---Toyota TOM'S Team Europe Spa 24 Hours 1987---
Fictional Livery Concept
The Supra nowadays has been almost every motorsports imaginable. Form GT4 to Super GT, and all the way to Drifting and evan NASCAR. Not everybody, however, knows that it's performance pedigree goes ALOT further than that. Stemming back to the early 80's with the then-named British Saloon Car Championship, the second generation was raced by Win Percy and Tony Dron by Toyota GB, and won the championship with motorcycle star Barry Sheene in 1985. It's first appearance racing in Europe was the 1984 Spa 24. Run by the I.M.C Toyota name, and run by the legendary Gordon Spice, it even finished with a top-5 overall after qualifying in 9th. Not bad at all, right? Well Toyota saw this, and seeing the newly-announced Group A touring car regs in 1982, they imagined the next generation of Supra as a all-encompassing globe trotter!
In this what-if, while the non-turbo version was developed in Europe by Swiss team Bemani Motorenbau, the in-progress turbo version was directly developed by close partner TOM'S. The engineers went to work , and with the addition of TRD Japan's help, the car weighed about 1200kg and had over 400HP in top trim. In it's first races in the All_Japan Touring car Championship, all races won and all steps on the podium were Supras, thoroughly beating the DR30 Skylines by Nissan. With the immediate success in Japan, Toyota wanted to take the new Supra to Europe, and see what their new dominant car is really capable of.
Under this what-if scenario, the car is entered under the 'TOM's Toyota Team Europe' name, and entered Toyota driving duo from the All Japan Sports Prototype Championship Geoff Lees and Eje Elgh, as well as Formula 1 driver/ future Top Gear presenter Tiff Needell. It would've run alongside the Bastos Team that are also running Supras run by the Belgian Bastos Toyota Team, their would-be immediate competition. How would they've run, I would have no idea, but considering the Team Bastos cars both DNF'd, hopefully the full factory cars would have faired better.
Photo Credit: @24HuresdeLoL/Gran Turismo 7
---ALL RIGHTS TO---
Toyota Motor Company
TOM'S Inc.
Denso
Bridgestone
Koito
BP/Castrol
Volk Racing/RAYS
TRD Japan
Fujitsu
