Supras & Carroll Shelby??

[Jayhall]

Yes, I am talking about the Mustang guy. I dont know if this has been discused before, so I hope im not just repeating someone eles. I was flipping through some old magazines of mine a couple days ago, and stumbled across something I found rather intresting.

In the May 2006 issue of Classic Motorsports, there is an article about the 1968 2000GT. I typed out the article in the suprawiki for those who want read it. But basicly, it goes over how in 1968 Carroll Shelby designed and prepared two 2000GT for the SCCA's "C" Production Class. Intresting article.

Then, I was flipping through the June 2008 Import Tuner. Theres a one page article titled "Original Celica... Original Sport Compact" I like the article, but a few lines of the second paragraph caught my intrest:

" The '70 Celica debuted as an off shoot of the famed 2000GT, bridging preformance with daily practicality"


So this got me to thinking, the Celica was a car of its own until 1986, when the Supra debuted and as I see it, "next generation" of the Celica. Now I know Carroll Shelby didnt design the MKIII, but the design is rather similar to the 2000GT. I was kinda blown away when I read that about Carrol Shelby's involvment with Toyota and the 2000GT. Something I definatly didnt know.

 

[bhmsupra]

Yes - and he still owns one of the 2000GT's. I have an article somewhere on this topic, I will try to dig it out and post up direct quotes.

 

[lppro]

yep i remember hearing about the 2000gt's and shelby i was also surprised. i remember hearing an interview with shelby talking about the toyota 2000gt.

 

[becauseican]

A few weeks ago at SILV, durring the dyno day, a few of the Shelby mechanics came by and were blown away at the power the Supras were making, there was what ?, 5-6 cars making 1000+ hp. BTW the Shelby HQ was in the same complex as the Dyno shop.

Sorry about the unrelated story...

 

[KeithH]

The Supra was an offshoot from the Celica from 1979 to 1986 - when the Celica was still RWD. In 1986ish the Celica became FWD and the Supra became a stand alone mark.

 

[kotu100]

talkin about this?

 

[Poodles]

Yep, he raced them, he was originally going to race the 240Z, but turned to the 2000GT (and if I recall correctly lost to a former employee that made BRE). I wouldn't say he had ANY involvement with the design of the car though, as it was a winning car in Japan before it came here. The 2000GT is indead the grandfather of the Supra in every way.

This is sex...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq96SXIxaW8

 

[SUPERIUM]

He designed a few rims for toyota back in the day. Heres one of his centercaps on a celica-supra rim

 

[Jayhall]

The Supra was an offshoot from the Celica from 1979 to 1986 - when the Celica was still RWD. In 1986ish the Celica became FWD and the Supra became a stand alone mark.

thats true. I guess i had a brain fart:3d_frown: All that reading must have been too much for 1 day

 

[SupraChrisMk3]

talkin about this?

Wow! I knew those cars were small but damn. From the guy in the picture it looks like the car isn't even as tall as the guys waist.

 

[super.secret.supra.club]

wow...i would have never thought.

ed.d.

 

[Tire Shredder]

as far as I know he did not actually design anything. it was a partnership between toyota and lotus since toyota owned a large portion of lotus at the time. They handed the car to shelby to race it because they were too slow. He mentioned the car trying to compete against the big v8s that the compression and cams were so wild that they had trouble getting it to run at all. They were so high strung and high maintenance...and they still weren't as fast as the big cars. The interview I saw he didn't speak to kindly of them...but mainly because of their small displacement.

 

[RyDeFly]

it was a partnership between toyota and lotus since toyota owned a large portion of lotus at the time. They handed the car to shelby to race it because they were too slow.

Whoa... where did Lotus come from?
In 1968 Lotus was state of the art, winning F1 championships... definitely not slow.
Toyota were just an economy car company back then, and the 2000GT was their first attempt at a stylish model, as well as their first foray into racing. Shelby was the Toyota distributor in Texas and an experienced racing constructor, so naturally Toyota asked him to lead a factory-backed team.

The 2000GT did not compete against the big V8s, as it was run in the SCCA 2 liter class. It took second place in the championship behind Porsche, who was dominating. Toyota pulled the plug after the first and only season for some reason.

You're thinking of the early-1980s. That's when Toyota and Lotus partnered, and the first MR2 was the direct result.

 

[Jayhall]

as far as I know he did not actually design anything. it was a partnership between toyota and lotus since toyota owned a large portion of lotus at the time. They handed the car to shelby to race it because they were too slow. He mentioned the car trying to compete against the big v8s that the compression and cams were so wild that they had trouble getting it to run at all. They were so high strung and high maintenance...and they still weren't as fast as the big cars. The interview I saw he didn't speak to kindly of them...but mainly because of their small displacement.

you should read the article that i posted in the suprawiki.

 

[Tire Shredder]

my bad on the other information. I got confused.

I still thought shelby had nothing to do with the actual design, just modifying them for scca racing. to say that shelby had a hand in designing of hte supra is a bit of a stretch. had something to do with motorsport racing of a vehicle that is part of the supra's heritage...yes.

 

[RyDeFly]

Another interesting note is that in Japan, the top trim level MKIII (equivalent to our turbo models) was called "3000GT".
I can't find the Japanese page with the brochure scans, but from what I remember the 7Ms were referred to simply as "Toyota 3000GT", and only the non-7M, 1G-GEU/1G-GTEU cars had "Supra" in the name. Toyota usually stuck a "cc/GT" moniker after the car's name (Celica 1600GT, Celica XX 2800GT, Carina 2000GT, etc) but that 7M car never said "Supra" or even "スープラ".

And here's the link to jayhall's 2000GT article, since its a pain in the ass to find and doesn't show in the search:
http://wiki.supramania.com/tiki-index.php?page=2000GT

 

[Poodles]

The MKII was also a direct result of Toyota's ownership of Lotus. IIRC the MKIII also was, but was then ruined because it was too low and stiff from lotus, so they jacked it up and softened it.

That's suspension wise, the engines where yamaha...