Toyota's Little-Known Thousand-Horsepower Engine Almost Conquered Le Mans

Guygeo

Well-known member
But this is still a super cool engine to read about. The R36V was a 3.6 liter V8 developed for legendary Group C racing in the 1980s, initially developed as a 3.2 liter R36V in 1988 but raced all the way until 1999 when it made a comeback in the GT1 era. It’s a product of Japan’s bubble years, when Japanese car companies lobbed almost limitless budgets at increasingly bizarre, wonderful, never-to-be-repeated projects. We saw an explosion of niche road cars and glory-seeking race cars like never before or since.

 
Thanks - I'm looking at the quoted $8k service on a '98 F355 - this makes it worth it, but really, despite the short summer...
 
Saw this car at the one and only Group C race in Montreal, 1990 (90CV I think) with the same engine. TOM's Toyota was the name of the team. The glory day's of racing, every configuration imaginable was there, flat 6, twin turbo V6's, V8, turbo V8, V10's V12's....Beautiful machines these cars had as much power and nearly as fast as F1 cars in the day and with full ground effects, almost twice the downforce. So much downforce that one car sucked the manhole cover right out of the ground and flung it into the air where it was hit by 2 cars following. Miracle no one was killed.
 
3,6L V8...ca fait pas des gros cylindre/piston mettons!.....faut pas s'attendre au son d'un 6+litre!

C'est pas à cause de la cylindrée le son 4cyl.

C'est plutôt dû au design du crankfast.

Les moteurs V8 de course utilisent généralement un crankshaft de type "flat-plane", c'est leger, higher revving, mais ça vibre plus. Le design du crank est identique à celui d'un 4cyl, ainsi que le positionnement des pistons.

Les voitures de production utilisent généralement un crankshaft crossplane; plus lourd, lower revving, mais c'est plus souple et ça produit le son "V8" qu'on aime tous.

Pas beaucoup de crankshafts flat plane sur des voitures de production, pas mal juste Ferrari, Mclaren, Porsche 918 et la nouvelle GT350(la GT utilise un crossplane).
 
Peugeot 905 with the Peugeot F1 V10.. Keke Rosberg and JP Jabouille raced this car in Montreal at the end of their careers. Video doesn't do it justice as it's barely being revved but this sounded badass back then..

 
La mélodie ça ne fait pas gagner des courses.

100% d'accord

3,6L V8...ca fait pas des gros cylindre/piston mettons!.....faut pas s'attendre au son d'un 6+litre!

Même les moteurs gm lsx en course (cr6/cr7) c'est pas ce qui a de plus beau comme son, un bruit gras et fort rien de très élégant. Habituellement j'aime pas mal tout les sons de v8, surtout ceux de petite cylindré qui sonnent aiguë et qui révolutionne jusqu’à la stratosphère. Je m'attendais à autre chose de la part d'un petit v8 twincam twin turbo, c'est pas du hâte loin de la j'étais juste surpris par le bruit du moteur
 
Saw this car at the one and only Group C race in Montreal, 1990 (90CV I think) with the same engine. TOM's Toyota was the name of the team. The glory day's of racing, every configuration imaginable was there, flat 6, twin turbo V6's, V8, turbo V8, V10's V12's....Beautiful machines these cars had as much power and nearly as fast as F1 cars in the day and with full ground effects, almost twice the downforce. So much downforce that one car sucked the manhole cover right out of the ground and flung it into the air where it was hit by 2 cars following. Miracle no one was killed.


Then Bernie made sure The Group C series and sports car racing would die by convincing Mercedes and Peugeot to leave.. Those cars were nearly as fast as F1 cars of the time.. Then he tried to do the same with WEC by having races (Cough Baku collide with F1) Mercedes stuck with Sauber when they both entered F1.
 
Then Bernie made sure The Group C series and sports car racing would die by convincing Mercedes and Peugeot to leave.. Those cars were nearly as fast as F1 cars of the time.. Then he tried to do the same with WEC by having races (Cough Baku collide with F1) Mercedes stuck with Sauber when they both entered F1.

Correct. Group C was fast approaching F1 in aerodynamic tech, popularity, speed (250mph was routine at LeMans), and they had the marque 24 hours of LeMans. More importantly it was much cheaper than F1 and attracted a lot of privateers. The ground effects Sauber c291 was generating over 6000lbs of downforce @ 200mph and the cars were just 3-4 seconds/lap slower as you said. They were so impressive. No question Group C terrified Bernie and it's potential was pretty much killed.
 
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