Tested: 1982 Toyota Celica Supra

Car and Driver

Our reviews of Toyota’s four- and six-cylinder 2021 Supras are coming on 5/13, until then we decided to look back at where the Supra started. Here’s our road test of the second-generation Supra.

From the March 1982 issue of Car and Driver.

On about the second day it became obvious that Toyota had figured out some way to magnetize black paint. People would be walking by, cool as you please, eyeballs stored away behind sunglasses, feet perambulating along in the regular way, and then (flash, zap, and thunderclap!) all at once they’d be rubbing all over the car. Loving it. Gawking, drooling, hyperventilating. It was almost disgusting, except we’d been doing it for two days ourselves, and for one additional reason: it’s a terrific car to live with.

Tested: 1979 Toyota Celica Supra Starts It All Off

History of the Toyota Supra

This will not be the good news that Chevrolet, Pontiac, Ford, Mercury, Alfa Romeo, Renault, and Datsun had hoped to hear. They have some pretty splendid hardware that could suffer a serious set­back at the hands of the new Supra. Consider its double-overhead-cam six, its fully independent suspension, its four-wheel disc brakes, its very special seats, and, of course, its aggressive handsomeness. These are not attributes that will sit well with the Z28-Trans Am-Mustang-Capri-GTV6-Turbo Fuego-280-ZX crowd.

This is the first sports/GT car from Toyota that know its way down the road. Any road, pick any road, and over its miles you will discover that the Supra represents a huge change in Toyota’s philosophy. This is a road car that stands up to demanding scrutiny and hard driving in a way that belies its Toyota origins.

Somebody at Toyota has been spending a lot of time soaking up the sport ethic. Run the Supra to the point where it begins to teeter and see how it helps you hold to the safe side of control, speaking to your senses with the aplomb of a gentleman who does, nevertheless, like a little regularly scheduled excitement.

Steering sensitivity, centering, linearity, and effort are very good, lacking much of the near-instantaneous off-center twitchiness of the less sporting L-­type Supra, Toyota’s digitally instrumented, computerized, full-zowie shot at the luxury-and-gadget market. The sporting Supra’s power assist lessens with engine speed, neither intruding nor detracting, and the front and rear anti-sway bars and broad-beamed Bridgestone Potenzas hold the pavement like epoxy that’s about three-quarters set. These Potenzas were on the all-black car we drove in California. The two-tone Supra we were dealt in Michigan was turned out in Dunlop D3s, and these proved slower and less accurate in steering response. In any case, the tires are 225/60HR-14s and the aggressive aluminum wheels are a full seven inches wide. In concert with the “front MacPherson struts and the rear semi-trailing arms, they take advantage of well-­tuned shocks and springs to adhere pretty faithfully to most road surfaces; one exception we noticed was moderately heavy braking over pronounced lateral seams in the pavement, when the rear tires unload slightly and chirp a moment’s loss of composure.

The front end skates when pushed really hard, say, when barreling into a closing-radius corner—then the tail does a pronounced step-out when the throttle is feathered in response—but all told, the chassis is nicely tuned. On the skidpad, the system is worth 0.76 g.

The wide tires and firm chassis setup sometimes connive to send road rumble and harshness into the body structure and through the seats and interior, where they come to play on your senses after a while. These faults are speed­-related, and minor adjustments of speed, up or down, take care of them.

A feeling of weightiness dominates the Supra for both driver and passengers. It weighs 3040 pounds sans occupants, and this is its biggest stumbling block. The weight is about the same as the Mustang/Capri’s, 360 pounds less than the Z28/Trans Am’s. It’s still more than necessary, but the Supra does give quietness, solidity, and refinement in exchange for its heftiness. We’d guess that Toyota has made a conscious decision to tune for the “substantial feel” of an even larger car, but one exception flies up in the face of crosswinds, which buffet the thing around like so much wastepaper in an alley.

Toyota is busy strutting and preening its fifteen years of twin-cam engine development, of which the new Supra’s is the first we’ve seen in the U.S. since the 2000GT of the late Sixties. All told, the company has churned out more than 400,000 DOHC engines, some of them with very stimulating specific power outputs. The Supra’s new 2.8-liter six is currently tuned for livability and smoothness, its 145 horsepower masked behind some thorough noise-and-vibration isolation work, which also accounts for some of that 3040-pound curb weight. Engine response is comparatively flat at low revs, but above 4000 rpm the performance picture changes to brighter hues and stronger brush­strokes, and after a few moments of concentrated gearbox and foot work you’ll find yourself romping over hill and dale with highly illegal abandon. Zero-to-sixty and quarter-mile figures are 8.8 seconds and 16.7 seconds at 82 mph, respectively. Top speed is a stable 115 mph, something of a triumph for the Supra’s slithery 0.34 drag coefficient. Still, tightening the thumbscrews on the boys in the engine-development lab in the years to come should pump up the engine output another 20 or 30 horsepower without resorting to a turbocharger. And with a turbo…Sad to say, more horsepower would doubtless drag down our 18-mpg observed average (21 mpg, EPA city estimate), although this tally does include a bunch of civilly disobedient 85-to-100-mph cruising. A whole bunch.

The five-speed gearbox is fine, notchy but not restrictively so. Hitches in the drivetrain’s git-along are a slightly clunky clutch throw-out bearing and a tendency to snatch back as slack is taken up. Smooth footwork helps, but the pedals could be arranged better in the heel-and-toe department. Taken by itself, the brake pedal is a joy. It’s hooked to four-wheel vented discs and, unless you lock the wheels, a very linear vacuum assist. Pressure on the pedal equates directly with force at the pavement, which begins very quickly the moment your foot presses for results. The 70-to-0-mph stopping distance of 198 feet only hints at the reassurance offered by these brakes.

