Lel i already completely forgot about this
Exactly as I had been expecting. Sometimes the old-school approach to a driverâs car (big NA engine, manual gearbox) is just as exciting as (if not more than) the newfangled turbo auto-only stuff.
1 Like
Round 6: light mid-engine sport
There were a lot of mid-engined entries, which is great because there was a strong pitch towards this market which barely exists in real life. I had to arbitrarily divide the entries into two classes as there was a large range of foci and it was hard to assess them all on one platform. In the end I decided the strongest correlation was between mass and outright engine performance, so Iâve basically drawn a line at 1300kg. Consider the following excerpt from the car list, arranged by track lap time, and you can see it kind of works:
@squidhead @phale @Rk38 @Fayeding_Spray @abg7 @Nomade0013
2016 Kraft Haus Technik Augusta SL
2017 Adenine Misty
2016 GBF 1800 Exsilio Turbo
2018 Hodan Rizun Pre-Production
2017 Albury Motors CMS 20T
2016 Gamma Surge S3
In this round, the graphs go quite awry. As you can see thereâs a huge hit to the âdailyâ stat nearly across the board. Why is this? Itâs mainly because of the use of the small mid-engined 2.3m WB body i.e.
It has an abysmally low practicality score, which isnât entirely unwarranted but did seem a bit disproportionate even compared to other bodies, hence there are a lot of cars here with zero practicality. I think itâs to do with the lower than average ride height but in particular the lack of cargo space, which, given the body, is pretty realistic. The only car that wasnât affected in this set was phaleâs Adenine, and thatâs because he used a different body and also because heâs probably the most proficient min-maxxer Automation has ever seen. That is enough to explain the superior âdailyâ score, but thereâs more to it than this: it also has the biggest NA engine in the most cost-effective format (for NA), the highest power to weight ratio, even sized tyres (are you mad) for massively reduced material costs due to not having to produce 2 sets of wheels, and a perfectly balanced suspension setup that maximises cornering without compromising drivability or comfort. Consider it this setâs outlier.
There are essentially two âstripped bare super rawâ budget cars here: the KHT and the Hodan. The KHT is high power, and the Hodan is low power. The KHT was submitted with a glitchy sway bar setup, which made the handling quite funny, otherwise it would probably have been a bit faster and a lot less unpleasant to drive still, which would also have increased its overall performance on this metric by a fair margin. This aside it is absolutely true to form as a budget weapon. The Hodan, on the other hand, goes for maximum lightness. Itâs rough as guts with a stretched i3, itâs down on power and itâs not actually any cheaper to build than the KHT despite looking like it should (hidden costs in the tech sliders and some of the material selection most likely), but it does combine the best of useable power and intense experience and is more likely to be drivable at the limit with more satisfaction to more drivers.
This leaves a slightly eclectic bunch: The GBF, the Albury Motors, and the Gamma. All with sport interior, achieving similar comfort levels. The GBF Exsilio is immediately notable for two things: one is a slightly dodgy safety score, which does mean itâs lighter than its competitors (despite having ten speakers!), and also curiously wide rear tyres. I donât think anything in real life that uses 335 rear wheels these days has less than 700hp. This has 268. Does give it heaps of grip, though. Call it the weird one in the family.
I remember calling the Albury Motors CMS 20T a bit of a mismatch: creature comforts offset by harsh boost. Pliant ride, but scary oversteer characteristics. Geared towards budget but significantly more expensive while achieving less than its competitors. Half a dozen of one six of the other. It could do with a touch of optimisation before seeing what it could really do. The same applies to the Gamma Surge: it has almost exactly the same problems except with thinner wheels, less power and less holes in the budget. The active wing is probably not a useful feature in this model. The comparatively poor âsportâ stat is due to the oversteer characteristic killing the low speed cornering.
In short in this class I daresay that some of these models have more potential that could be squeezed out of them. On a separate note if they still exist in UE4, theyâd all be expected to face some stiff competition from Armadaâs latest project from 2018 in the form of the Ultima SuperliteâŚ
9 Likes
Haha loving this review! UE4 does seem to be a lot harder to min-max with the new suspension and steering evaluations. Itâs pretty much impossible to do non-staggered tires on a MR without some pretty extreme camber and suspension settings, for instance.
