Just don't crash

On a recent episode of The Smoking Tire podcast, esteemed cay guy Doug Demuro chronicles the frustrating experience of getting a door replaced on his Land Rover Defender. Apparently - due to the great supply chain shortage - there aren’t any spare body parts available for people to fix their crashed Defenders. Any and all supply are being used for new Defender production. This, for a car that’s four model years old. This isn’t a case where a particular model is so new, the manufacturer have yet to produce any spare parts.

So what are Defender owners doing when they get into an accident, waiting months for body parts that may never arrive? Doug says the dealerships are actually buying back those cars. That’s right! Because Land Rover cannot (or will not) supply spare parts, they will instead buy your crashed Defender. Perhaps hoping you’d immediately get another fresh one off the showroom floor. That is freaking insane to me. Imagine being a Defender owner, with the specter of potentially losing your car should you get into a fender-bender hanging over you.

That must be the same kind of nervous energy that owner of classic cars have. At least the Defender guys can get another copy pretty easily. That one-of-kind classic car? All the money in the world may not be able to find another exact copy, should you be unlucky to crash yours.

It doesn’t even have to be super expensive, either. I read about some guy with a Toyota Celica with the factory TRD Action Package. He got into an accident that damaged the package. Guess what? You absolutely cannot buy another set from Toyota - the company doesn’t make spares of that anymore. The only resort is to scour the junkyards for another Celica with an undamaged body kit. Easier said that done, however, because so few Celica had the TRD kit to begin with.

Get into a minor accident - lose your car. That’s a heavy burden for any car enthusiast!

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Mango a go go.

Additional dealer markup

During Thanksgiving I met up with my cousin who I’ve not seen for a quite some time. Turns out he recently traded in his long-serving 2006 Toyota Corolla for a brand-new Toyota Sienna. The move makes perfect sense: he’s got a young kid now, and loading-unloading the car seat is just that much more convenient in a van than a tiny sedan. Besides, the improvement in vehicle safety has been magnitudes over the decade plus. I too would want the best and safest for my baby nephew.

Being that we are still amidst the great supply chain shortage in terms of new cars, I naturally asked my cousin if he paid over MSRP for the Sienna. Turns out he paid about $3,000 in ADM, plus the color blue he bought was not really his first option. I guess you absolutely cannot be picky in this market, especially the sought-after Toyota hybrid products (gas is still super expensive, after all). You agree with the dealer on the price, and then you wait until it’s your turn to get the latest shipment off the boat. For a particular color the wait can be months.

With high inflation, high interest rates, and a seemingly looming recession (tech companies have announced significant layoffs in droves), the current feeling is that the new vehicle shortage vis a vis demand will come back down to earth sometime next year. I hope the prognosticators are correct because the timing would be perfect for me. As I’ve written before, I am looking to buy the latest Honda Civic Type R. The car has just been released to the public earlier this month, so I’m waiting out the initial rush of folks who are willing to fork over the $10,000 or so dealer markups.

I’m looking to make the move sometime in the spring of next year. The hope is that serendipitously the market conditions would become favorable enough that I can buy a Type R with minimum to zero markups. In the meantime I’ll be scouring the forums for all the information pertaining to the FL5.

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Big wave, don’t avoid it.

Toyota GR Corolla!

Ever since the spectacular Toyota GR Yaris debut to the rest of the world except for the North American market, I’ve been badgering Toyota USA’s twitter account constantly to bring that road-legal rally machine to our shores. Not once did the intern in charge of that account ever got back to me. I understand why it’s not sold in America: the base Yaris model isn’t available in the States either, so it doesn’t make financial sense for Toyota to homologate the GR version just for the enthusiasts.

The company probably sells more RAV4 sports utility vehicles in a month than the GR Yaris will ever.

That said, my prayers were suitably answered last week when Toyota announced the GR Corolla for North America. Essentially the GR Yaris with two more doors, the GR Corolla features the same 1.6-litre turbocharged inline-three engine and a super trick all-wheel drive system. Even the sweet performance package is available, providing limited-slip differentials for both the front and rear. Best of all: the only transmission on offer is a six-speed manual. Plus a physical handbrake. Because donuts.

