1995 Scarab Nova GT X26
And the cars that got away
And damn you @strop for making me spend my free time building cars again 
2 Likes
La Mancha Motors "Rocinante"
1800 lbs, 210hp, awd. It gets lousy mileage, has a low top speed, and has no radio. It’s pretty quick to 100, though, and corners well. $9998 @0%.
2 Likes
Attention
The entries will close in about 27 hours. I now have imported entries from the following:
Aaron.W
AirJordan
brunator
Centurion_23
conan
DoctorNarfy
ELBruno
GassTiresandOil
gridghost
Jaimz
JANXOL
JohnWaldock
Lava_Cake
Lordred
Mad_Cat
Madrias
MAX_POWER
Mikonp7
NeO
NiuYorqCiti
Obfuscious
PugeHenis
racer126
SideswipeBL
Traviq_125
Xepy
yurimacs
@Lordred and @Mikonp7 I’m still waiting on your retunes, though, please get them in before new stable drops and I lose everything not already in Beam!
Edit: I’m also fairly sure that every single entry has a manual transmission, which is great. But there’s no sin in using other types… did anybody enter using a sequential? I don’t want to be driving it all wrong with the stick instead of the flappy paddles!
11 Likes
G&W are drawing inspiration from nature, in the form of the limited edition 1985 Stamford “Steatoda”. The Steatoda Grossa, more commonly called the False Black Widow, is marked similarly to spiders in the genus Latrodectus. As a performance trim, it packs a bit more punch: 10% more power, a down-force generating rear wing, and 3 paint schemes reminiscent of its namesake, you’re sure to convince a few challengers to back down.
If you upset someone driving one of these, you may experience fever, sweating, or discomfort… you won’t need see a doctor… just go and get one of your own.
1 Like
Nohda Super Strato Turbo, a pocket rocket.
- Rear Engine
- RWD
- Turbocharged
- 80s
- Stupid?
19 Likes
Ok I’m shutting entries now. Everybody who said they’d submit appears to have done so. I’ll finalise things when I get home.
Note that we’re all about to lose our automation files anyway as stable is about to get merged. This will not affect the Beam segment of course but will limit our ability to draw upon the data from Automation.
Also note I will release some beam files of my own cars which are references for each format (except AWD). They will be geared towards the performance side of things but at least will give you some idea of how to optimise a car for driving fast but controllable.
9 Likes
well i can’t be arsed to go back to stable… so i’ll just put this BNG export file here…
https://www.mediafire.com/file/1sf37o31z046rg6/cool_k_grehet_reviva_si_europe_unres.zip/file
update : apparently i readied the post and forgot to click reply for the last 2 days
Unfortunately I can’t accept Beam export files because the Beta has a different balance to the stable. Though ofc I guess I could run it in tandem but it won’t necessarily be included in the dataset…
Post Entry Phase Fun Facts 1
(valid) Entries: 31
FF: 8
FR: 10
F-AWD: 6
MR: 4
RR: 3
I’m kind of sad that there was no R-AWD or M-AWD car, but M-AWD isn’t cheap and R-AWD is pretty radical.
Median year: 1992
Lowest price: 7717
Median price: 9988
Highest price: 11993
Average price: 9986
2 seats: 15
4 seats: 11
2 + 2: 4
2 + 3: 1
Lowest comfort: 0.2
Median comfort: 6.3
Highest comfort: 16.6
Average comfort: 7.4
Best fuel economy: 5.7L/100km
Median fuel economy: 10L/100km
Worst fuel economy: 13.9L/100km
Average fuel economy: 10.1L/100km
Lowest power: 114.9hp
Median power: 173.1hp
Highest power: 313.5hp
Average power: 190.8hp
Lightest: 656kg
Middleweight: 995.4kg
BEEG CHONK: 1289.9kg
Average weight: 1016.7kg
Lowest power:weight: 133.6 hp:ton that’s right, Mad_Cat, it’s not yours!
Median power:weight: 182 hp:ton
Highest power:weight: 283.3 hp:ton
Average power:weight: 187.3 hp:ton
Automation Test Track (in Automation)
Fastest time: 2:18.26
Median time: 2:24.96
Slowest time: 2:35.74
Average time: 2:25.75
And for a surprise, I’m going to reveal the Hirochi Short flying hotlap time stats!
Fastest time: 1:06.784
Median time: 1:09.575
Slowest time: 1:14.194
Average time: 1:09.66
This is to say, there was actually a relatively even distribution of stats throughout the entire challenge across the board. I can also reveal to you that the AWD cars were obviously by and large the fastest in this test, as well as more expensive in general… though that doesn’t keep a well-tuned car of another format from blow them off the track or everywhere else for that matter.
