Gazoo Racing Bringing Twin-Charged 86 to Tokyo Auto Salon

You might recognize the name. Gazoo Racing is the team that took the Lexus LFA to Le Mans and won. They’ve also been a prominent aftermarket tuner for Toyota’s for years now. It shouldn’t be surprising that they’d take their skills to the FR-S. For the Tokyo Auto Salon, they’ve equipped a GT86 with a twin-charging system, meaning it’s both turbo and supercharged. That style of power adder was popular during the group B rally era as it afforded small engines a lot of responsive power.

Now, that sounds really cool, but their car is only making 315 horsepower. Doubtlessly it’s fast (the car barely weighs 2700lbs), but I don’t understand how this is better than dropping an STI motor in there. It wouldn’t be as responsive, sure, but it would be a lot cheaper and probably more powerful. I get that this is a show car though, and my poor person logic really doesn’t apply in the circumstance. Still. Twin-charging seems unnecessarily complex.

Most of this kit will likely trickle down to the masses in the future, but for now, these are still wish-list items. We’ll get more information about the car when the Tokyo Auto Salon begins later next month.

via [carscoop]