The AW11, prone to snap oversteer and known to hurt people. Why are people scared though? Sure it can kill you in an instant, but its no fun if there's no fear. Interestingly enough the MR2 AW11 had a transversial engine, probably contributing to the snap oversteer. It was also very light, roughly 2,300-2,400lbs (NA and Supercharged) which didn't exactly help either.
I'll focus more on the NA version in this post though. You're all probably familiar with the 1.6L 4A-GE by now. It was popularized by Initial-D, and if you haven't heard of that I highly recommend watching it. Back to the topic, the MR2 was Toyota's mid engine car, while Honda had the NSX (After AW11) it would be one of Japan's first mid engine cars. Although not the fastest, with 120hp and a 0-60 in the high 8s range it was a very great car. I say this because Toyota had the help of a Lotus engineer with the suspension, making the suspension exceptional. Even though the AW11 has snap oversteer issues, its just an amazing car, so amazing that it won Car of The Year Japan when it had first come out. Its also a great car because its unforgiving, the snap oversteer is hard to control, but if you can't control it after months of owning one you shouldn't be driving it. I also feel like the AW11 is forgotten, its not as loved as the 90's models. Sure the 90's models "fixed" snap oversteer (after '93) and had a turbo instead of a supercharger, they don't have the same character that the AW11 had. I fortunately got to see an AW11 at a car show, boy they sound nice. It was red and was pretty fast off the line, it was the SC 4A-GZE. Well that's all I got for today, if I got something wrong do not hesitate to write a comment! Have a nice day!
Source: Wikipedia
Comments (21)
She was my little flame shooter haha, follow me in instagram for more pics @flynnboul
My first car was a 1986 mr2 58k orginal miles, I loved it but it was just ridiculous to find parts for and being 16 I couldn't afford it
I wanted an AW-11 so bad but I went with my FD3S RX7 instead
The second generation SW20 had the snap oversteer issue. The AW11 was actually more prone to understeer due to the soft rear suspensions. Added to the very easy roll these cars were extremely good at squatting through corners. Although the biggest issue was the lack of ABS making it quite risky trail braking and then locking the tires and losing control
Reply to: Huck-It Media
Oh I was always told all generations ended up with SO problems
Reply to: JrShweg
Truly only the SW20 had that issue the first and third generations were balanced differently. You could pin the AW in a corner and you would most likely fight understeer than oversteer
Reply to: Huck-It Media
I mean understeer is still no fun
https://youtu.be/8H3H-SDQpG8