I don't know when it started, Japanese cars began to become synonymous with grocery carts, and even many people will become Japanese cars as "old man music", many people subconsciously feel that to say performance, but also depends on German cars, American cars, Japanese cars are still fuel-efficient, but the two words of performance have nothing to do with Japanese cars. There are also people who feel that Japanese cars do not have any technology at all, and the technology equipped with them is good to listen to mature and stable, and it is difficult to hear that it is backward technology, and there are many people who hold this view on the Internet.
In fact, the reason is very simple, many young people like to watch zero hundred acceleration results, to some cars on the seniority. But in fact, Japanese cars are not unable to build high-performance engines, the Japanese supercars of the 90s are indispensable, Nissan Skyline GTR, Toyota supra, Mazda RX-7, Mitsubishi 3000GT has also swept the major competitions, even now, Japanese cars can also create high-performance engines, but due to different technical routes, Japanese cars are more biased towards fuel economy.
Honda: The abusive Ferrari has no temper and forced F1 to change the rules
First of all, Honda, which is known as buying an engine to send a car, Honda's former red-headed machine many people know that when Honda built performance cars, it was indeed a lot of European car companies that were lying down. To improve Honda's performance car, there are two cars that have to be mentioned, the Honda NSX and the Civic TYPE-R.
In 1990, Honda introduced the top-of-the-line sports car, the famous NSX, powered by a 3.0-liter V6 DOHC naturally aspirated VTEC engine with a maximum power of 274 horsepower and a peak torque of 280 Nm. It must be mentioned here that due to the "Gentleman's Agreement" that the maximum power of the engine in the Japanese automobile market did not exceed 280 horsepower, many Japanese performance cars at that time had to suppress the power, but the performance of these models after the unsealing was amazing.
NSX is the world's first production sports car with an all-aluminum body, benchmark Ferrari, but in the fastest lap in New North, Ferrari 328 is difficult to join it, Ferrari 348GTB can not catch up with it, until 10 years later Ferrari 360 caught up with the lap of the original NSX. Considering the price, the NSX's cost performance is even more of a Scum of Ferrari explosions.
Civic TYPE-R is a car that netizens are more familiar with, with a score of 7 minutes and 50 seconds, from the Porsche 911 Turbo to win the title of "New North's Fastest Pioneer King", and then, the new generation of Civic Type-R conquered the New North Circuit at a speed of 7 minutes and 43.8 seconds. The second-generation Civic Type-R was named the best sport model of 2003 by the BBC Top Gear programme.
In the F1 arena, Honda is even more windy, called bug-like existence, RA167E engine a 1.5L small displacement turbo engine, in that era can burst out 1050 horses of power, as an engine supplier has helped Williams team and McLaren team to win the F1 championship, including 8 teams and drivers of the year championship, so that Williams with a crushing advantage of 61 points to win the team's annual championship, so that F1 had to change the rules, completely block the high-pressure engine.
Nissan: Toei God of War swept the arena, forcing European car companies to revise regulations
There has always been a legend in the supercar world that "a supercar that can't be won without GTR".
In 1989, the third generation of GT-R was born, which was equipped with the famous RB26DETT engine, a 2.6-liter twin-turbo turbo engine, although limited by Japanese regulations at the time, the horsepower was limited to 280 horses, but the modification potential of this engine was very terrifying, in the 1990 Macau Guia Competition, GT-R easily won the championship, 10 seconds ahead of the second place, in the European Group The BMW M3 and Porsche Carrera RS were pressed to the ground and rubbed, and the lap time of 8:22.38 at the Nürburgring Nord in Germany was recorded, and in the JTCC race, the Skyline GT-R set a record of 29 games and won 29 championships.
At that time, in order to beat this car, European car companies introduced higher category DTM cars, because the GTR weight was not up to standard, requiring GT-R to weigh 140 kg, but still let the GTR achieve the fourth place result, and then simply canceled the Group A event in 1994.
Toyota: 2JZ-GTE engine makes "king of straight lines"
Compared with Nissan and Honda, Toyota is more like a brand that purely manufactures grocery carts in the minds of many people, and Toyota's honor on the field is far less brilliant than that of Honda and Nissan, but this does not mean that Toyota does not have technology, or that Toyota does not have the technology to build a high-performance engine. The world's first-selling car company is certainly not a generalist, but Toyota has made trade-offs in terms of power and fuel economy.
In 1992, Japan's four major treasure sports cars gathered together, including the king of natural breathing - Honda NSX, the road god of war - Nissan GT-R, the rotor prince - Mazda RX-7, and the king of straight lines - Toyota SUPRA. The fourth-generation Supra is powered by this powerful 2JZ-GTE twin-turbo engine, which is not as famous as Nissan's engine, but it is actually a fierce character. Under the restrictions of the policy, the maximum power is only 280 horsepower and the maximum torque is 435 Nm, but the modification potential is extremely large, and a slight modification can reach 700 horsepower, or even 1000 horsepower.
Although it did not sweep the European supercar like the God of War GTR, its straight-line acceleration ability is extremely strong, known as the king of straight-line, zero hundred acceleration easily ran into 5 seconds, or even less than 4 seconds.
Even now, Toyota has some high-performance engines, such as the YARiS GR with a three-cylinder 1.6T engine with a maximum horsepower of 272 and a torque of 370 Nm, easily beating the Audi S3, Mercedes-Benz A35AMG and other four-cylinder small steel cannons. No technology can build such an engine?
Lexus' LFA, the 4.8-litre V10 engine has a maximum power increase of 420 kW, an acceleration time of 0-100 km/h in 3.7 seconds, and a top speed of 325 km/h, and the performance is also excellent.
So why, in the 1990s, the Japanese car that swept the world, in the next 30 years of development, in terms of high-performance engines, was weak in succession, not as strong as the German system? What makes us have the impression that Japanese cars can't build high-performance engines?
On the one hand, because of the Japanese government's extremely strict fuel consumption limits and horsepower limits, it can be seen from the above that many high-performance engines in japan are limited by policy, and can only seal the engine horsepower below 280 horses, which also directly leads to the decline of Nissan GTR. The Japanese government introduced this policy because of Japan's lack of local resources.
On the other hand, Japanese cars in the late 90s of the last century, in the development route has changed, in the increasingly stringent emission policy, car companies have to make trade-offs, Japanese owners to attack high thermal efficiency and hybrid technology, German cars focus on the development of small displacement turbocharged engines, so the high-performance engine projects of Japanese cars have been discontinued.
Having said all this, I just want to tell you that you don't have a stereotype about any car series, and don't think that performance is everything. Is zero-hundred acceleration important? Important, because power is like a banknote, it can't be used, but it can't be without. But many people on the Internet are only parameter theory, only zero hundred acceleration theory, which is too naïve. On the one hand, today's mainstream family car performance can actually meet the daily use.
In addition to zero hundred acceleration, the responsiveness of motivation is sometimes more important than accelerating performance, which is like when you need money urgently, how much money you have can be pulled out at once. In addition, the smoothness of the power is also very important, many dual-clutch models although the acceleration is fast, but there is a situation of light pedaling and not heavy stepping. In addition, fuel economy, failure rate, and the cost of maintenance and repair should all be taken into account. This is also why many Japanese cars seem to be very meaty, but many people pay the bill, because the people who look at the car and the people who buy the car have different perspectives on the problem. Or that sentence, judge whether a car is powerful enough, suitable for you, personally go to test drive, sometimes, the number will also deceive people.