I have not been this excited about a new car in a very long time. If the GR Corolla rings in at around Honda Civic Type R money (high $30,000s), then I’m totally plucking down cash for one. For sure there will be plenty of dealer markups, but I can patiently wait until one is available at MSRP. After all, I still have my M2 Competition. The intention is to keep the BMW - the GR Corolla will be a second car. Not sure how that’s going to work for someone who walks to work, but let’s cross that bridge when I get there.

For now, I’m so happy the GR Corolla is going to be a thing.

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The infamous trash can.

The lone problem with the GR Supra

I’ve already written previously on how the new Toyota GR Supra is an important entrant to the sports car segment due to how rarely we see brand new, relatively affordable sports cars in an overall market heavily biased towards sport utility vehicles. It’s an achievement worth celebrating, even if Toyota had to partner up with BMW to turn the dream into fruition.

By all accounts the new Supra is a brilliant car to drive, and us car enthusiasts should buy one in support of their efforts. Only by showing up with our wallets at the dealerships will manufacturers continue to put in development money on such delightful cars, a segment so small it might as well be a niche (unless you’re Porsche).  

But there’s a problem: I don’t think this iteration of the GR Supra is the one to buy.

As is the wont of Japan-made sports cars, each subsequent model year will have increment improvements, leading up to significant mid-model refreshes after a few years. Just look at the R35 generation Nissan GT-R: the 2012 model year got such an update it rendered the 2008 to 2011 cars to second-class citizenry. I’ve no doubts the GR Supra will follow the same production trajectory, therefore if I were buying one, I’d wait for the forthcoming refresh or special edition models.

There’s already points of improvement easily apparent in the new Supra. First there’s the power level: The same B58 inline-six has a higher level of tune in the BMW Z4 sister car, so it’d be no effort at all for Toyota to bump horsepower to that level, if not further. Second is the gearbox: the GR Supra simply begs for a manual transmission, and Toyota have heard all the clamoring for it. The BMW parts-bin do have a manual gearbox available – the unit currently providing service in the M2 and M3 – and I’d put money that a do-it-yourself stick version of the Supra will happen.

Those two key components, coupled with various upgrades to the suspension and body panels, and avoiding first model-year gremlins, makes it worth the patience to wait for the refresh.  

Of course, if you’re so infused with cash you can buy the 2020 GR Supra now and trade that in when invariably a hotter version comes out in a few years. Good for you indeed if you are able to do that.

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Bright lights in the morning.

The new Supra is worth celebrating

The arrival of the fifth-generation Toyota Supra is imminent, and we should all rejoice when there are new/returning entries into the sports car market. The modern automotive business is fantastically hostile to pure sports cars – unless you are Porsche, so any new product is worth celebrating.

Sadly, the Internet is wont to complain about things, and since the embargo on driving impressions by journalists were lifted this previous Sunday, the discussion online isn’t on how superbly well the new Supra drives, but rather that it’s made nearly entirely of BMW parts. Indeed, there are (crazy) enthusiasts out there who would not entertain purchasing the GR Supra simply because it shares platform and components with the equally new BMW Z4 convertible. 

Never mind the consensus opinion by those who’s driven it is that the new Supra is a brilliant machine; Toyota’s mandate of competing with a Porsche Cayman on dynamics is utterly achieved.  

Nope, people are whining about how the car is largely a BMW product, with only a few Toyota fixings sprinkled on top. As halo vehicle to follow the legendary fourth-generation Supra, the lack of “pure Toyota” in the GR Supra is seen as sacrilege. Again, mistakenly ignoring how great the new car drives, and that BMW isn’t exactly known for making terrible sports cars throughout its history.

Hilarious the hills some petrol-heads choose to die on. Toyota’s already got a product for the people hankering for a 100% Toyota-produced successor to the Supra: it’s called the Lexus LC500. Adjusting for inflation, it costs nearly the same as the MK4 Supra did, and in terms of handling philosophy, it’s more in tune with the old coupe’s grand touring-leaning appeal anyways. The LC500’s atmospheric V8 is quite the party piece, too. Why aren’t the people complaining about the GR Supra’s BMW underpinnings buying the Lexus instead?

Because it costs too much; they want their cake and eat it as well, but a brand new Supra engineered from the ground up by Toyota would have been far more expensive than the mid-50K price of the GR Supra, and taken even longer to materialize. There’s simply no business case for Toyota to be in the upper 70K to low 80K price segment, not least of which they know from history: the previous Supra (again, adjusting for inflation) did not sell well at all.

