Nurburgring
Well-Known Member
That is HUGE; reverse engineering a new DME would have set back aftermaket development significantly. Great info.
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Thank you! Reason I ask - I've got a Renault RS265 8:08 in metallic white and it's stunning. Shows off the curves of the car brilliantly, and gold pearls on white cars tend to look yellow when dirty... So fingers crossed it's more silver!It looks pastel-ish when not in direct light, but sparkles nicely in direct light. Not super easy to tell in this photo, but I'll try to find one that shows it.
The actual hardware of the ECU and various body controls is BMW, and Toyota did their own mapping/tuning to get the car to where they wanted. BMW would have given Toyota whatever tools and software were necessary to do so. This is was done specifically because BMW's proprietary encryption on their current ECU hardware has already been (mostly) decoded, and as such, 3rd party tuners can work with these ECUs for tuning purposes."2. The people of the tuning world are wondering if itāll have a Toyota ECU or a BMW ECU?
Tada-San:
BMW. I want to make sure itās open for tuners."
How exactly does this work? If Toyota tuned the car to have a distinct Japanese taste, they did that by coding/modifying BMW's ECU? I remember the Jarama reviews saying it had a Japanese feel to it with the engine and transmission. From an engineering perspective I only see Toyota developing the specifics of the ECU on their side to test the car repeatedly. Unless Toyota was just working on the BMW ECU from the beginning with the help of BMW engineers (looks like everything is manufactured in Germany).
Especially an ECU that has been cracked already. The incentive to crack BMW ecu's is high as their are many models that use the same ECU.It's easier for tuners to use an existing ECU over an entirely new one which would be harder to crack open
I think that's one of the most interesting things I've heard yet. I'm really hoping this proves to be a case of BMW with Toyota reliability rather than a Toyota with BMW reliability.Something I wanted to mention, and this is not corroborated by anything from Toyota, Tada-San, GR, or BMW. But, I have been looking into the development story of the Z4 and Supra, from the very first meeting in Q1 2012 til now, and there's one thing that has been racking my brain: The GR Team and Tada-San have been working with BMW since 2012 on this project. The idea to use the BMW inline 6 was present since the nascency of this project's development, and was one of the things they first started working on.
The BMW B58 was first released in 2015. It is a clean-sheet design over the previous N55 with a heavy emphasis on strength and durability compared to the N-series motors. It is part of BMW's modular engine design, so it has plenty in common with the other B-series engines including the diesels and the 4-cylinders, which does allow for more efficient/cost effective design.
Now, I am not saying that Toyota designed the B58, not by any stretch, but considering that we know that GR spent a significant amount of money and time breaking down engine/drivetrain parts and sending them back to Japan for testing and analysis, it makes sense that they were testing and improving parts on the B58 prior to its eventual release in the F30 340i in 2015. Whatever revision of the B58 that we ended up with in the Supra is unlikely to be just an off the shelf BMW unit, considering how much development time Toyota spent on it. In other interviews, Tada-San has specifically stated that there was a significant back and forth with BMW with "thousands of parts" sent back for analysis and development. Things like the chassis components, suspension, etc may account for some of that, but the engine is the one thing with the most question marks in terms of the specific components that lay within.
Anyways, that's just a sidebar, take from that what you will . I am working on researching all the specifics of the development of this car and cataloging it, and this is just one of the things I am working on.