Great to see all three of my entries qualify for the next stage with no penalty points - and with highly competitive (and in the case of my 2000s entry, class-leading) times in Automation to boot. This bodes well for the Beam testing to come later, but as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
This is a bit odd to me, especially considering that some of my favorite FR driver’s cars of the 1990s (FD RX-7, A80 Supra Turbo, Z32 300ZX, 968 Turbo S, Lotus Carlton, and Alpina B10 Bi-Turbo, among others) were turbocharged.
In fact, my submission for the 2000s was the second heaviest car (but on the other hand, the fastest in Automation testing) from that era to actually qualify for Beam testing.
The two oldest entries from me subscribed to that school of thought (by the standards of their respective eras), but the third one, not so much - in fact, it’s the lightest and least powerful of my three entries.
What I did with the '95 Thunderwolf after the deadline
As for the '95 Thunderwolf, I also cloned the original trim (or even the whole car) for use in a few other challenges - once each for PAIN, TTTT, and AGC30.
Last but not least, here’s what its interior (which I only added after the deadline for FM4 had passed) looks like:
And here are all three major variants of the '95 Thunderwolf together, from left to right: the TTTT version, the base car (from which the PAIN version was cloned - it’s now aesthetically identical, but retains both the stock FM4-friendly engine and the original chassis material of corrosion-resistant steel instead of glued aluminum), and the AGC30 version.
If the base Thunderwolf is the equivalent of a Standard class car in Ridge Racer V, then the TTTT trim would be akin to an Extra class version (faster and lighter), and the AGC30 trim would be reminiscent of an Oval class version (extreme top speed and acceleration, but with far more challenging handling).