We always think of Toyota as kind of a staid manufacturer who doesn’t pay a lot of attention to performance, flash, and dash. That’s effectively wrong because over the years, they have built some sneakily cool and quick cars. The mighty Supra models of the late 1990s are very well known and the 1994 Toyota MR2 Turbo is largely lost in the shuffle of history, but as this video shows it shouldn’t be. Why? This thing was capable of hanging with all the pony cars of the day and with the right driver, running away from them. The 200hp 2.0L turbocharged four was matched with a stick and between the balance of the car’s layout and the torque and power of the engine, it hustled. A 0-60 time of 6.6 seconds was blistering for a “common man” car in the 1990s and being able to run 15.2 in the quarter had it about a fender behind the pony cars of the day.
The downside? As you will learn, Toyota charged a real premium for these cars so they did not sell in huge volume. One of the more common hardcore mods was the addition of an air scoop that actually got the ram effect from being forward facing and mounted at roof height! They looked kind of goofy but at the same time had some visual pizzaz, especially to then teenaged me.
Like all short run high performance models, these have a huge cult following and they do not sell cheap these days. Fun stuff and a neat little car.
