GR Supra

Make
Toyota
Segment
Coupe

If you've been wondering if the recent rebirth of Toyota's Supra would bring even more interest to the iconic Mark IV generation Supra and drive up the values, then here's a clue. The Barrett-Jackson auction house hosted a no-reserve bidding war that resulted in this 1997 Anniversary Edition Supra selling for the sky-high amount of $176,000. On the American collector's circuit, that's the kind of money usually reserved for rare American muscle or European cars with pedigree. As a modern reference point, if you wanted a new high-performance sports car you could actually go out now and buy a Corvette ZR1 for the weekend, and then use the change to buy a base model Corvette for your daily driver.

Before we all get excited and check to see if that tatty Supra on Craigslist we saw earlier is still for sale, this one is a bit special. The reason it ended up going for crazy money isn't just because it's the same model with the same legendary 3.0-liter twin-turbo 6-cylinder engine that was immortalized in the Fast and Furious. This exquisite looking Supra is the Anniversary Edition that was only made in 1997 and has the Targa roof of which only 376 built in total had that feature in this color. It also has a manual transmission, which is a major boost in desirability. However, that pales into comparison when we see that it has only minor performance modifications. The sad fact is, so many Mark IV Supra's have been modified to within an inch of their lives that finding one with just aftermarket suspension and exhaust system is a rarity.

Once you add the rarity of this Supra's unmolested and desireable drivetrain to everything else, it's no surprise a few people were willing to lay down serious cash, even with two previous owners and 70,000 miles on the clock. As for what that means for Supra values right now, at the end of 2017 we saw a fresh looking twin-turbo 1997 Supra with a Targa roof sell for $58,000 on Bring A Trailer. Something tells us that just being the Anniversary Edition isn't where the extra $118,000 of perceived value was spent here.