1 Like
Fair enough. But then again, in the Kee era, there werenât any oversteer warnings. Iâve gotten better at tuning MR cars since then in that regard.
Nah there were no oversteer warnings, just the fact the yellow line on the steering graph would point firmly upwards 
@phale it took me a while to get used to as well. Even with FR format cars I find myself using ridiculous negative camber on the rear wheels when Iâm not sure I should have toâŚ
1 Like
Round 7: (not-so-light) mid-engine sport
Due to a last-minute reshuffle of the entries, both of my MR cars ended up in this lot. Also that entry from that asshole Iâm not tagging ended up in this lot too. I kept it for data calibration but since it was never intended to be more than a stats exercise I wonât be commenting beyond that.
2017 GBF-GG Bellua SR8e Strada
2017 Scarab Ceres SR
2016 Revera XR 377
2016 Matteo Miglia Legatus Turismo
2017 GreenMoonCheese?
When it comes to sporting focus thereâs a reason that mid-engined cars apparently rule the roost: a combination of prestige, but also the layout being advantageous for dynamics (but also nearly impossible to recover if losing control). With the increasing capability of modern cars, this has been somewhat mitigated by a migration to AWD systems, though most of the entries here eschewed such. The chief disadvantage of mid-engined cars: theyâre highly impractical, hence the market is somewhat rarefied.
This is obviously reflected in the generally low daily scores, which neatly follows an inverse correlation with the relative performance of each vehicle across the board, except for the âsportinessâ score because the Bellua was literally tuned with ecoboost due to the sheer massiveness of the block, whereas the Scarab and Revera had pretty peaky turbo setups. The main difference between the Scarab and the Revera was that this trim of the XR was premium and pitched at a higher market whereas the Ceres SR kept things standard, hence the difference in the value scores.
Interestingly the GBF-GG, Scarab and Revera shared a very similar focus when it came to overall high performance. In this guise the Bellua just happens to be the most extreme example, but supposing that the Scarab and the Revera are both conceptually and commercially viable, then perhaps all the mystery would be solved by emulating their business model. Whatever that is. Somebody pointed out to me that really it would make more sense if I had priced the Bellua like an early Koenigsegg, i.e. probably in the realm of a couple hundred grand. In real life I should. But sandbox doesnât really work like that. Guess weâll have to wait for campaign mode to see what would really happen.
The MM occupies a bit of a lonely spot. Pitched as the premium trim of a cheaper, perkier kind of car (in a less pronounced example of padding than Ornateâs Criceto), itâs clearly more refined but also decided not to go fully accessible in retaining the old MR format. For some reason despite the relatively plush interior itâs still really cheap to build, probably due to its simplistic philosophy. Comfort score is down on the Revera because it was geared to be as dynamically engaging as possible to make up for the power shortcomings, unlike the final entry that used much higher profile tyres, softer suspension and AWD to achieve all around stats, which is why the graph resembles that of one of the tourers more than anything else.
7 Likes
Round 8: but is it legal!? (tuned/modified/one-off)
@one85db @koolkei @AirJordan @conan @NormanVauxhall
These were the cars that were either highly modified variants of street legal counterparts, simply impossible to put on the road without a special permit, or never intended for volume production in the first place, like restomods, race cars and other weird hybrids. Some of them were outliers by virtue of not looking like theyâd work on paper and then falling in some asymptotic region on the Automation calculator, hence they literally go off the charts or theyâd skew my entire data-set.
2016 OMG RM5
2017 Maesima MRZ-3 ST-Z KSR
2017 Smooth Basking
2018 FRE Feroce S4
2016 Znopresk Zeta ZRP
Despite appearances, thereâs only one thing that really tie all these cars together performance wise: theyâre all pretty hard to live with. Thatâs either because theyâre all crazy powerful and you canât actually drive them normally at low speeds, or because theyâve been stripped out and sitting in them is like being stabbed in the leg, or both.
The OMG RM5 was almost completely min-maxed for Automatio-matic lap time and was therefore the only car in the comparison to have a faster track time than the Bellua SR8e (if only barely). For all other intents and purposes the only reason it got a greater than 0 comfort score was because it was AWD and has lots of room. In UE4 it would probably score -30 or so, just for reference. It also had a completely undrivable firmly oversteery characteristic that no human would actually feel comfortable handling above 60km/h, but the Automation driver is made of math, so it did the job. There is zero way a car like this would exist in real life and work.