What a fine thing it is to be able to survey and call up all these blessings from an interior as sumptuous as the Supra’s. The upholstery is a striking combination of solid tone and pinstripe inserts, and the seats have been hailed as something nigh onto the second coming of Recaro, so many are the adjustments and so substantial is the bolstering of Toyota’s wholehearted move into the new arena of super seating. With torso bolsters that can be knobbed in or out, thigh support that can be ramped up or down, and lumbar support that can be pumped up like a blood-pressure checker with a little squeeze bulb and bled down with three separate button , it comes as something of a letdown that some of us can’t seem to find either enough or the right kind of lumbar support to prop us up for long stints at the wheel, no matter how much pumping and bleeding we do. The passenger seat, which employs a lesser range of adjustments, seems more comfortable than the driver’s seat. The back seat, for modestly sized adults and everyday kids, isn’t bad, but headroom with the optional sunroof is in short supply everywhere. The back seat folds in halves, lengthening the hatch­back’s cargo hold, which can be covered by a typical pullout sunshade when the seats are up.

Toyota has a god-awful digital-instrumentation package available in all but the sporting version of the Supra, and for this lack of electronics, be thankful. The regular white-on-black-dial instrumentation is far superior, much easier to read, and very complete. The controls for the rear wiper-washer and the cruise control are in large knobs on either side of the instrument nacelle, handy for easy use, and other major controls are logically placed here and there around the interior, where every sporting luxury-lover will find himself right at home. And why not, with dozens of niceties such as fully automatic climate control (unobtrusive, but a little slow to cool the car on warm days), power windows and mirrors and sun­roof, and so on. The free end of the driver’s visor tends to activate the sunroofs controls when the visor is swung past the bulge in the molded headliner that houses the sunroof buttons. One of these buttons is a maddening fail-safe intended to keep little darlings from strangling themselves or pinching off their little hands.

The nightmarishly complicated electronic radio should be enough to keep the little tykes occupied, not to mention Mom and Dad, who would be well advised to take along a well-trained technician to operate the thing. Frankly, the sound quality doesn’t seem all that wonderful, and the size of the controls (small to the point of distraction) means that many folks will probably either “zero” all the settings or mow down a few fences trying to make the system live up to its show-biz appearance. It works better with cassettes than with the AM/FM section, because the windshield-embedded antenna doesn’t work very well at all.

Disregard the add-ons, nice though some of them are. The truth about the new Supra lies in its appearance (though we would be happy if Toyota would do away with the external rear sunscreen and the black finish on the hatch, which blends only with the arresting all-black paint job, clashing with all the other colors) and in its behavior, which bears no relation to the behavior of any previous Toyotas. They’ve been getting better in stages, but the Supra is a whopping big leap to the good, a driver’s car that won’t scare off the beginners or fail to impress the seasoned. More horsepower would be good, oh, yes, and less weight would be better, certainly, but listen here, we’re not really complaining. Just nit-picking.

Germany, watch out.

Counterpoints

The new Supra is a nearly perfect car. If the Astro-Boy instrument panel could be cleaned up and simplified-made intelligible to persons other than Boeing 747 flight engineers and astronauts—the car would have my unqualified endorsement. I love everything else about it. The Porsche people must look at the Supra, then look at their own 924, and wonder if they’re in the right business. Toyota dealers will be serving coffee to customers in waiting lines while American car dealerships on the same streets are being boarded up. Here’s another great American car from Japan, ready to do its part in further upsetting U.S.-Japanese trade relations. The tragedy is that American manufacturers could build cars like this one, or like any other Japanese car for that matter, but the American manufacturers still can’t convince themselves that American customers really want such cars. If there is a trace of complacency left either in Europe’s automotive capitals or in Detroit, cars like this one should eradicate it for once and for all. —David E. Davis, Jr.

When I first saw a Supra in living color, I found it hard to keep both my eyeballs traveling in the same direction. Wooo lord! It’s busy. Next to the new Camaro and Firebird, the Supra looks like a Rube Goldberg invention. But beauty, or lack of it in this case, is only skin-deep. Though not as quick off the line as a Camaro, the Supra’s fuel-injected twin-cam six responds eagerly to a kick from the throttle. Gear changes are smartly executed by the five-speed, but if you don’t tippy-toe from first to second the effect is like that of a paper clip being shot from a rubber band. The new fully independent suspension is a major improvement, and the over-the-road feel of this rather heavy rear-drive car is one of substance and stability. But the Supra’s interior is its crowning achievement. From door to door, it’s perhaps the most perfect orchestration of style, ergonomics, hardware, and craftsmanship I’ve ever seen in a car. Now that certain Toyota designers have perfected the insides, they ought to be given a shot at the wango-tango exterior. —Jean Lindamood

The new Supra reminds me a lot of the old six-cylinder Jaguar E-type coupe. It’s quieter and rides better than the Jag ever did, and it’s infinitely more comfortable; but the view over the long hood, the substantial feel, the long-legged stride, and the well-balanced smoothness of the in­line-six engine are strikingly similar. The Supra is slower than the Jag was because it has just as much bulk and weight motivated by a smaller engine, but it still compares well with the old cat. Neither car is a nimble tight-road charger. Rather, they are grown-up GTs much more at home gobbling up long stretches of road at high speed; both have that solid, somewhat massive responsiveness that makes high speeds seem secure and very normal. The Supra’s modern roadholding and comfort make it even less demanding than the Jaguar. Of course, if Jaguar were producing the Supra, the brakes would probably fade less, the lift-throttle oversteer would be belier controlled, and the interior would be less gadget-ridden and more business-like. But in the absence of a genuine British version, I’ll take Toyota’s E-type any day. —Csaba Csere

Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com