Doctor Frankenstein may have made a monster, but you gotta admire his devotion. All those nights spent toiling away in the lab takes the kind of zeal known to only to a few-guys like Justin McGinn of Port Saint Lucie, Florida. Like Dr. F, McGinn has built a powerful creature, and though it isn't disfigured, it has come back from the dead more than once. What drives men like these? The good doctor's maniacal obsession was to create life from death, while McGinn's aims were only slightly less insane. He wanted to prove to the local domestic fans that import cars are faster.
McGinn didn't always think this way. His first car was a '69 Camaro. The son of a car nut, McGinn helped his father rebuild the classic project from the ground up, doing all the work together in the family garage. No doubt, 396 cubic inches of V8 grunt could throw McGinn down the quarter-mile faster than you can say 9mpg, but as a daily driver, the Camaro was neither practical nor comfortable.
In 1996, McGinn finally ditched it in favor of a '94 Nissan 300ZX with all the amenities. While A/C, power windows, and a radio that could be heard over the exhaust made commuting much more civilized, McGinn was left wanting more. Development on the platform had not yet matured and, although it was no slouch, the Nissan was certainly a step down in acceleration compared to the heavily modified Camaro.
As McGinn struggled to find the right car, his father began building another '69 Camaro. Although street legal, this latest addition to the family ran 10s off the bottle. As anyone who has seen Star Wars will tell you, father/son rivalries can get particularly heated. McGinn needed to find his perfect import, fast.
He looked in all the right places, talked to fellow racers at track days, trawled through internet forums, read old issues of Sport Compact Car cover-to-cover. Exhaustive research all pointed to one perfect fit: a Toyota Supra MkIV. The car had everything: rear-wheel drive, incredible power potential, and of course, enough creature comforts to make the worst Florida commutes bearable. After a few months rummaging through the used car market, McGinn found his gem 900 miles away. He came home with a well-maintained six-speed with a black interior and mileage under 50K.
Once he got it home, McGinn jumped right into modifying his monster, starting, like most, with an exhaust, intake, and boost controller. Unfortunately, his over-eager lust for power resulted in a blown number two turbo. This catastrophic failure forced a decision: "Now came the time to figure out what I was going to do," says McGinn. "Was I going to build it or put it back to stock and forget it ever happened? After some research, I decided to try for 650 wheel-hp by going to a single turbo set-up."
A slew of parts were ordered and the Supra began its evolution up the automotive food chain to V8 eater.