What Happens When the Toyota Supra Takes the Moose Test?

Say the Supra is your weekend car. You're in the middle of carving some Alpine roads or are exploring the twisting tarmac undulations of the Welsh countryside. Suddenly, wildlife jumps in the middle of your lane. Not a frog or a squirrel, but a full-grown moose.

That's what the moose test is for, to weed out cars that have unsafe handling characteristics in an accident avoidance situation. It's a weird balance between being agile and light enough to avoid the obstacle and being sufficiently planted so as not to skid off the road.

In the past, we've seen a lot of sports cars being too "playful" during Km77's moose test. They slide the back end wide. And before you go off on a tangent about sports cars needing to be fun above all else, let's just point out one guy recently had a big buck through the windshield of his C8 Corvette.

Getting back to the Supra, it manages to complete the test at a speed of 48 mph or 77 km/h, which is a good result. However, the Spanish testers reported that it takes some practice to get such a result, meaning it might not be this safe in the real world.

Part of the problem is the variable-ratio power steering, which doesn't respond in predictable ways to different levels of input. The testers also subjected the car to a slalom course to see how nimble it was and were impressed with its handling.

The model seen here is the GR Supra, equipped with the 3-liter turbo. Up until recently, this was the only version available. There's no way of knowing if the Supra 2.0 would perform any better. As a reminder, this is lighter by 200 lbs (90 km), mostly over the front axle.