Maxxd.com – Modified and Performance Car News

  • TOYOTA SUPRA MK4 BUYING AND TUNING GUIDE

    Having cemented god-like status in the car tuning community, the Toyota Supra Mk4 is about a strong a statement as you can make at a car event. Here’s our quick-fire Supra buying and tuning guide.

    With so much excitement and disappointment right now around the new A90 Supra, there’s been a natural resurgence in interest for the old A80/Mk4. Of course, for people like us this enthusiasm never went away – we love these things, stock or modded, UKDM or JDM, subtle-and-smooth or big-power-and-boisterous, we’re well into a nineties Supra.

    At launch, the Toyota Supra Mk4 offered a pair of fresh new engines: the 3.0-litre 2JZ-GE straight-six offered 220bhp, while the twin-turbocharged 2JZ-GTE amped this up to 276bhp. For the export models, Toyota saw fit to pump up the adrenaline a little, adding bigger fuel injectors and smaller steel-wheeled turbos to produce a peak 326bhp – the holy grail for the UK buyer today is to find a genuine UK TT6; that is, a twin-turbo with a manual six-speed gearbox in full-fat UK spec. Not easy to achieve, but they do exist! (Giveaway details are that the UK models had a bonnet scoop and glass headlights instead of plastic).

    Toyota Supra Mk4

    In all markets, the turbo models had the option of the Getrag six-speeder while nat-asp cars made do with the W58 five-speed manual – although the GT nature of the car means that a lot of them were bought with four-speed automatic transmissions, which does rather dull the fun.

    Toyota Supra Mk4

    Turbos got 17-inch wheels while nat-asps had sixteens, and with either engine you could option a targa Aerotop. The SZ-R, available from 1994, had the option of bigger 4-pot brakes, as did the RZ from 1995 – this was also the year that Recaro seats arrived on the option list. A mild facelift in 1996 introduced Sport ABS and made dual airbags standard-equipment, along with revising gear ratios and equipping the RZ with an aluminium radiator. Turbo models from 1997 had VVT-I along with revised ‘REAS’ suspension, and automatics had Tiptronic gear selection added. The Aerotop was discontinued in 1999, and Supra production ended in July 2002.

    Toyota Supra Mk4

    Buyer Beware!

    It’s pleasing to know that Supras are pretty bombproof. Just look out for age-related wear such as warping of the dash top, boot rubbers perishing, and yellowing of the headlights on JDM examples. Naturally, being a 1990s Japanese car, you need to check thoroughly for rust – as a rule, fresh imports are likely to be less rusty than older imports or UK cars. You should also be careful to check through the history, particularly as very few Supras on the market are factory-standard: if it’s been modified, ensure that it’s been done by competent people with quality parts. There was a time when you could pick up Supras for relative peanuts, and some have been ham-fistedly modded by people who saw The Fast and The Furious and thought ‘how hard can that be?’. And finally, keep in mind that imported cars will have a 112mph speed limiter – better to know that in advance, rather than embarrassingly headbutting into it at an inopportune moment. Oh, and of course the easiest way to spot a proper UK car is by its functional bonnet vent, glass headlights and headlamp washer ‘horns’.

    Toyota Supra Mk4 Top 5 Mods

    Exhaust – from £450 (backbox)

    The 2JZ responds well to exhaust upgrades (particularly if you throw in a decat, and we reckon Supras only look proper with a huge drainpipe poking out the back! The Blitz Nur is popular.
    blitz-uk.co.uk

    Fuel Cut Defender – £116.40

    An essential for modded turbo models, the FCD changes the airflow signal to the ECU to trick it into thinking it never sees more than 1 bar of boost, which is the point where the computer cuts the fuel supply as a safeguard. Speak to the guys at Turbosmart.
    turbosmart.com

    Single turbo – £various

    If you’re chasing big power (and remember, the stock internals should be good for well over 500bhp), swapping to a big single turbo is always a strong option.
    garagewhifbitz.co.uk

    Intercooler – £349

    A bigger front-mount intercooler is another must for turbo Supras – Japspeed are the experts here.
    japspeed.co.uk

    Brakes – From £1,099

    The stock brakes are pretty damn good, but you’ll need them to be even better if you’re throwing more power in. K-Sport offer a great range.
    ksport.co.uk


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  • Hurley Haywood speaks of champion racing career in new Brumos video

    Racing champion Hurley Haywood reflects on his half-century career in some of the world’s greatest Porsches in the latest installment of the Brumos Collection’s “Inside the 59” video series.