The Maesima, Smooth and FRE are all FR cars but with very different philosophies. One is the angry cousin on steroids (as I said before) of the other MRZ-3 that I also reviewed. With by far the most turbo power in the comparison (903bhp), it was actually a drift missile, and about as easy to drive in a straight line. This showed in its superb track time (where putting power down is a pretty forgiving affair), and its fairly abysmal touge time, because all it was doing was burnouts.
The Smooth Basking on the other hand was a finely honed lean, mean vintage machine which made the most of its grip. Incidentally it was also by a fair margin the most expensive to build, which suits its nature as a one-off hand-crafted restomod⌠but also makes meaningful comparison limited.
The FRE Feroce S4 appeared to be race-tuned for a displacement limited series of some sort. The main driver of its skewed scores (low drivability and comfort in particular) was its massive boost to push out well in excess of 200hp/L. None of the other cars had subjected themselves to the same limitations, therefore, it appeared to be in a class of its own.
Finally, itâs not really certain that the Znopresk Zeta ZRP should have been sent to this class, but in terms of its origins this was indeed a skunkworks tuned version. Itâs just that it was done in a way that it is still eminently streetable if not exactly an ideal pleasant city runabout. Certainly itâs the best balanced of this lot, also meaning slowest, but considering the company itâs keeping. Perhaps itâs more meaningful to compare it to its neighbours on the lap charts:
In short, a high-performance MR supercar, a tuned race car (I think), a full-fat muscle car, and a hardcore track focused light MR sports car. And that was the track time: consider that on the back road it was mostly matched with the Revera and the Scarab. And itâs running 235 tyres all around, as opposed to the 285-295 and more from its performance competitors. Thatâs magical hero AWD power for you.
Round 9: offroaders
2017 Dynamite Motors GX-4 R
2017 DMA O117 Limited
The cars were too different, so the graphical comparison breaks down here. For one thing, the GX-4 R was mind-boggling: stupid amounts of power and top speed but ridiculously heavy with almost zero suspension travel. It kind of reminded me of a fatass version of Tajimaâs Pikes Peak Escudo, except obviously very different. It actually more reminds me of the kind of awful things you could do to the Escudo in Gran Turismo 2 i.e. whack racing slicks on it and give it an ultra low downforce tune and pop a wheelie around the High Speed Ring at 310mph 
If it were much much lighter Iâd be tempted to see how it fared up the original Pikes Peak, in fact.
The DMA was a proper offroader through and through. Ill suited to road racing, it snatched the wooden spoon away from the Baltazar. Iâm sure it would excel in an offroad challenge. Send it to Dakar or the Baja, and it might be a proper test. In fact if it were remade in UE4 Iâd also like to test it in Beam.
6 Likes
Final Round: the surprise package
Really this is just an entry of one but itâs a special one. Coming right up: @TheElt
2017 BM Spaciex R
This graph tells very little. The brief was about making an affordable performance vehicle, so all the metrics are set around how pleasant it is to drive, and how fast you can get. The closest we got to high practicality were the 4 seater tourers and the hot hatches. But what if you have more domestic needs than that? Thatâs not on this graph. Because for the most part in real life, âperformanceâ and âfamily valuesâ donât seem to really mesh all that well together. So when Elt submits a performance mini-van, I canât classify it because the market doesnât exist IRL. People just scratch their heads and go âbut whyâ?
I was mulling this over for a while, wondering what the significance was, when I had a sudden epiphany. The problem here is the historical sway of the patriarchy.
Yes, you read right. The patriarchy.
Performance car markets are strongly geared towards men. The reason thereâs so many ripples being generated and thereâs such controversy about women in motorsport is because itâs unusual. Because historically speaking, it was men who drove the cars. For several years it was believed that women shouldnât be allowed to drive because it was too risky and they lacked the physical constitution for it (not least because no power steering). For several decades after that cars âfor womenâ were akin to second-class citizens. This didnât really change until Honda specifically marketed the Civic to challenge that trend (much to their benefit). Now, if that held true for regular cars, can you imagine what it was like for motorsports and performance cars.
