Toyota Supra HV-R GT Hybrid To Race At Le Mans

Here's a rumor that I would like to see happen. Toyota will allegedly be bringing its Supra HV-R GT Hybrid, a racer that has been doing quite well in the Japanese GT series, to race at Le Mans. And coming from Toyota, whose most recent racing news has been their bailing on F1 after dumping in hundreds of millions of dollars for exactly zero victories, this is good news.

Now, at the moment, this is just a rumor, but these reports suggest that Toyota will be using the bits and pieces from the company's Hybrid Supra HV-R to build up a new Supra-based racer with the hopes of running it in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. And yes, that would be the same Toyota Supra HV-R GT Hybrid that won at the Tokkachi 24-Hour race two years ago.

The Tokkachi enduro winning Supra HV-R featured a 473-horsepower V8 on the internal combustion end of the hybrid system. On the sparky end of things, the Supra HV-R had regenerative braking, a quick-charging capacitor, and not one, but three electric motors.

There were two electric motors for the front wheels, and one electric motors for the rear of the car. Yes, that all sounds impressive, but the Toyota Supra HV-R GT Hybrid won at Tokkachi two years ago, which in racing terms is an age or two. If they were to run it at Le Mans, the HV-R GT Hybrid would need some serious upgrading and sorting to make an anticipated run in the GT1 class. Word is that if this does turn out to be true, it would be for the 2012 version of the race.

As far as I'm concerned, Toyota should definitely race the Supra HV-R GT Hybrid, or use the tech bits in some other big GT car. And then after that, they should figure out how to port those same hybrid drive bits into a production car. That would be a win/win.

Source: AutoBlogGreen