Ohhh Bhailog, c'mon, now...What about the Acura NSX and the Honda S2000...250 hp out of a naturally asprirated 2.0 liter engine at 8000 rpm!!! Toyota doesn't even come close to a production engine that has done that.
In America, where I live the two cjhallengers for best selling car in America are the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. Both sell around 240,000 units per year each. But if you drive them, the Camry has a softer ride, quieter, and better mileage than the Accord. But the Accord has more power, corners better, is faster, brakes better, and is MUCH more fun to drive...So I bought one!
And on the last generation Celica, Toyota's so-called "sports car" which is in fact merely a "sporty" car, they made a concious decision to have smooth driveability at the cost of about 35 hp at the top end. They called it a "style consious sporty car" for the USA market. The car failed miserably.
Also, Soichiro Honda, the founder, had a very strong Formula 1 team since the 1960's and REQUIRED EVERY Road Car Chief Engineer go through that program. In fact two of Honda's Presidents were Chief Engineers of the F1 Program. There is real performance/"Racing improves the breed" culture in Honda from the top down. Toyota started as a sewing machine company, became a conglomerate driven by what sells for high profits. Remember, performance is not where the most profit is.
Toyota is indeed the highest selling car company in the world, but remember, they are out for sales volume and making money as the prime motive. Biggest doesn't mean best. And to the brother who claims to have driven Ferrari's, etc. You can't compare the performance of a Ferrari or Porsche to any Toyota. Toyota is for the mass market, toyota makes a higher quality car, but we are talking about performance here. If you wanna talk about the Supra, remember, Toyota needed twin turbos to get 70% of the performance of Ferrari who had naturally aspirated power.
Honda is more focused on performance (read: mileage AND hp!) and although they make high mileage cars and high performance cars they invest more in this technology than Toyota per unit vehicle sold...this is a fact.
Lastly, When Toyota entered the USA racing scene in a very important (to American racing fans) CART Racing League which includes the Indy 500, they HIRED Ilmore Engineering (competitor to Cosworth) to design and manufacture their racing engine.
Honda just pulled in their resident engineers and kicked Toyota's, Nissan's, Ford's, and Chev'y asses! Also, when Ferrari needed top notch performance engineering talent for their F1 engine program in 1999, they lured and hired none other than Honda's Chief Engineer.
Now Toyota has ALOT more money than all the other carmakers in the world, including Honda, and will have more performance products as the business case makes more sense, but make no mistake, the facts and the history of the two companies speak for themselves...I don't need to.
Allah Hafiz