At this point I expect people to say âhey Strop youâre getting this ass-backwards. A minivan with a V8 isnât anything like a Civic.â Youâre right. But that was then, and this is now. Now is the time of the strong independent woman who donât need no man, right? But thereâs a flip side! The whole issue isnât just about women and their role. Itâs about the fact that we had rigidly gendered roles for both men and women, where the women did all the boring housewifely stuff and the men did all the working and playing. That means that itâs the women who buy the minivans, and force the husbands to drive them. Same with all the shitty SUVs and crossovers being snapped up by a whole bunch of sheeple who donât know any better. And what I find even more interesting is that certain SUVs have found traction with the âmaleâ market and they get the HEMI treatment. But not minivans. Minivans are too overtly domestic for desperate penis compensation.
You canât break one gender out of their predefined role if you donât open it up to all parties. This is why you canât have a fair parental leave scheme by simply extending maternity leave and not having the same option available for paternity leave: letting a mother take 1 year and the father just 2 weeks ensures that itâs the mother who is still forced into the predominantly domestic role which reinforces the cultural belief in corporations and industries that itâs the woman who should be career limited for having kids. And thatâs whatâs ass-backwards.
Therefore, this V8 minivan is actually just the ticket to provoke a cultural reexamination of how our driving habits reflect the gender biases of yesteryear. Give the minivan great driving dynamics and lots more grunt, and you have a vehicle ready for a feminist future where men play an active and equal domestic role to support their career partner.
So, really, congratulations to Elt for coming up with the most feminist friendly entry in the whole series. I didnât see it coming, and I sure as hell bet @TheElt didnât see that one coming either. As heâd probably be telling me right now: âGee strop, this is the 21st Century, get with the times.â
In case I canât be any more clear about this, @TheEltâs Spaciex actually proves that he is the real feminist here. In light of this perhaps he might want to reconsider his political affiliations.
( ͥ° ÍĘ ÍĄÂ°)
13 Likes
If you really wanted, I could try my hand at recreating the spirit of the Dynamite GX4-R in UE4, with some extra effort put toward lightening the car. Wouldnât look quite the same, but Iâm sure I can be just about as outlandish and wild. I canât test it in BeamNG, but I could send you the .car file with the same idea behind the car: Big engine, small car, AWD with some tilt toward it being off-road capable. Though it wonât end up the same, as I have new options in UE4 to work with, and as already mentioned, the plan to throw a big chunk of weight out of it.
do give it a shot. What I found from initial testing is that if the power is too far above the traction limits of the tyres it doesnât really help very much. Also having as much torque as possible in the mid-range is the way to go.
Currently Iâm doing the testing with a heavily modified Armada Ultima:
This oneâs running about 710hp and weighs about 1050kg, and, surprisingly, is quite easy to control on the dirt. But itâs not much faster than my 1250kg lifted Dakar truck with barely 330hp from a NA 5L pushrod V8 (sounds glorious) because itâs all in the tyre traction.
5 Likes
hmmm okay. iâm gonna go try spicing this up then.
soooo gonna give it a run in BNG now.
itâs⌠a great offroader⌠a decent rallyerâŚ
it can hold a drift, control it and stop it rather amazingly
DL
Grehet - Grand OR PikesPeak.car (37.1 KB)
3 Likes
Its close, I had to make some changes due to differences in calculations, it wound up with less horsepower, a bit heavier, and 30s slower on green hell. I think I got it all within the original rules.
O 117 - Limited.car (18.5 KB)
When taking it to the extremes off-road I drop the tire pressure to 10psi, on road I was playing with 25psi
2 Likes
The Green Hell calculations are not because of changes to the car so much as the track calculations changing massively. I think most of the tracks probably just need rewriting.
It seems beam doesnât support dis-connectable sway bars, you will have to go into the settings and remove them.
I will probably work on fine tuning it more over time.
The Final Word
We got a little distracted with the offroad testing there. But I will likely come back to that in a separate test because thereâs a Pikes Peak Gravel track that needs conquering.