    “Conversations with Hurley Haywood,” which has been posted on Brumos’ social channels, commemorates the 50th anniversary of his first championship, the 1971 IMSA title he earned with teammate Peter Gregg in a Porsche 914-6 GT.

    Hurley Haywood (left) with Peter Gregg

    Hurley Haywood (left) with Peter Gregg

    Looking fit and ageless at 72, Haywood tells of his early days when, as an inexperienced youth, he was entrusted with driving for Brumos racing and immediately met with spectacular success.

    “Racing against equipment that was much faster than ours, we won because of durability and planning,” Haywood says in the video. “This was my first year of racing, so it was quite a learning process.”

    Two years later, he was behind the wheel of a mighty Porsche 917 in Can-Am competition.

    “Switching from the 300-horsepower Porsche 914 to the 1,200-horsepower 917 was a huge leap for me, at only 24 years old and in just my third year of racing,” he says in the video, remembering the 917 for its “tremendous acceleration and huge downforce.”

    “It was like being shot out of a cannon,” he recalls.

    [embedded content]

    Haywood, who was inducted to the Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2005, counts among his many victories five overall wins at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, three at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and two at the 12 Hours of Sebring. He earned the 1988 Trans-Am title, two IMSA GT Championships and 23 wins, three Norelco Cup championships, a SuperCar title and 18 IndyCar starts.

    In the video, Haywood describes how his ability to master some rudimentary practices learned early on led to a historic life in motorsports.

    “The most important thing a driver can do is focus on vision; your eyes tell your hands and feet what to do,” he says. “Patience is also extremely important. Racing is like chess: every move you make is calculated to a risk/reward. You have to learn how to evaluate a condition and make the proper adjustments to be successful.”

    The iconic race cars that Haywood drove, as well as those of other Brumos drivers, are on display among the historic competition vehicles at the Brumos Collection’s huge display area, which opened to the public 14 months ago in Jacksonville, Florida.

    “There is really no other facility that allows you to get so close to the cars that you can almost smell their heritage,” Haywood says in the video. “I’ve noticed that when people come into this building, they understand why Brumos is such a revered name, a standard bearer of excellence, and so critically important to the reason we’ve won so many championships.

    This article, written by Bob Golfen, was originally published on ClassicCars.com, an editorial partner of Motor Authority.

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  • BAGGED RS4 B9: ESTATE OF PLAY

    There’s something immensely cool about a fast estate car. And when it’s bright green with ludicrous horsepower like this bagged RS4 B9, it’s playtime every day…

    Feature first appeared in Fast Car magazine. Words: Joe Partridge. Photos: Matt Clifford.

    A certain curly-haired TV presenter once made the point that all modern cars are essentially VW Golfs. There’s no element of surprise when it comes to quality or reliability, at least when you compare such things to the wildly varying margins of, say, the 1970s or ’80s; a Range Rover is a big Golf, a Toyota iQ is a little Golf, a Tesla Model S is a long electric Golf. When you think about it, this broad generalisation has been true for generations, albeit in more specific niches; in the early seventies, every saloon car was basically a Mk1 Escort – the Triumph Dolomite, the Datsun 510, the Fiat 124, they were all variants on the over-arching Escort theme, three-box shapes with a variety of powertrains from the utilitarian to the briskly entertaining. They could be reliable, they might not; they could remain solid, or they could quickly crumble to dust – but in every case, if you were to line them up in front of a visiting alien, they’d see several shades of what is fundamentally the same thing.

    Nowadays, the scale has shifted a little. Cars aren’t all basically Golfs, the architecture of people’s aspirations has jumped up a couple of sizes: we’re not using the hatchback as the base point for everything, but the SUV. Take a look out of the window right now – what’s the ratio of SUVs to other bodystyles in your vicinity? Is it about half-and-half? People are going nuts for these needlessly large things, it’s a seemingly unstoppable trend.

    Bagged RS4 B9

    Thankfully, however, there are still those who can see that an estate car will always be infinitely more desirable than an SUV. Talvin Johal – aka TJ – is one such person. There’s no Tiguan or Juke in his crosshairs, he knew that the Avant life was the way forward to everyday success. And with the formidable package that the RS4 B9 presents, there’s really no argument to the contrary… we’re talking about a 2.9-litre TFSI V6 twin-turbo serving up 450bhp, a clever-fox 8-speed ZF Tiptronic ’box, and a Quattro chassis to die for. Keep your plus-size motors, here’s a practical family car which is also an absolute mentalist on demand.

