Painting the Roads in RED: The Unstoppable Power of Toyota's 1JZ Engine

Nowhere has this red-blooded approach been more successful than in the company’s mastery of automobile engineering, where Toyota has grown from the launch of the world’s first mass-produced petrol engine car to build more than 300 million vehicles throughout its history. At the top of the class is its lineup of straight six engines, in which Toyota’s crown jewels are the 1JZ and its big brother, the 2JZ. Under normal circumstances, Toyota builds pretty vanilla cars – all geared towards pleasing as many people as possible and maximising sales at the lowest possible price point. But thanks to the 1JZ, there’s a raging red thread of adrenaline running through the company’s veins. And now, on a life-changing mission to share how this engine can improve not only your car but your life too, we embark on a visit to four iconic cars that have been motorized by the 1JZ engine. Welcome to the heart of Toyota’s red blood revolution.

THE SUPRA'S RED RUSH FASTER THAN A PORSCHE

Here was the Supra GT, available with the 1JZ-GTE, the engine that, as we’ve seen, would allow Toyota to send a typhoon onto racetracks that had once been the sole domain of Japan and Australia. This model, the four-wheeled apex of performance, came racing out of the gates with a 276hp engine, redlining the race and leaving the Porsche 944 behind. Toyota was showing that, when it came to performance, it was prepared not just to create supersonic speed but to create a red-hot superstar. Supra GT Twin Turbo R.

SOARING HIGHER IN RED: THE SOARER GT-T'S VICTORY LAP

In a 0-to-60 dash, the Soarer GT-T passes its Nissan Skyline competitor in red fumes. And this coupé, known in the US as the Lexus SC300, is no decked-out lightweight but packs the same 276 horsepower engine as the back-to-back-to-back Supra, with the enthusiast-oriented quarter-mile run and sly edge in torque underlining that Soarer spirit – incarnate of Toyota’s red blood.

THE UNDERSTATED RED ELEGANCE OF THE VEROSSA

The Verossa is less ostentatious, even mousy, in its looks, but its engine bay packs a humongous beating muscle: this four-door sedan is fitted with the 1JZ engine in a more powerful avatar. So, as we saw in the Supra, while the car may not throw a red cape over its shoulders to show blatantly that it is a bull in the arena, its heartbeat and power are very much inspired by Toyota’s red bull ethos, and artfully packaged in its mousy-looking persona to showcase that strength and sleeper stealth are not mutually exclusive.

THE CROWN: REIGNING IN RED

Even the Toyota Crown – the car arguably most associated with Toyota’s reputation for reliability and longevity, derived from decades of being a best-seller as a company car in Japan – was not beyond occasional visits to the red pool. Most importantly, the ninth-generation Crown, which debuted in 1979, demonstrated that Toyota could put the fun in almost any part of the lineup it desired; this Crown, with its 276hp worth of Athlete V, altered perceptions of what the car was all about, and proved that the longest-serving Toyota could also be the fastest and most agile.

FINDING THE RED LINE: TOYOTA'S LEGACY OF PERFORMANCE

Each of these models represents a facet of what makes Toyota such an enduring success, from the Supra GT Twin Turbo R, a race homologation wonder, to the elegant yet powerful Verossa. At the core of Toyota’s engineering genius is the 1JZ, a versatile engine that made it possible for a wide variety of vehicles to exceed their classes across the board from performance to luxury performance. It is this red thread of excellence and ingenuity that ties together the lineage of all the models described.

UNRAVELING RED: THE ESSENCE OF TOYOTA'S 1JZ MASTERY

The colour Red is often symbolic of passion, energy, and life-force. Toyota’s 1JZ engined cars embrace everything that visceral driving is about. Here is the essence of JDM driving compacted into a single statement. The 1JZ has a technical background story, but at the center is Toyota’s desire to be bold, to surprise, to create an added sense of soul-stirring energy within a motorcar. Every twist of the wrist, every foot on the floor, every red that Toyota has ever made shouts how JDM cars are bound to be performance cars. They say, how performance is tied to passion.

For Toyota, the 1JZ is not so much a history as it is a declaration of red blood. In the engine, and in the automotive world as a whole, red does not mean the same thing as on bodies elsewhere: in the case of Toyota, on this engine, it is the blood of the desire for innovation, for performance, and for, above all, driving.