The real world market is a fickle thing but the emerging trends for this decade are clear. Demands for everything are rising, requiring bigger packages and it puts the squeeze on the small and the traditional. The small cars in this shootout, at this budget level, struggled to compete with the bigger end of town in terms of the pure metrics. But the metrics are all about outright speed and performance, and what they lack in pace they should make up for in character. How large is the market for slow-fast character now, I wonder? (Not shrinking, at least thatâs for sure).
The other relatively disadvantaged market here is the muscle/pony. Theirs is also the place of the market thriving for want of traditional values with modern trimmings. This will be a comparatively controversial pronouncement, but as far as front-engined cars go, while FWD cars have a serious disadvantage in terms of launching and they may be criticised for having âless characterâ than their RWD counterparts, particularly in this day and age to write off the FWD versus the RWD all else being equal is naĂŻve (particularly as Colin Chapman would put it). Just because you canât do a Fujiwara with your perfectly touge balanced car doesnât mean you canât drive it damn fast. But, of course, the chief advantage of the FWD cars is that one can make them lighter and more cost-effectively, thereâs no denying that.
Either way, when it comes to road holding, itâs hard to go past the well sorted mid-engine. Given the focus of this shootout they had the advantage, with the obvious expense of practicality. In reality itâs not as if the actual costs to assemble one unit would be that much higher than for a similar front-engined car but the market is that much smaller that they need to be more rarefied, priced much higher.
In reality, then, the SR8e could market itself as a cut price Ferrari, but how many people would be in the position of being able to afford a car like that AND have the lifestyle to allow it, without wanting something much more? Being generally small volume production runs, mid-engined cars require a lot of pizzazz and fanfare to attract their clientele, which has been the Gryphon Gear business model by virtue of making the most extreme performance cars which in turn entice investment from shady Chinese and Russian oligarchs and Saudi oil barons. But having something that goes nearly as fast with none of the prestige? Thatâs definitely deep into the eccentric zone. Regular, sensible people with a regular, sensible people budget would probably be scared off. The budget enthusiasts would cock an eyebrow, and either go for the cheap small car with a lot of character (like the Nardella), the scary tuner car (like the Zeta ZRP) or the muscle car (like the Eagle) or even a touring car (like the Nimrod), and promptly do a burnout into the nearest crowd outside the Cars and Coffee (donât @ me you know it still happens regularly). Knowing this, Iâd be terrified to think what the person who would pick a Bellua over a Mustang-equivalent would do⌠launch it through an entire shopping mall??? Surely they wouldnât be able to afford to take it to the one place where it can truly show its colours: the track day.
Marketed as a kit car for proper speed freaks, perhaps, itâd work, but if that were the case, it should just dispense with any pretense that itâs liveable as a daily, because sadly, the people who could consider that a priority would be more likely to end up with the BM Spaciex. Without the V8.
A well tuned sporting people carrier, however⌠the big challenge would be the body rigidity and the manufacturing costs associated with it, but perhaps itâs worth a look, seeing as there are a lot of idiots who buy a crossover expecting it to be able to do everything when for the most part they canât do anything. Would it be possible to turn the budget soccer-mom family unit into something genuinely engaging? Would that ever be a marketing priority? Or is that to remain the domain of the sport wagon like the Sinatra?
There are no particular winners or losers in this challenge. Only good choices, weird choices, and surprises. Personally I think the small cars have more potential to eke out (particularly the small ones), kind of like how the 4C seemed like a superb idea but ended up dynamically dull and disappointing.
Recommendations
- Mid-engined cars shouldnât pretend to have anything to do with being practical or sensible. Either theyâre quirky, outrageous, or very very fast
- In the real world, the Bellua should be sold with a more hefty markup than whatâs proposed
- The small car is at a disadvantage. Keep small light and as far as possible donât weigh it down with amenities and fancy tech
- Try not to drive off-road cars on the road more than absolutely necessary
- We need a performance minivan revolution. Iâll see what I can do
11 Likes
Youâre calling to⌠Calvinator? 
Except actually doable sometime this century, perhaps. And actually good on the road. And without the airbags exploding every time you hit a bump.
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A performance minivan, you say? I have a few ideas that can fit that definition with a little tweakingâŚ
3 Likes
I see the shade here but the lesson I got from the Cric Metro was âModern safety regulations is the end of 2-seater coffinsâ