Toyota Modified Cars

Latvia-based HGK has a long repertoire of drift car projects, most of which BMWs (think E92s and E46s). Every now and then, however, HGK likes to switch it up and massage Japanese sports car as well. Case in point: this rad looking Supra.

PS: It has a 2JZ engine.

The 2021 Toyota Supra’s stock BMW-sourced, 382-horsepower 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-six engine is a noticeable improvement from the 335-horsepower unit that first came out, but if would-be Supra owners really want to channel their inner Brian O’Connell, 382 ponies isn’t going to cut it.

For that, help from the aftermarket world is needed, and it just so happens that Manhart Racing is ready with open warms. The German tuner already presented a 450-horsepower upgrade for the Japanese sports coupé earlier this year, but it seems that the rambunctiousness isn’t over.

Kazuhiko ’Smokey’ Nagata is one of the most infamous car tuners to come out of Japan which is quite a bold statement when you consider that, well, the entire tuning scene of the late ’90s and early-to-mid-’00s that even took the US by storm, in part thanks to the Fast & Furious franchise, can trace at least some of its roots back to Japan.

But, then again, ’Smokey’ Nagata is the man behind Top Secret, the Japanese tuning shop that, among many others, gave us the world-renowned V-8-engined Skyline GT-R and the twin-turbo, V-12 Supra. This Supra looks identical to that one but there’s no V-12 under the hood. Still, it makes for quite a unique ride.

The 2020 Toyota Ornamental Conifer GR Supra is a customized version of the Japanese coupe designed for the 2020 SEMA Show. Now converted to the SEMA360 Showcase online presentation due to the coronavirus pandemic, the event will debut four special-edition Toyota models, including this GR Supra. Essentially an art car, the Ornamental Conifer GR Supra was designed by British artist Nicolai Sclater.

Formula D ace Ryan Tuerck is one of those people with a vision that seem to have erased the word impossible from their dictionaries. His main drift car is a 1,000 horsepower Toyota Corolla Hatch that’s been carrying him to constant top-10 finishes in Formula D competition, but Tuerck’s first big shocker was another car, the Ferrari-engined Toyota GT86 he unveiled at SEMA four years ago. This latest project that involves an A90 Toyota Supra and a Le Mans V-10 engine will top that one. His words, not ours.

Regular people like to work on their hobbies once the 9-to-5 program is over and done with. Not the industrious folks over at Toyota’s Takaoka plant in Japan. No, sir. There, 200 members of the staff decided to use their off-hours time to put together this Toyota RAV4 limo.

In the short time that it’s been around, the Toyota Supra has become an aftermarket darling. Tuners have taken to building programs for the A90 Supra with as much fervor as the nameplate commands. Even companies known for building kits for other automakers have turned their attention to the Supra.

Count Manhart Performance on that list. The German house that’s best known for tuning BMW models has prepared a comprehensive program for the Supra that includes an engine upgrade program, suspension tweaks, new wheels, and a host of aesthetic modifications to the exterior and interior. The result is a raunchy Japanese sports car that now lives up to the revered Supra nameplate.

The all-new Toyota Supra A90 is an aftermarket tuner’s dream, and it hasn’t taken long for the world’s best tuners to build programs for the returning sports car icon. As you know, AC Schnitzer typically specializes in building aftermarket kits for BMW models but, since the Toyota Supra is a BMW at heart, AC Schnitzer is able to show it some love. AC Schnitzer’s program for the sports car is as all-encompassing as it gets. There’s a full line of upgrades to the Supra’s exterior, interior, engine, and a lot of mechanical parts in between. AC Schnitzer hasn’t rolled out the full price list for this new program, but you can bet it won’t be cheap.

This is a 2001 Ford Taurus RWD. There’s nothing special about it, at least if you look at it from all angles. But this particular rear-wheel drive Taurus has a little secret hidden underneath all that underwhelming white body panels. Believe it or not, but this 2001 Ford Taurus with the missing headlamps and the mismatched wheels is actually powered by a 2.5-liter 1JZ-GTE VVTi inline-six-cylinder engine. It’s the same engine Toyota used on the first-generation Supra all the way to the third-generation model. Suffice to say, this 2001 Ford Taurus is the living embodiment of a car that isn’t what it seems at first glance. Just as you scoff at its blandness, it leaves you in the dust with your jaws dropped on the floor.