    Interestingly, TJ isn’t a middle-aged family man with who needs an estate car because he has a gaggle of children and a dog to cart about. Nor does he relish weekly trips to the tip to offload hedge trimmings and grass clippings. No, he’s a 21-year-old modding enthusiast, very new to the show scene, who bought a wagon simply because it’s obvious that they rock.

    Bagged RS4 B9

    “My first car was a 2014 Audi A3 1.4 TFSI that had some RS7 alloys and a few carbon interior parts,” he says. “Then I upgraded to a Mk3 Focus RS a month after I turned 19.”

    Yeah, we were momentarily blindsided by that too – quite a step up in a short space of time, isn’t it? This is clearly a man committed to fast-road thrills. “I moved to Newcastle in late 2018,” he continues, “and saw some bagged cars which made me want to bag my Focus RS!” Sure, we can see the logical progression there. This passion for modding, it’s highly infectious.

    So if he was living his best life in arguably the best modern hot hatch on the market, what prompted TJ to level-up once again to the current-model RS4 Avant? “The insurance quote came up cheap, so it was a no-brainer,” he shrugs, with a grin. And the choice of colour is absolutely sublime too – in a sea of greyscale that’s washing over the nation’s high streets, Audi’s vivid and lustrous Sonoma Green is truly refreshing.

    “I chose that colour because you don’t see it around very much – I hadn’t seen one modified and I wanted to be the first in the UK,” TJ explains. “It turned out that 2020 wasn’t the best year to buy a new car though! I found this car just before lockdown happened; nothing on the market was changing and it was really hard to find the spec I wanted. This RS4 B9 was one of only three Sonoma Green cars on the market in the whole country… but with only 14,500 miles on the clock and the desirable carbon pack option, it was obviously the one.”

    TJ bought very well, despite trying circumstances, as an RS4 in this colour with the carbon pack is pretty much the winning choice when it comes to spec wars. And given his enthusiasm for bagged rides, it was obvious which direction this car would be heading in. That direction was downward.

    Bagged RS4 B9

    “All of the work has been carried out by Offset AutoHaus, the newly-started business set up by Steve Fraser,” says TJ. (Regular readers will no doubt be familiar with Steve, aka @s30bmx – we recently featured his bagged Gen-2 R8, and he’s got a stellar back-catalogue of Audi builds to his name.) “Originally I just wanted to bag it leave it at that, but Steve messaged me saying we can’t break the internet by just doing air – so we started thinking about wheels and went from there…”

    The Rotiform OZR came recommended by the team at Offset AutoHaus, and TJ’s gone for a full-fat 20-inches of diameter, no messing about; squaring up at 10.5-inches wide apiece, they certainly help to give the bagged RS4 B9 an aggressive footprint. The arches are positively bursting at the seams when it airs out, and you really can’t argue with the contact patch on a set of 285-section tyres when you have the thick end of four-hundred-and-fifty horses to deploy. A set of custom three-piece forged Rotiforms are being knocked up as we speak, but for now the carbon-clad and extremely green formula is hot to trot in the day-to-day.

    “It really is the perfect daily, and the perfect cruiser,” says TJ. “People’s reactions to the car are always the best – it’s a head-turner, no doubt due to the colour. In the sunshine it stands out from everyone, but starts to look really stealthy and sporty after the sun goes down! And with it being an estate and having the super-wide factory arches, it certainly has the best road presence.”

    That’s the essence of the formula, really. The world may be turning SUV-shaped, but estates are just cooler, that is and always will be a solid gold fact. And if they’ve got a killer stance and more power than a Countach – well, that’s a pretty unbeatable proposition. It’s basically a bagged greenhouse with a rocket up its backside, and that’s the coolest way we can think of to blast out of 2020.

    Bagged RS4 B9

    Tech Spec: Bagged RS4 B9

    Styling:

    Sonoma Green, carbon pack, rear wiper delete, shadowline badges

    Tuning:

    2.9-litre TFSI V6 twin-turbo (450bhp), 8-speed ZF Tiptronic

    Chassis:

    10.5×20-inch Rotiform OZR wheels, 285/x2030 Nankang tyres, RS Performance brakes, Air Lift Performance suspension with
    3P management

    Interior:

    Carbon pack, RS Supersport seats with red stitching and massage settings, RS flat-bottom steering wheel

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