Tommykaira is neither a person nor a newcomer to the tuning scene. Tommykaira is a Japanese tuner company formed way back in 1987 by Yoshikazu Tomita and Kikuo Kaira, who creatively named their company by combining their last names.
Twenty years earlier, Tomita formed Tomita Auto, which was one of the first importers of exotic cars to Japan. Kaira spent his early days racing in Japan and the European F2 series. He even designed his own Formula 1 car, the KE007, in 1976.
When the two men met in 1984, they realized they both had the same desire: to build the ultimate road car. In 1995, they reached their goal of creating an original sports car from a clean sheet of paper, the Tommykaira ZZ. Despite this achievement, they continued to modify Japanese production cars.
The fully kitted car you see on these pages, the Tommykaira M20b 2.2, started life as a 2001 Japanese-spec. WRX STi, so it already had Brembo brakes, a six-speed manual transmission and more power than our U.S. WRX. For Tommykaira, the car was a blank canvas.
Although an STi's suspension is up to the task of backroad bombing, Tommykaira decided to take it up a notch. Working with Bilstein, Tommykaira came up with a new suspension package that includes nine-way adjustable shock absorbers, along with adjustable spring perches front and rear that allow the ride height to be lowered anywhere from 1 to 2 inches.
Part of the system's benefit could be its adjustability, but we couldn't get it to work properly. The main problem is its lack of compliance. It's just way too stiff, and this was on a racetrack. It also seems to lack any damping whatsoever, which results in major bouncing and hopping over every bump and curb, which causes the car to skate across uneven sections of track, especially through corners. On rough patches of mountain road or on fast on-ramps with crowns or expansion joints, this is a real problem.
Despite these problems, the suspension, along with 235/40ZR-18 Bridgestone Potenza RE-01s shod on beautiful, gold-colored Tommykaira Pro-R forged aluminum wheels ($750 each), got it around our skidpad with 0.91g. Compare that to the stock WRX's 0.82g effort. Its quick turn-in and lack of body roll helped it navigate the 700-foot slalom in an extremely respectable 70.4 mph (compare again to the WRX's 66.8). You should remember, however, that the pavement on our skidpad and slalom course are billiard table smooth.
The car's suspension woes are a shame because the 2.2-liter engine is so wonderful. Tommykaira's 2.2-liter engine kit increases the horizontally opposed four-cylinder's bore and stroke, adds a new crank, pistons, rods and gaskets and boosts crank horsepower to a claimed 355 at 6400 rpm along with 325 lb-ft of torque at 4200 rpm.
Start the car and the familiar loping boxer idle is there. Take it through the gears and it pulls strongly from low rpm and rushes to its 8000-rpm redline as though it was late for a date. This is one fast WRX, ripping through the quarter mile in just 13.35 seconds at 102 mph and screaming to 60 mph in 4.65 seconds. Plus, its engine is much more enjoyable to listen to than any stocker thanks to the Tommykaira free-flowing exhaust system that belches a snarly note.