It's 11:00 a.m. on a Tuesday. I just spent the morning hanging out of the back of my camera car shooting Taj Turner’s MkIV Supra in the redwood forests of the San Francisco Bay Area, and Taj had to stop for a pit stop at the legendary Alice’s Restaurant. As he finishes taking care of business and walks out, he gets a notification on his phone and chuckles, "Someone spotted the Supra and tagged me in their story while I was in the bathroom."
He ended up getting tagged and spotted about five more times that day while in the middle of nowhere... on a Tuesday.
Over my tenure as a filmmaker, shooting everything from a Kimera Evo37 and a McLaren F1 to a Ferrari F50, I can only recall a few times where a car garnered so much attention and love from passersby. But none so enthusiastic as those who spotted Taj’s Supra. Okay... there was this one Italian kid who went ballistic over the Kimera, but that's neither here nor there. The Supra is something truly special.
Taj’s obsession with cars began the same way many enthusiasts of his generation did. Knight Rider. Street Hawk. Dukes of Hazzard.
But television wasn’t the true catalyst.
For Taj, the real moment happened in a grocery store magazine aisle when he spotted a Lowrider magazine as a kid. For the first time, cars weren’t just characters in stories, they were the story. That revelation eventually led to his first cars, wire wheels, Vogue tires, and countless modifications on an '85 Bonneville. Then came a Honda Accord modified during the height of the first Fast & Furious era, which is where the addiction truly took hold.
By his mid-thirties, and after countless project cars "completed," Taj wanted something from the golden era of Japanese performance, a platform with no ceiling, something endlessly customizable. A Lego set for adults.
The MkIV Supra was his answer.
He found one locally and set about putting together and executing on his grand vision until one day, the car was stolen.
He reported it to the police, but in standard fashion, they failed to retrieve the car for him. So he went about doing some investigating on his own, found out who stole the car, reported them to the police, but without probable cause, the police stated they could not further investigate his case.
Regrettably, Taj took his insurance payout and decided he would buy another Supra to finish the project he started, and this time hold nothing back.
When the insurance check arrived, he made a decision: "They're not going to take that joy away from me."
This wasn't about replacing a car. This was about refusing to surrender a passion.
Enter Taj’s second Supra. A one-owner, completely stock example.
Before modifying it, he drove it stock, exactly as Toyota had intended.
This wasn’t another project car. For Taj, this was something much more intimate.
"Cosmetically, I had a whole vision,” he says. “I'll always give credit to Enrique down in L.A. He has what most Supra owners would consider the most perfectly built Supra. He's the only other person that has the E88 BBS wheels on a Supra. The interior, from front to back, has all been replaced. Almost like if you were trying to make it the concept."
A Ridox body kit brings the whole exterior together, along with TRD rear skirts and new headlights and taillights. HKS coilovers bring the stance right on point.
Under the hood is a completely rebuilt engine with countless supporting modifications.
"I went with the Stuhagen hybrid twins, their GT28 twin turbos, but in stock housings. The head and the block have been rebuilt, so slightly bored out, a little bit wider than a 3.0. And then a bunch of little goodies. Lawrence Shipman custom fan, a brushless electric fan, HKS exhaust, HKS downpipe, a lot of Powerhouse Racing bolt-ons as well.
“If you take it over 4,500 RPM, it acts like it wants to kill you, and I love it. But, if I want to just take it to Napa with my lady and take off the targa top and just go wine tasting, it'll be very tame. It'll act the way you want it to act. If you want to be conservative, it'll just drive. But if you want to go all out, it'll meet you there."
Taj continues: "The joy of a Supra are two very distinct things. First: when you're on a highway and you let it build boost and then you take it from 4,500 to 7,000 RPM, it is exhilarating.
“The second thing: I have never owned a car that is more of a celebrity than this car. It doesn't matter what vehicle is in front of me, behind me, next to me. No one goes crazy the way they go crazy for a Supra. There's never a stoplight that I don't have to give someone a thumbs-up back."
As I packed up my cameras and headed home, I kept thinking about the notifications that kept appearing on Taj's phone throughout the day. Here we were, deep in the redwoods on a Tuesday morning, miles from any car meet or Cars & Coffee, yet complete strangers were still spotting the Supra, photographing it, and sharing it with their friends.
Maybe that's what makes the MkIV Supra different. For some people it's a 320-horsepower Toyota from the 1990s. For others it's a childhood poster, a video game hero, a movie star, or a dream that always felt just out of reach. Whatever the reason, few cars have managed to embed themselves so deeply into enthusiast culture.
The irony is that the build began as a response to something being taken away. A stolen car. A lost project. A dream interrupted.
Five years later, none of that feels particularly important anymore. What remains is a Supra built exactly as Taj envisioned it and the joy it creates everywhere it goes.
The thieves took the first car, but they never stood a chance of taking away what it represented.
Photography by: Paolo Lekai
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