My opinion is that for now, there seems to be a few distinct ways to get there. Which way resonates with David the most is currently unknown, but these options are still open.
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Yeah, 48 sportiness is not the highest of any car here, but again I was under the impression that weāre supposed to build a luxurious GT Car, rather than a front-engined supercar. Thatās why I intentionally made the suspension slightly (not massively) softer than standard. I could have sharpened the suspension and gotten more sportiness out of it, but I wanted to find a balance between sportiness and comfort because I thought that mattered. I should have committed to performance and sportiness from what it seems.
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the highest sportiness Iāve seen was a full 32 points higher than yours. Luxury or no, that is clearly a problem
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Sure, I know I could have got more sportiness by going RWD instead of AWD, by sharpening the suspension, by making the engine smaller and rev higher (at least up to a point where it still meets the maximum loudness of 40 LOL), change gearing etc. But 80 sportiness, thatās supercar-like. Not quire race car like because you can go over 100 sportiness in this game and Iāve built cars like that, but 80 is definitely towards the more extreme end for a road car.
Iāll give you that, 80 is a very extreme value and the car that has it is either just crazy good or sacrificed a lot of sportiness to get there.
The guidelines were very clear, however: Sportiness is of highest importance and David was even stated to want something āthoroughly sportyā in the entry for driveability. Comfort, while it should be good, definitely doesnāt need to imitate a Rolls-Royce.
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The key difference between cars have 80 sportiness and yours is that they achieve such high sportiness while having competitive comfort and drivability while your entry have great comfort and drivability (I assume) but sacrificing sportiness by a HUGE MARGIN. Remember your car is competing with other entries, so a significant downside/weakness can easily cause a bin. To put it frankly, you car is simply outperformed by other entries. Also, Vero clearly mentioned that sportiness is one of the top priorities. So it is definitely not wise to disregard sportiness stat or making significant sacrifices.
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In light of this, I should have gone with my other test mule - a smaller, lighter, hand-built, normally aspirated, RWD, V8-powered two-seater that struck a more well-rounded balance between drivability, comfort and sportiness - because it would have been more likely to appeal equally to the heart and the head, considering the brief for this round. My actual submission sacrificed sportiness in favor of the other two attributes, and would therefore have struggled to trouble the finalists even with a normally aspirated engine.
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That is some fine animation right there. This conversation about performance/comfort actually reminds me of an old Top Gear.
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Thereās people at 80 sportiness? Oh boy, i hope their comfort is on the low end, or iām not making the next cut lol. Then again, i made the first cut with 53.6 sportiness on a 5m long boat of a GT, so maybe thatās not the only problem with TheTomās car.
That showās got the best feel-good moments. JC is one hell of a narrator
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Yeah, I see the problem nowā¦I was aiming for minimalist chicā¦but the chic fell off at the factory! 
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I wanted to go with a smaller, higher-revving engine, but there is a limit for the maximum engine loudness, which I donāt understand why thatās there or why itās so low. You know, I always try to imagine what real-world car would have a certain stat in Automation, e.g. what kind of real world car would have around 40 loudness in Automation, or what kind of real-world car would have 50 sportiness in Automation etc.
For 40 loudness, Iād imagine something like a modern Golf GTI (with its turbo engine, full set of mufflers and so on), so something slightly louder than normal but you knowā¦ not particularly loud. But yeah, thinking of it that way, all of the cars in the inspiration Iād put probably at anywhere between 55 sportiness (the Lexus) and around 75 sportiness (AMG GTR and Nissan GTR), so my car clearly fell short of that. 80 IMO would be something like a Porsche 911 GT3 or a McLaren 720S.
oof
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you did not have to go this hard tbh
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There were lots of high revving engines submitted that were well under the loudness requirement, some of which were revving higher than yours. 40 on paper seems low, but itās more than enough for a challenge like this, in my opinion. The problem with that specific stat is that itās hard to find what it directly compares to in real life.
As for your design, it wasnāt just the lights. The entire front grille/vent setup was very large and too rounded off, which dated your car. The upper grille between the lights and the large wing didnāt help either.
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thank you for the explanation and for the objective response. I know I made some bad decisions in hindsight, and Iāll try to do better next time.
edit: just stiffening the dampers, lowering the car a bit and removing the rear seats brought the car up from 48 to 57 sportiness. Yes I know thereās still lots of potential to go higher but I think 57 could be considered adequate. In hindsight, I shouldnāt have put rear seats in the car to begin with but what threw me off was Automationās market demographics according to which a GT has to have 4 seats, even though the rules said we only need 2. Removing the rear seats also made the car 200kg lighter so now it does 0-100km/h in 3.0 seconds rather than 3.3, without any change to the engine or gear ratios.
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I have had this same concern with Automation loudness units. For clarity, Bel is a logarithmic unit. What that means is 40Db is twice as loud as 30Db, and so on. Subjectively, 40 loudness units seems to be in the 80Db range (loud stock exhaust, service truck, lawn mower, etc) but 30 loudness units is not 1/2 (assuming loudness is Decibel-40), or 1/4 (assuming loudness is Decibel/2) the volume of 40 loudness units. It also does not seem to be a unit of SPL since that expression is affected by Hz and amplitude. Is there another sound pressure scale I donāt know about?
Theoretically, if we had a known reference point someone could make a linear conversion chart from loudness units to the Bel scale using a sound editing program, but that seems excessive for gaming purposes. It would be like calculating muzzle velocity in Halo (ok, I have done this When the game went to 60fps on PC it broke the ātickā system used in hit detection, and I was curious). Two or more data points may reveal a bell curve, if applicable.
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48 sportiness!? I have 36.4, which is possibly the lowest out of everyone.
I just realized that it is possible, with the right combination of parts (using a standard intake and/or a regular 3-way catalytic converter helps).
I thought my entry was sporty enough (it managed 54 sportiness), but recently I realized that I could have gotten 60 or more from the smaller test mule I had made previously. However, I had to fit a dual-clutch transmission to get that figure, thereby sacrificing some comfort and drivability for sportiness, but it would easily have been worth it. Even so, the way it was set up left me with enough room in the budget to install a hand-made interior, which boosts your prestige and comfort scores to no end. I couldnāt do that with my actual entry, though.
Market competitiveness is not a factor in the scoring for this round, and besides, some of the cars listed as inspiration also have only two seats, which makes them feel more like actual sports cars, but even so, that doesnāt stop them from fulfilling the role of grand tourer.
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