COAL: 1993 Toyota Supra – Spoiler Alert

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– Posted on April 28, 2021

As you may recall from my Miata story, my wife was concerned for our safety and well-being driving it out on the highway – which rendered the car almost useless since we live in an isolated Iowa town. A takeaway though, we did learn to love the sports car/fun car lifestyle that bookended our reliable, practical and efficient sedan with the hardworking and versatile pickup truck. So we thought that was a genre to continue to pursue, just with a different car.

What to get became the question. There are so many great options out there in the sports car world and what a fun problem to have to select one. My favorite type of car (aside from the pickup – you can tell that about me by now, right?) is the GT. Grand Tourer cars represent some of the best attributes in a motor vehicle to me – speed, striking beauty, exclusiveness (typically), solid build quality (typically), hour on end comfort, quiet and smooth linear powerband (typically), refined driving experience, excellent visibility/airy greenhouse and more. Some of my favorite examples in no particular order include the Mercedes 300SL, Toyota 2000GT, Ferrari 456GT, Ferrari 330 GTC, Ferrari F40, BMW 2002, BMW E9, BMW M3 E36 LTW, Porsche 356, Audi A5/S5, Facel Vega HK500, ISO Grifo and Alfa Romeo Montreal. Seeing how I’ll never be able to afford any of those in good, operable condition I’d have to take my dreams elsewhere.

As Daniel Stern wonderfully described in this blog, a car-loving child remembers small details from a young age. Be it the wacky rubbing sound of the back and forth of mom’s windshield wipers or the physical details of other cars. Among several, one memory was of the late 1980s Nissan Pulsar and how I always thought the taillights looked like Good and Plenties (I’m a weirdo who has always loved anise, black licorice). Another was of the MKIV Toyota Supra’s giant spoiler – there was just nothing else like it on the road. So with that early affinity, I’ve always had an interest in the A80 Supra and have been tracking them since.

In 2017, with the Miata being up for replacement by another sports car, the timing seemed right so I began looking for a nice, stock example. Pricing had me exclusively looking at naturally aspirated examples and more often than not, automatic transmissions, too. The pricing between those and six-speed manual transmission twin-turbo cars is staggering. The NA/auto combo did not bother me as I was not going for the Fast and Furious boy racer look but rather a true GT experience. The NA would provide butter-smooth power and the auto transmission kind of plays into that, too. I looked at a few Supras in faraway locales as they’d pop up on the internet but had troubles pulling the trigger on cars with 200,000 miles on the odometer without seeing, driving them. And even then, they’d sell before I could begin to gesture interest. With just 11,472 LHD USDM MKIV Supras made, many lost to attrition and high demand, finding a good one can be hard. This search went on for a few months before a Supra showed up locally with my criteria. It was an adult-owned, really clean car – stock down to the stereo head unit and 121,xxx miles on the odometer. The unfortunate parts were the gaudy aftermarket wheels and his price but those could be fixed. I test drove it one day and liked what I saw/drove. We continued to haggle on price via text and eventually either got tired of it or found a common ground. The car was mine.

The first time I saw the car. The seller wanted to leave it running to charge the battery. Hmmm. The “Super White” color is kind of boring but at least it’s the official racing color of Japan.

 

The second time I saw the car, in the seller’s garage. The open hood situation was to be a precursor to the next several months of ownership. I thought the seller was perhaps a huge fan of sausage, turns out that was his wife’s name – glad I didn’t bring it up.

Ugh, my luck with buying old cars. When I returned with the money the car would crank but not start. He said he’d been driving it earlier that day and the engine was warm. Anyway, no amount of small tinkering would get it to fire up and he offered to pay to have it towed 35 miles to my local Toyota dealership. I probably should have had him tow it to HIS Toyota dealer and fixed before paying. Hindsight. But I was OK with his price and was saving hundreds already on transport fees by buying local. Being the car ran and drove just fine earlier in the week I thought it would be something minor. The fun began…

In the seller’s driveway featuring the removable aluminum “sport roof” – Toyota talk for Targa top. Contrary to a certain movie, the top is removable via five Allen bolts, not fists of rage. Those wheels HAD TO GO!

 

The silky smooth and linear 2JZ-GE 3.0-liter inline six-cylinder engine with its long intake runners. It’s quiet at idle but has a lovely exhaust note when you giv’r. It’s also used in the Lexus SC300 so I suspect the BMW and Mercedes competition helped refine its manners and were a basis for design.

Once at the dealership they did some funky wiring fix via the AC/defrost button for constant power to bypass the issue and of course within the first two miles of driving it died again. So, I had the car towed home to my garage and dug in. An alternator replacement was in line, along with a new battery. That fall I sold the Miata and worked through preventative maintenance and other items with the Supra. I sourced some new tires, stock wheels and center caps and plugged the car into a trickle charger for the winter.

Surely the ever-humble Japanese would never put something so ostentatious on a car without its fair share of merits. The lightweight, hollow-core spoiler fits in with the roofline of the car to minimize effects on rearward visibility and provides an extra 66lbs of downforce at 100MPH.

The following spring I did a full tune-up and preventative items were addressed. The car ran pretty well but would still have the occasional hiccups. More parts were replaced. That Halloween I stopped into the grocery store for some candy on my way home from work and the car would barely run when I tried to back out of my parking spot. A friend helped me limp it home, warning lights and black smoke all the way back to my garage where it sat again all winter. A new coil and ignitor remedied that.

The driver-centric layout of the interior is really cool (the center stack is tilted towards the driver). And really boring for passengers. I sourced a 1998 Supra three-spoke steering wheel to replace the diaper-shaped 1993 unit, which has been my only modification. The passenger did get an airbag, though – the first Toyota production car to have one standard.

 

We hosted a foreign exchange student last year and he loved going for rides in the Supra. Here we are after church.

So essentially each year brings new to-dos and items to tackle on the car. Last year it was new rear shocks, rear hatch struts and touching up cold solder joints in some instrumentation clusters. This year, so far, it has been a distributor shaft seal that was leaking oil all over the engine bay – and probably what killed my original alternator as it sits right under the leaking distributor. I also want to adjust the driver’s side door as it sags and address some cosmetic issues like cleaning the headlights, taking out some door dings, etc. But so it goes with old cars. A co-worker of mine laments on the topic – “If it were easy everyone would do it” and I’d have to agree with his sentiments.

Those rear seats must only serve to lower insurance rates. Even with the front seats far forward on their track, there is ZERO leg room.

I’m hoping I’m reaching a point that I can trust this car to drive it more. I dream of taking it to Oshkosh, WI for the airshow someday with my dad or other fun destinations. I plan to keep this car for many, many years so these minor challenges thus far have not been big deterrents. I’ve enjoyed learning the car/platform and doing my own wrenching where I can. I’ve also made a good friend through this car, one day I caught up with another 1993 Supra owner as he was parked downtown and we now go to car shows together, cruises, share wrenching tips, etc.

Me and my bud at a recent car show. Both our cars are ‘93.5 NA Targa tops. His is a five-speed manual and factory wingless car, though. The Anthracite paint and added polished 17” turbo wheels are a sharp contrast, it’s a good-looking car.