Toyota is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Supra Mk IV in style by taking a look back at this iconic model.
Originally the car was introduced at the 1993 Chicago Motor Show and was heralded as a true super car as it managed to outrun some of the other more expensive rivals at that time like the Porsche 911 Turbo. The entry-level model had a naturally-aspirated 3.0-liter engine that generated 220 hp (164 kW) and the high-performance variant added two turbochargers to increase the output to 326 hp (243 kW).
The car became pretty famous when it won its class in the Swiss Mountain Races and competed some of the great races that include 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb and the Japan GT Championships.
Despite the car’s cult-like following, it was the slow sales that resulted in dropping this model in the United Kingdom in 1996 and in the United States in 1998. Finally the model had to be axed in 2002 as the company felt that it would be very expensive to modify the car to meet newer emission standards.
As a statistic, Toyota sold 593,337 Supras, including Celica Supras, from April 1978 to July 2002.
