Toyota Supra 2.0 Barely Saves Its Sports Car Face in 0-60 Tesla Model 3 Battle

Parts of the public were excited about the news of Toyota and BMW working together for the development of the iconic model's modern iteration. Still, others saw it as a guaranteed recipe to make the JDM sports car feel less, well, Japanese. And, from certain points of view, the fears of the latter group of people turned out to be justified.

Order a Toyota Supra with an automatic transmission, and you'll get a BMW shifter. If that doesn't put you off, then surely the iDrive unit will, and if you're built of really tough materials, a glance at the climate controls might send you in a fit of rage finally. Well, that's cost-cutting for you, and it's worth bearing in mind that the alternative to all this would have been no Supra at all.

However, everything will be forgiven as long as BMW's involvement makes the car go faster, to put it in layman's terms. Except, it kind of doesn't. In fact, we have the Bavarians to thank for the fact there even is a 2.0-liter four-cylinder Supra, which is slightly sacrilegious to the memory of the 2JZ unit.

Well, you can look at it this way, or you can look at it the way a lot of people did and see it as a great opportunity to own a Supra for less money. You can grab one for less than $50,000, which is a pretty good price for an imported sports car with the Supra's pedigree.

How about its performance, though? Is that 2.0-liter turbocharged engine up for scratch? If you're looking at the base model (from Japan), then the answer is "no." The 194 hp speak for themselves, so expect no miracles. However, if you go for the GR version, the same 2.0-liter engine magically gains 61 more horsepower, dropping the 0-62 mph (0-100 kph) time to the very low fives.

That sounds half-decent until you realize there's a four-door, five-seat family sedan that can pretty much match it while also selling for $36,000 (or whatever Musk feels like that day). Yes, it's the Tesla Model 3 Standard Range, the RWD electric vehicle in its most basic form.

These days, a comparison like this calls for a side-by-side drag race, but when there's only one driver, a good old 0-60 mph time measurement using GPS equipment will do. So, after four runs (two each way) for every vehicle over the same patch of asphalt, you'll be glad to know the Toyota sports car is quicker than the electric sedan.

You will also be sad to know it's only by 0.04 seconds (5.60 compared to 5.64). The figure is also way lower than Toyota's official numbers, which claim the GR Supra can reach 62 mph in 5.2 seconds, suggesting the 0-60 time should be 5.1 seconds if not even 5 seconds flat. Overall, we'd count this as a loss for the Supra.