Toyota Supra set for 450hp with Litchfield upgrade

Litchfield made its name in Japanese cars, and more recently with BMWs; a faster Supra was only a matter of time…

Litchfield is working on software and exhaust upgrades for the Toyota Supra, changes that are predicted to boost its turbocharged straight-six’s output to 450hp – a gain of 110hp on standard. The Gloucester tuner, which has wasted no time in getting Japan’s new sports car onto its in-house rolling road, has already extracted 420hp from the car’s 3.0-litre engine via an ECU remap, but expects to add 20-30hp to that figure when hardware changes are made to the mechanical setup.

The changes will centre around the car’s breathing hardware, primarily its centre pipe and exhaust system. Litchfield is working with specialists Milltek and Akrapovic on new parts, engineers visiting the latter in Slovenia last month in order to get to grips with its just-announced titanium setup – which you can listen to on video here. To get the most from the new pipes, Litchfield unsurprisingly will ditch the Supra’s factory-fit particulate filter.

Assuming Litchfield achieves its target for the Supra – and there’s little reason to doubt it, given the firm’s familiarity with the B58 from its BMW ’40i’ work – it seems plausible that the Supra’s 0-62mph time will edge beneath the four-second mark. That would rank it close to some pretty serious machinery – 911s, BMW M cars and the like.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that Litchfield is also developing an oil cooler for the engine, because buyers of an uprated Supra are the sort to embrace the power on offer. To the same end a raft of chassis upgrades is forthcoming, including a strut brace and uprated suspension, with a choice of Bilstein and KW dampers.

It all sounds rather exciting, and just the sort of stuff we felt necessary after driving the highly impressive but not-quite-as-exhilarating-as-expected standard Supra. A big boost in power and some light chassis fettling ought to extract the properly focussed performance machine that seems to be lurking somewhere in the A90. The question remains as to how much this will all cost; pricing is yet to be confirmed, but expect Litchfield to offer something pretty competitive, what with it already having a decent number of interested Supra customers eagerly awaiting final numbers. More to follow soon!

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