A daily-driven, 1,089-hp Supra. Really.
There are all sorts of miles. Long miles, bump strewn miles, cruising miles and miles taken at ten-tenths. There are commuter miles, road-raging bumper-to-bumper miles, secretary miles, beginner driver miles and shop owner miles. Only miles racked up by journalists are harder on a car.
Dusty Womack owns MVP Motorsports, which is one of the top dealers in the country of HKS, Blitz, GReddy, RPS and Veilside speed parts. MVP also specializes in Supra paraphernalia. By virtue of his car being the resident Supra at a company that does huge Supra business, including aiding in the manufacture of products, it gets to be a development mule and dyno slave which knows the straps and chains of Dynojet captivity all too well.
For most people, owning a Supra with pornstar performance, and the considerable investment there required, means keeping it happily covered and locked in a garage. Dusty's Supra, however, carries him to and from work every day, to the dry cleaner and to pay the cable bill, to the tune of about 20,000 miles per year. In fact, more than 166,000 miles have passed under what is now a well-used and abused 1994 Supra chassis.
But Dusty's current car makes the big, swinging numbers you've been waiting for: 1,089 hp at 6420 rpm and 932 lb-ft of torque at 5840 rpm. Purists might guffaw over the power figure, pointing out it was produced in conjunction with nitrous and race fuel. True.
At 1.3 bar of boost, however, drinking nothing but 93 octane, the car still makes 718-wheel hp, enough to "take down your basic modified Hayabusa." This is also 90 more hp than the car made when it ran a 10.2-second quarter mile. While there are "street-legal" vehicles that run quarter-mile times in the 8s, most are "street driven" those grueling 100 yards from the trailer to the staging lanes. Dusty knows fast, however; the white AAP Supra in these pages is Dusty's old racecar, which in 2001 was the first import car in the country to run an 8-second quarter mile (8.98), thereafter dethroned by Stephen Papadakis' Civic.
Making this kind of demonic power on pump gas, and being driven daily, meant removing all possible points of failure. Chris Johnson of Performance Motorsport cinched together the powertrain setup, which has been reconfigured more times in the last 6 years than Michael Jackson's nose-and every time included the installation of a larger turbocharger.
The stock connecting rods and pistons, though forged, were ditched for H-beam Carillos and stock compression CP pistons. The head received a full Performance Motorsport port and polish, and the runners on the Veilside intake manifold were ported to match. Power House Racing, another of the heavyweight Supra specialists, supplied 1mm oversize valves kept sealed against seats cut with 7-angles by their own springs and retainers. The customary 272-degree HKS cams are adjusted with Unorthodox Racing cam gears, and a 1.6mm head gasket also from HKS keeps boost out of the water jackets.
When one Walbro 255-lph fuel pump isn't enough, then maybe two isn't either, so Dusty installed three. Otherwise, the fuel components come standard with the Boost Logic fuel system, including the company's fuel rail, 1000cc Precision injectors, braided stainless fuel lines and Aeromotive fuel pressure regulator and fuel filter. Injector and spark firing is ordered by an HKS V-Pro engine management system, tuned at Tuning Concepts in Austin.
The lightning storm required to ignite hugely compressed, rich mixtures is provided by HKS's DLI-2 ignition system. To aid in tuning, a wideband 02-sensor kit with AuxBox from Innovate Motorsports takes measurements 12 times per second.
An HKS single-turbo manifold remains from a previous setup, but the rest of the setup is Boost Logic's big T76 kit. Included is a 50mm racing wastegate from HKS, the boostzilla turbocharger, 2.5-inch coated intercooler plumbing, 4-inch downpipe and exhaust, and 4-inch intake pipe. This feeds into a sewer valve-like throttle body of the same diameter mated to the Veilside intake manifold.
Installing the generously proportioned Veilside piece necessitates moving the battery out of the engine compartment, but because of the custom interior work barring installation under the rear hatch, Chris came up with a unique solution: Two compact, sealed 6-volt batteries are bolted under the trunk floor.
The GReddy four-row intercooler looks like the refrigeration unit from a semi, and probably cools better. This is stacked in front of a Fluidyne radiator protected with a carbon-fiber shield from MVP and partially sealed by a radiator plate from Autobahn Motorsports.
To add the fourth digit to the horsepower figure, Dusty upped the jets on the Nitrous Express single-fogger wet kit to a 125-shot, which he runs only with high test in the fuel lines.
How does the beast stay supplied with the petrol equivalent of 40-year-old single-malt scotch? Dusty keeps a couple of barrels of 118-octane race gas at the shop replete with an electric pump. Hey, it's cheaper than a crack habit ... barely.
Replacing worn-out items is always a good opportunity to upgrade them with something much more expensive. When one of the brake hard lines developed a pinhole, Dusty replaced all of them, from the master cylinder back, with braided stainless lines.
We commend Dusty for the suitably enormous brakes on the front and rear of the car. Four-piston Brembo calipers from the F50 claw on 14-inch, two-piece rotors through PBR pads. The rear brakes were similarly upgraded, but use slightly smaller 13.6-inch rotors.
The Supra battles only the Skyline for the most lard-assed car to flaunt its wide haunches in our pages, which makes choosing aftermarket suspension components all the more critical. Hypermax II adjustable coil-overs from HKS, known for placing a premium on streetability, are installed.