Have you heard of the Patriot Campers? Well, these guys are magicians. If you haven’t heard about them, here’s a little brief. The company was born in 2013, but it has already taken over the world by storm. Patriot Campers is an Australian company that has diversified itself into many branches. The company’s trailers are quite famous amongst camping enthusiasts. Patriot Campers even works on creating off-road beasts. The PCOR – Patriot Campers Off RoadRoad – division handles the mods on SUVs and trucks. A staple within this is called the Supertourer, wherein the company works on the Ford Ranger, the Landcruiser 200, and the Ram truck, apart from the LC79. The company recently posted a video on YouTube where they show us a custom-built LC79 right before its handover. Will this particular LC79 be any different from the other Supertourers?

When Toyota revealed the new fifth-generation Supra at the 2019 Detroit Auto Show, fans had mixed reactions. While some were ecstatic for the return of the nameplate after two decades on the shelf, others felt that the BMW-sourced six-cylinder engine was a disservice to such a legendary performer. Of course, the logical next step was obvious - swap in the venerable 2JZ engine! And that’s exactly what Japanese pro drifter Daigo Saito did, as documented in this two-minute video.

Some Toyota Supra aficionados are strongly criticizing the all-new coupe that revives the nameplate, calling it derivative and pointing towards its co-development process with BMW. Some are even criticizing the fact that the new Supra has BMW engines - for those people, a solution is brewing, in the form of a kit that will allow anybody to discard the BMW lump and replace it with a more suitable 2JZ power plant from Toyota.

The 2020 Toyota Supra was long overdue and, as Akio Toyoda himself admitted, was one of the worst kept secrets in the automotive industry. It is, then, no wonder that as soon as the car was finally unveiled, tuning companies started working on body kits. One of these companies includes Prior Design who presented some renders of an upcoming body kit for the 2020 Toyota Supra.

Remember us talking about how the fifth-generation Supra has way too many fake vents Prior Design enlarged some of them and made others functional while also adding some Rocket Bunny-style flared arches and an elegant wing atop the ducktail in the back. It may not be the best tuning kit you’ll ever see for the Z4’s brother, but it sure is one of the first to emerge.

You expect such insanity from Magneto, Joker, Doctor Doom, or Lex Luthor. They may be fictional characters, but here’s one crazy dude who came up with an idea to turn an environment-friendly Toyota Prius into a pee-when-you-see, one-car cavalry. Civilian cars have been made into dogs of war before, but this time, Black Rifle Coffee Company, a coffee producer, has incorporated an M61 Vulcan rotary cannon on a humble Toyota Prius, and the result is blowing our mind!

It’s been over five years since the Toyota 86 and Subaru BRZ hit the market, and if you’re still hoping to see turbocharged versions of each sports car anytime soon, you have a better chance of seeing Ferrari build a four-cylinder hatchback. It’s not happening. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever — at least not in this generation, anyway.

The Toyota Camry is a lot of things. Flashy isn’t one of those things. That’s the usual narrative surrounding America’s top-selling model, but just because the Camry has been pigeon-holed as a certain type of car, that doesn’t mean that it can’t spread its wings every so often and break out of its own house, especially when you get someone like Denny Hamlin involved. The 36-year old NASCAR racer may drive a race-spec Toyota Camry in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, but at the invitation of Toyota, Hamlin’s trading in his race overalls for a chance to design his own custom Toyota Camry. The result is this stand out piece of work.

Hamlin’s Camry may not be the quintessential Camry upgrade, but it looks the part of one. It has a wide range of custom features, ranging from fancy graphics, shiny wheels, and a wide-body conversion. And, those are just on the exterior of the sedan. Instead, Hamlin’s influence is clearly evident, particularly in the choice of colors the 2016 Daytona 500 winner picked to stamp his personalized touches on the four-door ride. All told, the Hamlin-designed Camry makes up one of the handful of custom-tuned Camrys that are on display at the 2017 SEMA Auto Show. It may not have the visual presence that Rutledge Wood’s Camry has, but it certainly qualifies as the most dynamic build among all the Camrys that were designed by Hamlin’s peers. At the very least, it’s the one that I’d like to have for myself.

Continue after the jump to read more about the Toyota Camry XSE Denny Hamlin

Racing analyst and former Top Gear USA presenter Rutledge Wood is known for his affinity with plaid T-shirts. He’s also known for having a deep-seated passion for the automotive industry. So, when Toyota was looking for individuals to take the lead in building custom Toyota Camrys for the 2017 SEMA Auto Show, Wood’s name inevitably turned up. So Toyota tapped him to work on his own custom version of the Camry, and the result is a car that reflects the man’s boisterous personality.

