A starring role in The Fast and the Furious may have assured the investment grade of the Toyota Supra Twin Turbo, but Gary Hooper and Bill MacEachern bought theirs entirely on merit, well before the first street racers sped across the screen in 2001.
A guy in that film says of the Twin Turbo, “This will decimate all, after you put about 15 grand in it or more,” as though it’s the automotive equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator – and American collector Myron Vernis says pay attention.
“Go play Gran Turismo or rent Fast and Furious,” Vernis counsels collectors in seminars on emerging collectibles to identify tomorrow’s auction marvels.
Talking cars with MacEachern and Hooper – they first met when MacEachern exited a Tim Hortons in Markham, Ont., and found Hooper scoping out his car – you walk away with another notion altogether. Maybe original owners get the most out of cars that later become collectible. They buy them because they’re enamoured with their design and engineering, nothing to do with making a buck down the road.
At a glance, their cars look identical: high rear spoilers rising like hoops, bodies seemingly shaped with evil intent like billy clubs. But one has never seen a snowflake; the other serves as a winter beater. The first basically stock; the second modified beyond the star car in The Fast and the Furious.
When MacEachern asks Hooper about the time he was kicked out of a drag strip, it’s your first indication there’s a difference. “I took it to Cayuga and they asked what time I thought it’s turn [in the quarter-mile] and I said, ‘Probably 11.5 seconds.’ When I ran 9.98, they told me not to come back without a roll cage – you need that under 10 seconds.”
Hooper bought the car in 1994. He’d vowed to consign minivans to his rear-view mirrors. “After being stuck with a tragic wagon for six years, the kids left home,” he says, referencing the minivan Chrysler dubbed a magic wagon.
“So I test-drove four cars: The Corvette had lots of power but was a little crude. Nissan’s 300ZX felt a little too heavy, sluggish steering. The Mazda RX-7 was very nimble, handled well, and then I drove the Supra: It felt solid like it was made out of a bar of iron, handled well, was every bit as fast as the Corvette.”
The Supra Twin Turbo cost $67,500. That was only the start: He has spent as much again creating a super Supra. With 768 horsepower and 726 lb.-ft. of torque, its rear wheels fight for traction with each shift. The sound track is sensational, a throaty roar building each time the turbo pressure climbs toward 25 pounds, then a shriek from the overboost exhaust – and a momentary hissing from the blow-off valve as Hooper shifts up to another gear.
Hastening acceleration, Hooper achieved a weight reduction of 419 pounds chiefly by fitting HRE 593 wheels and Brembo brakes. But creating the 3.4-litre engine at Competition Automotive in Thornhill, assembling carefully chosen components, was most satisfying. “As a technologist, I soon came to appreciate their precision,” says Hooper, who designs and builds radio stations. “Doug Lipps works on engines with the care of a neurosurgeon.”
MacEachern, on the other hand, sates his appetite for speed in the Porsche Turbo he bought when the model came to Canada in 1976. At the Texas Mile, a top-speed run, he touched 175.6 mph in 2010.
The Porsche’s heater having been dispensed with in the eternal search for horsepower, he decided in 2000 a Supra Twin Turbo was perfect for winter driving. “I called Eppie Wietzes to see if he could get me one,” he says of the Toyota dealer he knew from racing. “Eppie told me I’d have to get in line behind him – he wanted one himself and there weren’t any left. I found another dealer with one he’d been driving himself, a ’97 with 15,000 km, and I paid full markup for it.”
The odometer quit at 413,000 kilometres; he guesses it’s touching 460,000 by now. Hard to believe now, but expensive sports cars tanked in the 1990s. Toyota Canada sold fewer than 200 Supra Twin Turbos from the car’s 1994 introduction to 1997, when it was deleted from the lineup. Porsche gave up on its 928 in 1995, Nissan its 300ZX in 1996, Mazda its RX-7 in 1998. All are appreciating today, none more than the Twin Turbo – not that MacEachern and Hooper care.
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