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Famous Japanese Tuner and Racer Roasts New Toyota Supra, “It Really Sucks”

Shinichi Kobayashi may not sound familiar to you, but in Japan, he’s pretty well known by the aftermarket and motorsport communities. Kobayashi-san founded Matchless Crowd Racing in 1994, a company from Saitama that’s specialized in extreme machines.
Shinichi Kobayashi of Matchless Crowd Racing roasting the Toyota GR Supra 46 photos
Photo: Tuned Japan on YouTube
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The MCR R34 GT-R was crowned Touge Monster by drift king Keiichi Tsuchiya a few years ago, cementing Kobayashi as the go-to person for hot Nissans in the Land of the Rising Sun. Matchless Crowd Racing can also spruce up the R35 as well as the 370Z, but we won’t talk about these cars today.

Instead, we’ll talk about how a tuner and racer is roasting Toyota for rebadging the BMW Z4 as the GR Supra when the car clearly isn't a Supra.

I admit I came across this video three months late, courtesy of an r/cars thread titled How Do Japanese People Feel About the GR Supra? The reply that captured my attention by the scruff of the neck is Kobayashi-san’s interview with Tuned Japan, uploaded on YouTube on January 15th.

“Why does it seem like everybody – including Smokey Nagata and all the other famous tuners – hates the new Supra?”

To that question, Kobayashi replied that “it’s so slow” and “I can’t battle using that thing at all. That car can’t drive at all. It’s a BMW inside anyways” and “a complete waste of money.” As far as roastings go, this one is smoking hot.

The man you will either hate or love for his stance on the front-engined, rear-wheel-drive sports car then explains how he benchmarked the 3.0-liter model against the Audi RS 3 Sportback at Fuji, hitting 248 clicks instead of 255 kilometers per hour for the German hot hatchback. “I think the A 45 is faster than the Supra," added Kobayashi-san.

On that note, the interview’s ending summarizes how little this man thinks of the all-new model that features a BMW engine, BMW platform, and torque-converter automatic from ZF Friedrichshafen even though Toyota owns transmission manufacturer Aisin Seiki.

“It really sucks. The new Supra really isn’t made well," he told Tuned Japan.

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About the author: Mircea Panait
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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.
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