When we hear the words “Toyota Cressida,” speed isn’t necessarily the first thing that comes to mind. Yes, we’ve seen a few swapped Cressies in the past, and there are plenty of clean-looking examples with VIP-esque themes to them. But 9 out of 10 Cressidas remain stock, or worse, they have deteriorated beyond the point where a reasonable person would want to restore the car. This exact fact is why we like Danny Rodman’s car so much. Not only has Danny taken a less-than-common tuner car and made it his own, while managing to shy away from the most common styles for the vehicle, he has gone a step further and stuffed a Supra motor into it. Intrigued? We certainly were.
Danny has always been a car guy. Having grown up in a household with a mechanic father, he began turning wrenches at a young age. “I followed my dad’s passion for cars,” Danny tells us. “I have always liked hot rods and rat rods, but I started out building Hondas. My first car was a ’91 EF Civic with a B16A that I completed in 1999. A few years later, I purchased a salvaged ’95 Acura Integra GSR that had been stolen; I put it back together with a JDM Type-R front end, 5-lug and a JDM [Type] R swap.” Clearly, Danny isn’t afraid of a little hard work and elbow grease, and the Cressida build in his future would prove to be a great way to move on up to something more beefy than a Honda B-series swap.
“My friends were all driving 2JZ-swapped cars,” Danny recalls. “They had MkIV Supras and 240SXs, so I wanted to build something with four doors and a JZ swap.” We respect Danny’s choice to be different, and although the 2JZ motor is a very popular swap amongst sport coupes, seeing one in a four-door sedan is a less common occurrence. “I found my Cressida on Craigslist for $200,” Danny says. “It had some issues, as you would expect from a car its age. But aside from the typical blown head gasket, it was a super-clean, one-owner car.”
Once Danny had the car in his possession, the process of transplanting the Supra heart began. The 2JZ-GTE is a fairly straightforward swap into the Cressida chassis; aside from the wiring and plumbing the intercooler, it’s essentially a bolt-in affair. The 2J is known for being a very robust motor, requiring no internal modifications to safely produce in excess of 700 hp, so Danny left the motor’s guts alone. The beastly inline-6 is fed with a billet 6265 turbo from Precision Turbo, while exhaust gases are expelled via a XS Power manifold and custom exhaust. Danny’s setup is good for 468 hp, which isn’t a massive number by Supra standards, but it’s certainly enough to get this relatively small four-door sedan properly motivated. Danny plans to upgrade the cams and valvetrain in search of more power in the near future, but he wants to keep the car reliable — he daily drives this thing, after all.
Power is delivered through a R154 transmission, the unit found in several Toyota models, including the MkIII Supra and JDM Soarer and Chaser. An upgraded set of differential bushings from Serial 9 help keep the car operating smoothly and properly, aided by a reinforced rear subframe and the usual array of suspension modifications. The ride height of Danny’s Cressida is nice and low, but doesn’t hinder it from being a functional street car. A set of 18-inch SSRs look right at home on the sedan, fitting perfectly with the rest of the era-specific exterior aesthetic.