I’m not one to pass judgment on something I know little about at this point, but I can tell all of you that Wood’s work on the Camry is the most impactful of the bunch. It’s certainly the most colorful of all the custom Camry’s we’re seeing at SEMA, and the story and the process behind its creation involves the use of certain techniques that you can expect from someone like Rutledge Wood. He may be the only non-NASCAR driver to get a chance at customizing a Camry for this year’s SEMA, but all told, Wood vindicates Toyota’s decision to tap him with a creation that has as much going for it as some of the Camrys that were customized by actual NASCAR racers.

Continue after the jump to read more about the Toyota Camry by Rutledge Wood

SEMA is a place where the imagination reigns supreme, an event that celebrates the weird, the wild, and the most extreme that the automotive industry can muster. Case in point – this performance version of Toyota’s funky C-HR (Coupe High-Rider) compact utility vehicle. Believe it or not, this thing is so performance-oriented Toyota is claiming it as the “world’s quickest CUV.” Backing that boast is a lap time of 1 minute, 25.22 seconds at the Willow Springs International Raceway in Southern California. Quoting figures plucked from fastestlaps.com, Toyota says that time makes the CH-R R-Tuned quicker than such incredible sports machines like the Nissan GT-R Nismo, McLaren 650 S Spyder, and Porsche 911 GT3. That’s some rather heavy-hitting company for a humble subcompact crossover, but it’s got the R-Tuned has the upgrades to match. Long story short, this thing is stripped and race-ready, rocking 600 turbocharged ponies, exotic suspension components, and very effective aero.

Offered as a follow-up to the Sienna R-Tuned build that Toyota brought to SEMA back in 2015, the C-HR R-Tuned was created by Southern California speed specialists Dan Gardner Spec (DG-Spec for short), the same folks who turned wrenches on the hot-to-trot Sienna R-Tuned. This latest creation is even more over the top, and clear evidence that with enough dedication, you can make anything blisteringly quick – exactly the approach we want to see at SEMA.

Continue reading to learn more about the Toyota C-HR R-Tuned.

While there are plenty of older builders out there, car modification is inherently a youthful endeavor, don’tcha think? Indeed, how many older individuals do you see out there driving custom cars versus the younger crowd? As such, it makes sense that Toyota asked its youngest NASCAR driver, 25-year-old Daniel Suarez, to have a hand in building this custom Camry. Granted, Toyota is giving several of its NASCAR drivers a chance to customize their own 2018 Camry, but we think Suarez might have a leg up on his colleagues. Funny enough, not only is Suarez’s youthful demeanor an asset but so is his experience. “I grew up in the car customization business,” he explains, “so I’m very hands-on when it comes to this kind of project. I wanted to keep the Camry’s athletic, refined aspect but morph it into a track-ready vehicle.” As such, his revisions to the popular four-door sedan include new body components, a white-on-black paint scheme, a freshened interior, a few extra ponies under the hood, and a sharp suspension set-up.

Suarez currently competes in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, driving with Joe Gibbs Racing in the number 19 Camry. He also enjoys the occasional stint in the Xfinity Series behind the wheel of the Joe Gibbs Racing number 18 and number 20 Camrys. The young talent secured a championship win in the Xfinity Series last year – the question is, can his Camry secure some attention at SEMA in 2017?

Continue reading to learn more about the Toyota Camry Daniel Suarez.

Jonathan Ward has been working with Toyota FJs for well over a decade. His company, Toyota Land Cruisers (or TLC for short), specializes in buying, restoring, selling, and servicing Toyota SUVs ranging from the venerable FJ40 up through modern stuff like the FJ Cruiser. In fact, TLC was contracted by Toyota to build the first three FJ Cruiser prototypes ahead of its 2005 debut. But TLC isn’t Ward’s only operation. ICON has gained quite the notoriety in recent years by building high-dollar, custom vehicles for discerning customers. The bread-n-butter of ICON’s menu is the original Toyota FJ.

ICON offers four versions of its FJ series, aligning with the original FJ models produced by Toyota from 1960 to 1983. The FJ40 is the iconic, two-door Jeep CJ competitor, the FJ43 offers two doors with a longer wheelbase, the FJ44 uses the 43’s wheelbase but adds four doors, and the FJ45 is a two-door pickup variant. Each FJ ICON builds is for a specific customer looking for a rugged and reliable vehicle that’s built well enough to tackle daily driving. We’re taking a deep dive into ICON’s FJ lineup here, so keep reading for specifics.

Continue reading for more information.