Enrique Munoz - 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo

This kit, being designed by a racecar driver in the JGTC, had the JGTC look I had fallen in love with years earlier. Being the first one to import this from Japan into the USA it was neither easy nor cheap but I got the lawyer (customs), paid the air freight, and import fees to make it all happen.

Enrique Munoz - 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo
1997 Toyota Supra Turbo
Enrique Munoz - 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo
Enrique Munoz - 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo
Enrique Munoz - 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo
Enrique Munoz - 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo
Enrique Munoz - 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo
Enrique Munoz - 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo
Enrique Munoz - 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo
Enrique Munoz - 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo
Enrique Munoz - 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo
Enrique Munoz - 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo

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Enrique Munoz

1997 Toyota Supra Turbo

Instagram: @kingerm_supra

Photographer: @mr2mivin

My name is Enrique Munoz.  I’m born and raised in sunny Los Angeles, CA.  The epicentre of JDM car culture.   I currently work in the video game industry. I make cinematics for the games you love to play.  Previous to this I worked on Film & Television doing Visual F/X for blockbuster movies and tv shows.  In my spare time, I like checking out cool cars at meets, attending racecar events and enjoy watching MMA either live or however possible.

My fascination with Supra's started back when I was in high school in the early/mid-'90s. A friend of mine had a JGTC (Japan Grand Touring Championship) poster with 2 Supra's battling it out which I loved. At the same time, there were street races that happened on Sunday nights in Long Beach. This is where I came across a Royal Sapphire Blue coloured Supra that left me awestruck. It destroyed everything it went up against. I was sold! It wasn't until 2001 when I found the perfect example on toyotacertified.com no less (now defunct website). That very same moment I called the dealership (in Mars, PA of all places...) and put a deposit with my credit card. I flew out that same night and bought the car the very next day. Little did I know that this 1 decision would help shape the rest of my life.

Back in the '90s, Japanese cars were not known for going fast in the quarter-mile. The same friend with the poster had magazine subscriptions to all the car magazines at the time. One of these magazines had on the cover a Supra that had just broken the 10-second quarter-mile record for ANY Japanese car. This immediately piqued my interest and I read about the guys behind the magic. It was drag racing legend Vinny Ten (ironically enough, with a name "Ten") and two twin brothers from Queens NY, Marc and Eric Kozeluh. From then on I fantasized about having these guys working on my car but with them being on the other side of the country it all seemed like a pipe dream.

Flash forward a couple of years and I'm enjoying my car, driving it around town and taking it to the occasional track day. The bug to start modifying the car was too great. Being an artist by trade gave me the excuse to change the look of the car with aftermarket aero. This would lead me to Japan for the Tokyo Auto Salon 2003 while on a tour with now-defunct Turbo magazine. At the show I made it a mission to meet racing star Manabu 'Max' Orido, then owner of Ridox brand Supra Bodykit.

This kit, being designed by a racecar driver in the JGTC, had the JGTC look I had fallen in love with years earlier. Being the first one to import this from Japan into the USA it was neither easy nor cheap but I got the lawyer (customs), paid the air freight, and import fees to make it all happen. I got the car all put back together now in a different shade of red (now "Rossa Corsa" from Toyota's "Renaissance Red") and she looked awesome. I still had so much more to do especially mechanically, little did I know at the time how long it would take to get to this aspect of the build.

I was extremely happy with the car and its build progress but with anything in life, other things can get in the way. In 2004 I bought a house and my financial commitments were on everything but the car. The car sat for years. With all, I had done it was in a state that it was not easy to drive or just use as a normal car. It got so little use I contemplated selling the car in 2007. After talking with family and friends and them stressing me to not sell, it wasn't until I spoke with my mom and she of all people (she didn't like that I had a fast sports car for my safety) convinced to keep it. And so it sat. As fate would have it, during this time Eric and Marc Kozeluh - the twin brothers from New York, had moved out to the West Coast in sunny Long Beach. Now known as Twins Turbo Motorsports – the shop responsible for building Vaughn Gittin Jr.’s RTR-X Mustang and the twin Turbo Viper that appears in the Need for Speed video game as the final boss car,  along with many other radical street and track cars. I knew they were the only shop that could work on my car.

