Supra Performer - 2000 Toyota Supra

Many of you might remember our Supra Stars issue of Turbo (February, 2000), where, in tribute to one of the best import super cars available on the planet, we unleashed a fury of Supras for your consumption. The issue revolved around Craig Paisley's Supra Drag Monster which graced the cover but a closer look inside highlighted the fact that most of the vehicles featured in the issue were found at the Supras Invade Las Vegas III held on September 17-19, 1999. Christian Rado's street-driven, 10-second strip charmer; Brice Danna's wild, 674 hp, red rocket and Ben Treynor's Supra sleeper were all shot at the event. However, there has been one car that has eluded our grasp until now.

We first saw Kenneth Henderson's meticulously constructed black twin-turbo Supra in the Luxor parking lot. The Bomex front spoiler, Stillen side skirts as well as the 18-inch, three-piece Manaray wheels, the 14-inch cross-drilled Brembo rotors and four-piston calipers at the corners, were all reasons enough to have the Supra set up for a date with the camera.

Although the body has been sculpted with stunning success, we were surprised to hear that the real work was performed under the hood. Kenneth first started modifying his twin-turbo Supra shortly after purchasing the vehicle. With simple bolt-ons and a pair of tweaked factory turbos, the car was able to pound out 418.3 hp at the wheels on pump gas. In late 1997, Kenneth decided to shift the Supra into high gear and enlisted the help of Alex Shen and Jeff Kung of SP Engineering in City of Industry, Calif. The three brainstormed and drew out a battle plan for the Toyota.

At the time, the easiest way to make more power was to remove the factory sequential turbo set-up and install a large single-turbo system. Although this would meet their horsepower expectations, the power output would only be at the top-end. Since Kenneth wanted a daily driver, the single-turbo approach would greatly increase turbo lag and dilute the low-end grunt needed for around-town driving. To resolve the turbo lag issue and increase low-end power, a twin-turbo set-up was decided upon. Unfortunately, at the time, HKS' bolt-on twin turbo upgrade was not available on the market and GReddy's upgraded system for the 2JZ-GTE powerplant was a single-turbo based unit. The solution was to develop a prototype GReddy-based twin-turbo upgrade. To this day, it is the only one of its type.

Take a peek under the hood of Kenneth's Supra and you can easily tell this was no one-day job. Top Secret, a major Japanese-market tuning firm, was enlisted to fabricate a tubular, equal-length, stainless-steel exhaust manifold based upon SP Engineering specifications for U.S.-spec Supras. Advanced Design Fabrication (ADF) of Whittier, Calif. spent countless hours fabricating the entire system's intake, exhaust and intercooler plumbing with multiple heat shields to prevent heat saturation. SP Engineering then mated Top Secret's stainless-steel exhaust manifold to twin GReddy TD06L2 20G-8cm2 turbochargers. A single GReddy Type-C wastegate, with enough CFM to support 1,000 hp at the crank, was called upon to keep the Mitsubishi turbos in check. ADF was also contracted to fabricate the stainless-steel downpipes, super induction air box and secondary fuel rail.