USDMFTWs Car Reviewing | Deader than a Doornail

[quote=“Speedemon”]

#illuminati s :sunglasses:

Wait a second…

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They know my secret!? :open_mouth: This calls for some drastic measures…S

Normanvauxhall EDIT
Please don’t quote big post right above your.

Free copy of half life 3 for each person who entered the comparison :mrgreen:

Sweet! :smiley:

I WILL hold you to it when it’s out. :sunglasses:

Thanks for the review! We (at GG) feel that it’s quite fair, given this is our first attempt at making a “reasonable hypercar”. We have the following additional comments to make:

Brakes: our reasoning for using single pot large discs had several factors. One was active aero assisted air braking at high speeds. Another was the unlikelihood of loading the car with a lot of extra mass. And the bite was gentler, meaning an easier brake pedal feel in daily driving. In retrospect it would probably lead to sponginess in repeated high speed stops, so we will reconsider the balance in future models.

Handling: contrary to our reputation for building mad deathtraps, we actually prefer to strenuously avoid terminal oversteer in mid-engined cars designed to be driven by anyone other than race drivers, as the history of the Carrera GT attests. We felt this particularly important in a M-AWD car given their nasty habit of seesawing between under and oversteer both going into and out if corners. Given our lower budget with this car, the AWD system is advanced, but not that advanced. It lacks the sophistication of the torque vectoring technology as in the likes of the 918, so there’s little option to hang it all out with the help of the stability control, but the torque distribution is matched to the balance of the car. It goes faster this way :sunglasses:

I mean, there’s always a way to AWDrift even a mid ship with the driving aids off. It just requires skill.

Aesthetics: in retrospect I agree the tail end has too much going on. Saving issues prevented us from giving you the neater version so let’s say you were testing a Phase 3 mule. The boot lid has since been replaced as have the exhaust outlets.

Safety: reverse camera? Who left that in there? :laughing:

To be honest with you we don’t put reverse cameras in our cars, so one of the engineers must have slapped one on because they didn’t want to wreck the car backing it off the trailer. Call it an impractical throwback to the nineties, we call it weight saving haha. That’s probably the hardest part about living with this car: rearward visibility is rubbish.

Also while we can’t comment on the supplier of our “lightweight airbag system” (we’ve never sold a car with airbags before, previously our cars were so savage we fitted them with HANS), we won’t hide the fact that we rely solely on the integrity of the carbon monocoque for crash protection. Reinforcing bars? Crumple zones? What’s that? It gets minimum safety rating to pass for legal sale in the most stringent region, and that’s what we care about. Oh, and 4 point harness. We do have a good seat and harness supplier.

Finally: the factory settings are a bit suss and never save. The car uses “small 1” settings, but the cost is offset by the fact we’re importing the powerplant. Expect actual value to be closer to 180000AMU (with margin). In Australia, we’d be selling it for about 300000AUD, which is far less than a 488GTB, and less than half that of the performance benchmark, the Aventador SV.

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Znopresk virus striked in GG after the Zeus experience? :stuck_out_tongue:

The Zeus was the beginning, yes :wink:

There was also a Phase Two project, I’ll be revealing that in a bit!

I need to revive my old car thread, has not been updated since the first car designer came out, could review my own cars for fun too, but thats a bit of cheating :mrgreen:

Next review coming out Wednesday

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Did I miss something or did Beta become a stable release? Or can we just send in stable release cars for reviewing?

Beta has still not finished, so im not accepting cars for the Hypercar challenge yet.

The new review is coming today right?

Yea, its going to be coming later tonight, i had work and other stuff to do today. Writing is mostly done, last 4 categories need finished then overall.

That’s good! Take your time if needed. :slight_smile:

7am review, sure! Today we have the 2015 Sanguine Volare Venera. A car we simply don’t have any idea what its suppose to be or who its marketed towards, but it is cheap. With that said, onto the review.



Quick Stats
Drivetrain Layout: Front Engine - Rear Wheel Drive
Engine: 6.1L DAOHC Flatplane V8
Horsepower : 209 @ 4400rpms
Torque : 327@ 1200rpms
Top Speed : 117.6 mph
Transmission : 5 Speed Manual
Weight : 3091.2 pounds
Mpg(US) : 25.5

Driveability
|6/10|
This car scored ok in this category. We really were not surprised by its street manners. The car features the traditional front engine rear wheel drive layout. With a big torquey v8 powering the rear wheels, expect some wheelspin, especially in the rain. Dont expect modern electronics to help you with that wheel spin, or even help you steer as you fit into that grocery store parking spot as this car features literally zero driver assist, yes, you dont even get abs or power steering. This is 2015, even for sports cars abs and power steering is just to nice too not have today, especially when all of its closest competitors offer all driver assist.

