Millennial star: Toyota Supra Turbo

The fourth-generation Toyota Supra has been a hot commodity for quite some time; for many, it’s the ultimate modern Japanese sports car.

The Supra was launched in 1993 but really became the poster child of a generation when in 2001, it was the subject of one of the best commercials ever for any car. That commercial was not produced by Toyota, however.  It was the film, The Fast and the Furious.

Almost overnight, Supra became a legend, a car bought by performance tuners, and now, a collector car for that generation.

The Pick of the Day is a 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo 15^th Anniversary Limited Edition that is a one-owner car driven just 36,477 miles from new, according to the Lavergne, Tennessee, dealer advertising the coupe on ClassicCars.com.

The fourth-gen Supra has increased in value to where excellent, unmodified examples sell for considerably more than the $40,000 the Supra Turbo cost when new.

It isn’t all movie hype, either. This was from the get go a high-quality and remarkably fast sports car. The 3.0-liter double-overhead cam, sequentially twin-turbocharged engine puts out an impressive 320 horsepower and 315 pound-feet of torque. This makes for performance numbers of 0-60 in 4.6 seconds, quarter mile in 13.1 seconds and a top speed of an electronically limited 160 mph.  

Toyota took great pains to reduce weight from the heavy Soarer platform on which the Supra was based. Some of these measures included such details as bolt heads that are dished, am optional rear wing molded with tiny air-filled glass spheres, and even the fibers of the carpet made with hollow strands. 

This lightening produced a sports car that not only goes fast in a straight line but is an excellent handling car on a twisty road.

What happened after The Fast and the Furious came out is that young tuners bought hundreds of these cars, and then commenced to modify them to achieve still more power. Many were successful and did the modifications well, but more of those enthusiast owners combined cheap parts with little or no mechanical skills and effectively ruined the cars.  This makes finding a stock, low-mileage Supra Turbo a difficult task.

This Supra is finished in its original Renaissance Red paint with a black leather interior, and it looks to be a true collector-grade example.

At collector car auctions, we have seen low-mileage Supras sell for more than $100,000.  One thing in common is that the high-priced sellers were 15^th Anniversary Limited Edition cars like this one.

This Supra Turbo has an asking price of $99,995 and in the next few years, it could move north of that number as more younger people who loved these cars new, have more money to spend.

To view this listing on ClassicCars.com, see Pick of the Day.