I met with the Twins in 2010 and after our meeting, I had a reality check of the price and extent of the kind of build I had envisioned. I left with a 3-page laundry list of parts that would be needed and a greater understanding of what it was going to take to make it happen (money and lots of it!), a complete rebuild from the ground up. I didn't give up, for the next 2 years I saved up and sourced parts from the list and stockpiled them for the day I would be able to return to the Twins. Once the faithful day did arrive, early 2012, the Twins were impressed with my perseverance and this was the spark that would lead to our synergistic mash-up, them with the engineering expertise and me with my artist background.

What follows is a build to rival any car build let alone a Supra. What could be so special about a Supra with a single turbo conversion? One look at the engine bay and you'll realize this is anything but your typical bolt-on parts build. Everything in the engine bay is hand finished metal.

We took great influence from the hotrod scene and went for a "clean look". Minimal wires, cables, everything! A new custom harness was crafted, bespoke parts were made like the intercooler with its hand-hammered end tanks, the front of the engine bay was completely remodelled to accommodate the v-mount intercooler/radiator setup and all the custom ducting under the front bumper. All parts were converted to metric (some parts like the intake manifold came from Australia, imperial measurement), all bolts where possible were converted to an ARP stud and 12-star nut combo. The whole underside was stripped to the bone so to speak, bare metal. All undercarriage bolts (and engine bay bolts not replaced with ARP) were shipped to be cadmium plated (40-pound box!). Custom BBS Motorsport wheels, custom LED lighting, Brembo monobloc brakes with custom colour match paint, are just a few of the many top-shelf and bespoke parts that helped make this car what it is.

Taking the hotrod theme to heart, who else to work on the interior but the shop from the tv show, American Hotrod. Enter Gabe's Street Rod Custom Interiors. The whole interior is wrapped in leather with red stitching. Even the roll cage is hand-sewn wrapped in leather. When you open the door to the car it still smells like a woman's purse store! Little details you may miss, the Recaro seats are covered in woven leather, a true weave not a print. I was able to source vintage Recaro badges from a 1970's Ford Cosworth.

When I first started building the car with the Twins the build was such a radical departure from any other Supra build I actually thought other Supra owners would hate it and shun me (I being in Southern California, there are plenty of Supra owners and we all know each other). Little did I know the reception it would receive once it was unveiled at the Supra National meet, Supras in Vegas 2014. It would go on to grace the cover of SuperStreet magazine twice (within 1 year), go to SEMA and compete in the Battle of Builders 2015 and break into the Top 10. A first for a Japanese car to be alongside and recognized with such builders as Chip Foose, the Ring Brothers, and Bobby Alloway.  It recently completed a tenure at the Petersen Automotive Museum as part of the "World Tour'' in their Vault collection.

If you enjoyed this Car why not read this ONE HERE

As great as these accolades are, the one true thing this car has given me is to show me what it means to stay committed and push through when it gets hard and see something to completion. This car and the build oddly enough helped me grow up and helped me commit to my now wife. Previous to building the car, in my life when things got tough I would abandon them or just never see anything to completion either out of fear or not being brave enough to push through that last 10% that always seems to come up just before excellence. This build showed that with hard work, and a commitment to finish what can be waiting for you at the end of the struggle, the hustle, the grind. Completing the build helped mature me to where I wanted to marry my long time girlfriend and now wife. This car changed my life in every way.

At the end of the day, these cars are all about the people behind them. As much as this car is a reflection of me, I in my present-day reflect the car. It also reflects on the talents and skills of all the people who helped make my car what it is today. I will forever be grateful to them for making my dream car a reality.

Spec List

Engine

  • Toyota 2JZ-GTE, 
  • Precision 6766 turbo, 
  • Full-Race T4 divided header and 4-inch downpipe, 
  • Custom V-mount setup with Bell intercooler core & hand-hammered end tanks, 
  • HKS 264 cams, 
  • Adjustable cam gears, 
  • HyperTune intake and 90mm throttle body, 
  • Accufab clamps on custom TT intercooler pipes, 
  • Custom dual-pass C+R radiator, 
  • Setrab oil cooler & power steering cooler, 
  • ID2000 injectors, 
  • Twins Turbo HyperTune cable bracket, 
  • Twins Turbo MK4 short throttle cable, 
  • Twins Turbo thermostat housing rotator kit, 
  • Twins Turbo Inconel T4 divided turbo inlet gasket, 
  • Twins Turbo Inconel turbine heat shield, 
  • Brown & Miller hose & crimp fittings, 
  • 4-inch stainless steel oval exhaust tubing with 4-inch electric exhaust cut-out from mid pipe, 
  • Veilside Ti muffler, 2x Bosch 044 fuel pumps with flex-fuel sensor for E85, 
  • -10/-8 stainless steel fuel feed & return hard lines, 
  • Weldon fuel pressure regulator, 
  • Weldon fuel filters, 
  • MoTeC M820 engine management system with a custom harness

Driveline

  • Factory Getrag 6-speed transmission, 
  • Tilton CC triple-plate clutch, 
  • Remote shaft-mounted slave cylinder with Twins Turbo clutch master cylinder kit, 
  • TRD LSD

Suspension/Brakes

  • HKS Hipermax Max IV GT coilovers, 
  • TRD sway bars, Brembo 6-piston callipers (front), 
  • 4-piston callipers (rear) custom painted to match the body colour, 
  • Brembo slotted/vented 2-piece rotors

Wheels/Tires

  • BBS Motorsport E88 wheels (custom size) 19×10.5-inch (front) 19×11.5-inch (rear), 
  • Toyo R888 tires 265/30/19 (front) 305/30/19 (rear), 
  • Custom-plated ARP wheel studs

Exterior

  • Custom metalwork and ducting, 
  • Ridox front bumper carbon fibre, 
  • Ridox front splitter carbon fibre, 
  • Ridox front canards carbon fibre, 
  • Ridox wide front fenders FRP, 
  • Ridox side skirts carbon fibre, 
  • Ridox rear skirts carbon fibre, 
  • Ridox trunk lip wing carbon fibre, 
  • Ridox GT wing, 
  • Top Secret hood carbon fibre, 
  • Top Secret diffuser carbon fibre, 
  • Ganador side mirrors carbon fibre, 
  • Custom LED bars for turn signals, 

Paint color Ferrari Rosso Corsa

Interior

  • Full leather-wrapped interior with hand-sewn custom Chromoly 6-point roll cage, 
  • TRD Tachometer, 
  • TRD Steering Wheel, 
  • Recaro sport seats in black and red leather stitching with real woven leather customized with vintage 70’s Recaro badging, 
  • Custom seat mounts, 
  • Custom LED instrument setup by Stu Hagen, 
  • Veilside pedals and shift knob, 
  • Carbon fibre steering column (Whifbitz)

Masterminds behind the whole build, fabrication - Twins Turbo Motorsports

  • Engine bay metal work - Mark Delong
  • Paint/Bodywork - Buddha Concept Designs
  • Electronics/Harness - Greg Pyle
  • Tuning - Shane Tecklenburg
  • Interior - Gabe's Street Rod Custom Interiors

Advice/Tips

Build your car for you. Don’t follow trends. Don’t do as others do or say. If it so happens that it falls with what you’re thinking and wanting to do, then so be it. But the biggest piece of advice I could say is to make sure you build your car for yourself.

What do you think? leave your comments in the comments section at the bottom of the page

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