Having such a short wheelbase also does not help either, go into a turn too fast, and you will spin out. The thin 205mm front and rear tires dont help the situation either. The car is pretty twitchy, but it is manageable by any decent driver.

Performance and Sportiness
|4/10|
With a 6.1 liter V8, and a small body, you would expect great performance, but all we found was painfully below average performance. With a 0-60 time of 7.1 seconds and a ¼ mile time of 15.54 seconds, V6 family cars from today and 10 years ago would simply put car lengths on you. Gearing is also poor, first gear and second gear are too long. The car also has an open differential, one wheeler peelers will happen. Modern sports cars like the MX5 with less horsepower get better 0-60 times and ¼ mile times. There are alot of causes for this, many of which are just odd design choices.

The car weighs almost 3100 pounds, hundreds of pounds heavier than some of its rivals. Weight savings were not even though of here, the car uses all steel construction. Aluminum, though more expensive, would drop hundreds of pounds.
We were pretty happy when we first seen this car, a 6.1 liter V8 in such a small car should be great fun. We were let down again, this engine feels like it was pulled out of a 90s truck. To be fair, power was strong early, but the engine has a low 4500rpm redline and only makes 209 horsepower. This engine is just not acceptable in a 2015 sports car, it simply does not like to rev nor does it make an exciting amount of power. We would call it a boat anchor at best.

It even gets worse when you try to stop after you get bored waiting for the quarter mile to pass. Utilizing front and rear drum brakes, yes drums on all 4 corners in 2015, we get an abysmal stopping distance of 150 feet. This would be a good number for a modern truck, let alone a sporty coupe. Pedal feel is nonexistent, your foot just goes to the floor while you recite bible verses hoping the car stops before you start your offroading adventure. Disc brakes are needed.

The car also had mild understeer, with oversteer at very low speeds then sudden understeer just above 40mph, but steering feel was excellent. We would call that acceptable.

Handling
|7/10|
The car does much better in this category. Despite the weight and lack of power the car done well in corners. Understeer did occur, but any experienced driver could use the nice torque of the engine to persuade the rear end to rotate around corners. The car communicates well to the driver while on the track.The car uses very advanced active suspension which allows it to be a fairly predictable car. With that said, an inexperienced driver should expect to spin out in corners often. The car got a good 1g at 20 meters on our skidpad.

Comfort
|5/10|
Nothing special to really say here. You get standard adjustable seats, heavy use of hard plastic throughout the car with cheap cloth inserts and headliner. The seats are ok, but are still just cheap cloth and vinyl. The ride was also very lumpy, if you hit a bump, your bum will feel it.

Interior Quality
|5/10|
The car comes with an ok 4 speaker stereo system. Once, again cheap hard plastics found its way there too, along with the rest of the car. What do you expect at this price point

Safety
|7/10|
The car does well in this category too, thanks to its heavy and strong steel construction. The car also comes with the expected standard safety equipment such as 4 airbags.

Cost
|8/10|
Despite all of the downfalls of the car, maybe you could ignore some of it when you walk onto a lot and see the price. For around 22000 dollars you could have a small rwd car with a large V8. This car could have alot of potential for the astute modder this price.

Reliability
|8/10|
The car did very well here for some pretty simple reasons. The car almost has no electronics that can fail. It uses simple steel construction with a very low revving V8 and uses a simple 5 speed manual transmission.

Aesthetics
|No Score for this|
Overall, we liked the cars simple design. A 90s round body with the front featuring a rather sad looking grille and vent arrangement. With the back featuring twin exhaust on each corner and a flat 90s aggressive looking rear. With nice 6 spoke rims to finish the car off.

Overall
|5/10|
We cant recommend this car as it sits. We believe you can get a much better car for not much more money. The V8 in a small car is just not enough to make us want this car. Simple improvements could be made across the board to vastly increase the cars scoring in our test. The car simply does not do anything exceptional well, its either average or below average in most categories.

(wtf is up with this formatting)

I think my first question is a) if you wanted cheap miata competitor, what’s up with that 6.1L V8 lol. That’s ludicrous and completely ruining the weight distribution. Second, why DAOHC? In 2015 you would have hopefully switched to SOHC or even DOHC (though that’s heavy). The extra friction and reduced efficiency of the other system is robbing you of performance potential!

Try and put it in context of the rest of your fictional company. If your engineering still relies on DAOHC and drim brakes in 2015, one would be asking some serious questions.

To be fair the weight distribution is not that bad at all, if i remember right it was 55/45.

Also, im out of cars to review, no reviews will be posted until i get some submitted, obviously. Still accepting cars for steam stable build only.

Want me to send in one of my cars? :slight_smile: