series of drag races. “We ended up doing two rolls from 45 mph (72 km/h) and a dead-stop launch with both cars.” The Supra’s mods are exclusively aesthetic while the high-winged Stingray boasts a different exhaust system with round tips. The C8 is running an LG Motorsports exhaust that’s listed on the tuner’s website as “coming soon.”
The first race sees the Supra pip ahead yet the ‘Vette starts gaining ground before the driver shifts from third into fourth. By 6,000 rpm in fourth gear, the C8 is already ahead and stays ahead of the coupe sibling of the BMW Z4. The second roll starts at around 42 mph (68 km/h) according to the digital speedo of the C8, and the winner is – once again – the midship brawler from Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Drag racing from a standstill also favors the ‘Vette even though the Supra has the edge off the line. It would be easy to claim that there’s no replacement for displacement, but that would be wrong. These two sports cars couldn’t be more different, and you can tell that on paper as well if you crunch the numbers.
Toyota quotes 4.1 seconds to 60 mph (97 km/h) for the Supra while Chevy promises 3.0 seconds flat for the base Stingray and 2.9 for the Z51 package. Torque is an important aspect of drag racing as well, rated at 365 pound-feet (495 Nm) for the Supra and 470 pound-feet (637 Nm) for the mid-engined ‘Vette.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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