Toyota and Lexus just keep teasing their new performance flagships. The pair, known as the Toyota GR GT and Lexus Sport Concept, have been on track around the world over the summer. We’ve even gotten up close and personal with the supercars at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
Now, the head of powertrains at Toyota has confirmed what will be powering its new go-fast machines. It’s going to be a hybrid, but it will be one with a twin-turbocharged V8 gas engine.
Takashi Uehara, President of the powertrain company at Toyota, broke the news to Australian journalists at the Japan Mobility Show earlier this week. We pretty much knew a V8 was in there – a very V8-sounding audio clip in a video released earlier this month gave it away.
The cars were set to be revealed at the Japan Mobility Show, but difficulties pushed them back. That might be why Uehara was willing to talk about the car. It should have been public knowledge already.
The new V8 will be “widely speaking” based on the new 2.0-liter four-cylinder that Toyota is developing and testing in the GR Yaris concept mid-engine car. Uehara didn’t confirm that the V8 engine would then double it for a 4.0-liter mill, but it does hint at that result.
With the four-cylinder turbo engine expected to make more than 400 horsepower, will the V8 make 800? It might, especially with hybrid power added. A 4.0-liter twin-turbo hybrid V8 would put Lexus right there with Porsche and Mercedes-AMG, certainly some high-performance company. But this will not be just one engine.
“We have several partitions with the engines. For example, I don’t say for the 1.5-liter we have only a sporty one… so for both sizes of engines, we have several partitions if necessary. So maybe we could have a V8 with a more gentle [character] or we could have a more muscular, heavy-duty version,” Uehara said.
This likely means a version for Toyota’s car that’s more “muscular,” as the executive said. Lexus, in keeping with its brand, could be more gentle. Or that could flip, because the Lexus brand needs the top engine. It could also mean “gentle” versions of the engines used in other Lexus models. A new large SUV or sedan, for example. That these new V8s can share some development (and possibly parts) with the four-cylinders is probably how Toyota was able to justify the cost to make them happen.
Why a new V8 in this era? “To think of the maximum power, we have to design the maximum rpm [revs per minute], and we have to care about the design of the combustion chamber – then we select V8,” he explained. Okay, maybe it’s not a great explanation, but we’ll take it.
The reports suggest that this engine won’t need to be a PHEV to meet emissions regulations around the world. The extra weight of a PHEV battery hasn’t exactly been a hit on vehicles like the new BMW M5, even if it does come with much more horsepower.
Lexus isn’t the only luxury car brand working on a new eight-cylinder. Competitor Mercedes-Benz is also building a new V8, a twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter unit that will power the next generation of AMG vehicles. That brand tried a four-cylinder PHEV with more power than the old V8, and it wasn’t exactly a success, prompting the turnaround.
Source: CarExpert
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