Have I mentioned the new Supra – according to reviews – drives really great? It seems Toyota have made a worthy sports car for 2019, and that’s all that should matter. For those looking for a bit more Japanese soul, well, there’s always the LC500, or better yet, the LFA.

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Be like seals: chill and have no worries in the world.

I won't buy an A90 Supra without a manual

After seemingly the longest gestation period since the new Honda NSX, the return of the legendary Toyota Supra is set for early 2019. What is with Japanese manufacturers and these long teased-out development periods? Too many concept cars, not enough substance. By the time the NSX went on sale, the car enthusiast public was already bored with it. If I were Toyota I’d hide the new Supra until it’s ready for public consumption, otherwise risking it to the same fate.

Over-saturation risks didn’t stop Toyota from recently allowing motoring journalists to have a go in heavily camouflaged test mules. The early impressions are good: the chassis code A90 Supra is lithe and agile, with adequate power to give Porsche 718 owners and potential buyers a serious second thought. Co-developed in conjunction with the new BMW Z4 - because nobody makes money building sports cars these days unless you’re from Zuffenhausen, the A90 may share an inordinate amount of parts with the German car, but it reads to me the driving dynamics will be disparate and unique.

The new Supra will be pure sports car.

Except in the transmission department. Sharing the same BMW turbocharged straight-six power-plant with the Z4, the A90 Supra is expected to have horsepower figures in the upper 300s. I think that level of engine power does not warrant the necessity to pair it with an automatic transmission. A high-strung Porsche GT car absolutely demands a dual-clutch PDK gearbox for the full experience; the same can’t be said for a car with an estimated 0-60 time in the mid 4’s.

I’m far from an automatic gearbox hater - the ZF 8-speed going into the new Supra is one of the best ever made: in the appropriate setting they are superior to stick-shifts. The A90 is not one of those settings. The car really needs a manual gearbox, especially if it were to ever get my business. For all the talk of honoring tradition, how Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada made sure the A90 would feature turbo inline-six engine and rear-wheel drive just like Supras of old, the one glaring omission in the nostalgia fest is the six-speed manual.

It’s not as if BMW haven’t got a manual gearbox from which Toyota can easily use: there’s perfectly fine units currently doing service in the M240i, M2, M3, and M4. It’d take relatively zero engineering muscle to implement any those six-speeds into the A90 Supra.

Rumors has it that Toyota will indeed produce a manual-spec Supra sometime after initial launch. I certainly hope it’s true: not only would I not buy one without a manual gearbox, the return of the legend isn’t complete without it.

Much camo, such wow.

Credit: Toyota

Toyota finally wins Le Mans

Never give up a on a dream.

After decades of futility, Toyota have finally won 1st overall at this year's  24 Hours of Le Mans. The marque joins Mazda as only the second Japanese manufacturer ever to win the storied endurance race. 

It was the team's 20th attempt; how many billions of money have been spent in chasing this glory.  

With Porsche bowing out of P1 class this year the Toyota team had little competition other than lady luck herself. All eyes were on whether the two Toyotas can finish the race without the mechanical troubles that doomed them the past two years, and if so, which car would be on the top podium step. 

The pole-sitting number 8 car of Nakajima/Alonso/Buemi have been faster all week than the sister 7 car driven by Conway/Kobayashi/Lopez, but during the race the 8 car encountered an unlucky safety-car plus a 60-second stop-go penalty that dropped them nearly 2 minutes behind. Supremely mighty night-stints by Alonso and Nakajima erased the deficit and when the sun came up on Sunday morning at La Sarthe the 8 car regain the lead it won't relinquish. 

It was poetic and emotional to see Nakajima do the final-stint to the checkered-flag, him being the driver of the car that stalled-out before the final lap while leading the race in 2016. From ultimate heartbreak to ultimate redemption. During the podium ceremony Nakajima nearly lost his composure when the Japan national anthem was playing. To win one of the crown-jewels of motorsport with the team representing your home country is super special indeed. 

Honestly it was emotional for me as well. I've been following the Toyota Le Mans effort since the GT-One (TS020) era at the tail-end of the 90's, so it's been a proper long time. I thought the 2016 tragedy with one to go was the Racing Gods telling Toyota it was never meant to be, but the team kept fighting and now they've finally achieved the result. Omedetou gozaimashita. 

Got a white one as well, in the only size of Porsche I can afford.