Tiptronic Supra Test 11th December 1999

	Tiptronic Supra Test Drive Japanese Import Centre Saturday 11th December 1999 http://www.japanese-car-imports.co.uk/
Even though Toyota stopped exporting the Supra to the UK in 1996, and then the rest of the world shortly after that, they still continued to develop and sell the Supra to the Japanese market. One of the developments was the introduction of a 'Tiptronic' button shift gearbox which was sold as an option in place of the standard automatic gearbox. The availability and cost of this option is currently unknown, but with the manual gearbox becoming an expensive cost option it can be assumed the 'Tiptronic' system was designed to fill the gap between automatic and manual. I recently spent some time talking to Tim at the Japanese Import Centre in Surrey. I had accompanied another member down there to look at some cars and the member concerned purchased a white Veilside from Tim. A number of other people had contacted me about import companies and I suggested they look at Tim's stock as he had more than the normal 'run of the mill' cars. Another 3 people purchased from Tim and all are happy with his service. As a 'thank you' Tim offered to lend me a Tiptronic Supra for a day to see what I thought of it, and this review is from that test drive. I arrived at 9.30am to pick up the car and it was ready and waiting. It was an RZ (new model line up had RZ and RZ-S with the GZ no longer available). It was fitted with leather, airbags (notice the 3 spoke wheel with airbag) and factory fitted Satellite navigation. Externally it has a set of 18" wheels and also had factory fitted silver tinting on the rear and side windows. It also had the VVTi engine which has variable valve timing. The controls were explained to me and off I went. I drove the car round the M25 to Hertford to go and look at another Supra for yet another member and on the way I played with the Tiptronic gearbox as much as I could. I spent a whole day with the car and returned it to JIC at 5.00pm after doing a number of miles including an almost complete lap of the M25. The following pictures explain the gearbox and how it works, with The Conclusion at the bottom of the page.
	It had rained most of the day so I didn't take any pictures until I got back to JIC, by which time it was dark. I think the colour of the car is Quicksilver, which was only available for a short period of time in Japan.
	The colour of the car in daylight is quite different and has to be seen as its difficult to explain, but it basically takes on an oily appearance alongside the silver colour.
	As this is a facelift model it has the different front grille, and also has different lights. Notice how the indicators now have the sidelights integrated into them. The surround to the main lights is also a darker colour which makes them stand out more.
	The rear light clusters are slightly different in that the surround is a lighter grey to the pre-96 cars.
	This is the dashboard of the facelift model which has a normal odometer (as opposed to the digital ones from the early Supras) and it also has 3 small gauges to the right of the rev counter more of which can be seen later.
	When you turn the engine on the gear selection indicator lights below the rev counter.
	This is the gear shift lever for the Tiptronic gearbox. It works the same way as the normal auto box, but when it's in D you push it to the right into M which switches the car into manual mode.
	The gear selector indicator then shows a black box around M, and displays the words 'D range' to show you which gear you are in.
	On the left and right side of the wheel there are 'down' buttons which change the gearbox down 1 gear. As usual there's a special guest star, namely my finger. At least if its in front of the camera we know its not somewhere else.
	This is the change up button which is on the rear of the steering wheel. This picture is taken from next to the ignition hole facing towards the drivers seat, i.e. the up buttons are on the back of the steering wheel. It should be noted that you change down with the buttons on the left or right on the front of the wheel, and change up with the buttons on the left or right at the back of the wheel.
	As you can see the gear selector indicator shows you which gear you are in. So the gearbox is now in 2nd. If you stop the car in 2nd it will drop to 1st for you, and then change to 2nd automatically but will not change into 3rd unless you press the up button. You can see the additional gauges here, one of which is a boost gauge. I never understood why somebody would fit another boost gauge if this stock one was already there, but it now makes sense. The gauge hit the top line on just the first turbo, so its really only of use if you want to know if there is any boost at all.
	This car was fitted with Sat Nav which included CD and mini-disc. It was a very nice system but got somewhat lost being in the UK. I tended to find myself in a field and at one point found myself down by the seaside while touring round the M25. This is a factory fitted unit and is an option on almost all Toyotas. I believe this includes Toyotas in the UK so rush out to your local dealer now for more details.
	And this is another view of the Sat Nav. Also notice the 2 buttons below where the traction control normally is. One button is SNOW and the other is OFF. The Snow button allows you to partially turn on the traction control so you have more grip in slippery conditions, and the off button is the one you hit when you would like more fun and less rubber on your tyres.
The Conclusion Overall I found the car to be very nice, if slightly harder sprung than my MKIV. I also found the turn in on corners to be less accurate but then it does have different wheels and tyres. Inside the car is setout the same as my Supra except it had leather seats which I still feel are more comfortable than cloth. The car also had special brake and accelerator pedals which I found were actually too big and twice I found myself with my foot hard on the brake and hard on the accelerator just because I hadn't moved my foot far enough over. The engine had variable valve timing but I found that it didn't accelerate any better than my normal MKIV. This could have been because I didn't really thrash the engine, or it might have been running on cheap fuel (although I did put SUL in and that didn't make much difference). The gearbox is difficult to sum up. I agree that it might be useful if you concentrated very hard on it and used it all the time. If you use it in-frequently you forget its there, and then you forget that you need to change up gear before the engine blows up. You can hit the down button twice and it drops 2 gears straight away which is good for over taking, but then on the standard box you can select 2nd just by pulling the lever back. I did find the changes were quicker than if you left a normal auto box to do all the work so I suppose it has the advantage there. You also have to look at the dash to know which gear you are in, and with the normal auto you learn to feel where the auto lever is to know which gear you are in. If it was my car I would have the switches re-wired so that the right button does the up shift and the left button does the downshift. That way I wouldn't be fumbling for the buttons at the back of the wheel and I would force myself to use it properly. Its a nice toy to have and is an improvement on an auto box, but it still doesn't replace a manual box in my book. Leon also took the car round the block and enjoyed using the Tiptronic side of things, but agrees that it takes some getting used to and would need practice. This review makes it sound like I didn't like the car which isn't true. I enjoyed driving the car but I had probably built up my expectations too high for the Tiptronic system. The car has now been sold and I hope the owner joins the list and lets us know how he gets on with the gearbox.