And on that note, tomorrow, I will be posting my reference cars so you can take a look at them and see how I tuned things. I have one for each format represented except AWD (because AWD is hard to screw up). Suffice to say while I tuned each to be representative of their respective class, they’re all tuned to go pretty quickly but more to the point, handle nicely on the limit if you have a steering wheel. Should enough people want the files and can’t export because they updated to LCv3 and the exporter died, I can upload the Beam zip files too.
18 Likes
yay,mine is the one with highest hp per ton, what a beast XD
I made one M-AWD to fit the rules but thought it was to much of a cheatcar 
Big engine in big car + AWD = BEEG CHONK… seems fitting, now i know what to call it 
i think that comfort is my plushboi
Lightest!
But not vest power to weight, supprising.
I would have taken it, damnit. I think I made one of my reference cars too OP so as a result your car is still slower around most of the tracks than something that’s down on it by about 125hp 
It seems that my car is just nearly a median car, only edging a bit on the price sector. I hope all goes well on the driving dynamics…
Are sports cars suppose to feel like nails are biting your ass? And I was worried that I should’ve tuned my car for 20 comfort(!?). Anyway, Good feeling to be the top of two categories and average in the rest.
It depends on the era. These days there’s a certain market pressure that sports cars are now forced to be thing that are capable of massaging your ass while you drive balls to the wall. Some would say this is rubbish. This is why I picked the years 1980-2000, because those were times well before this era.
My interpretation of the comfort score was to say that “if the score was above 0, somebody with enough dedication could tolerate driving it daily”. Of course, the closer that score is to 0, the more they’d complain about it. The one driver I mention who will need to drive the car they get as a daily also wants something sporty and will sacrifice to a point, hence the above criteria. But of course if you can get a fun and engaging car that’s fast with more than that, well… that would be better wouldn’t it!
Speaking of which, @Ornate, you may think your car has a superior comfort rating, but some choices that “improve comfort and economy” on the Automation metric just simply don’t work when it comes to the business of actually driving a car. I’m currently sifting through a list of choice insults for the way your car drives. You have been warned.
Post Entry Phase Fun Facts 2
Not really so much a fun facts thing but I called the first post 1, so I’m obliged to keep going…
This is the post where I show you my reference cars. They’re obviously not part of the main data set, and a good thing too since I didn’t change anything from their original lore-friendly configuration and they still pretty much wrecked the entire field, particularly if you break the field into their respective drivetrain classes 
This is probably more to do with the fact that I tend to disregard comfort and tune cars so they can be pushed 100% and corner far better than they have any right to.
1983 Matteo Miglia Legatus
Matteo Miglia’s debut car, when he broke away from the Znopresk umbrella, then had to come back begging for them to let him borrow their new engine from the upcoming Zest!. In every way a classic MR sports car, then boosted. It’s meant to be a sharp experience. Does it stack up?
Cost: 9231
Format: MR
Seats: 2
Comfort: 4.2
Fuel Economy: 13.1L/100km
Power: 197.3hp
Weight: 884.6kg
Power:weight ratio: 223hp:ton
ATT time (Automation): 2:20.73
strop’s Hirochi Short time: 1:07.07
MM Legatus - Beam Edition.car (68.6 KB)
1985 Polski Bomba Street
I have no lore car that fits, so I went for a real life inspiration. A more realistic version of the “vehicle” I entered for Puge’s “make a track car as fast as possible for a listed cost of 10k” challenge that one just flagrantly abused the limits of the game and ended up with 850hp:ton and did Hirochi Short in 52 seconds. It was designed to be a reference point for what kind of suspension tuning is required to make a trackable tuned RR car with a very short wheelbase work (hint: the suspension is pretty stiff because having a long response delay when the car is pretty much a short-stack ass-heavy pendulum is a deadly combination to drive fast). This has a lot of power to the very light weight, and I expect with a bit of mastery it should perform almost as well as the Legatus.
Cost: 8279
Format: RR
Seats: 2
Comfort: 2.8
Fuel Economy: 8.6L/100km
Power: 151.2hp
Weight: 615.3kg by far and away lighter than any other entry
Power:weight ratio: 245.7hp:ton
ATT time (Automation): 2:21.16
strop’s Hirochi Short time: 1:07.283
Polski Bomba - Street.car (23.8 KB)
1991 Armada Motors Fore Gen.II Eagle GTi
The much acclaimed 2nd generation hot hatch, which became emblematic of the old Armada philosophy of light and punchy in a modern, accessible guise. This thing’s been around on the forums since 2015 where it’s been flying the flag of squeezing out physics defying feats on Macpherson struts and Torsion Beam. I’m really pleased with how this turned out, because this car genuinely rewards mastery of the FWD car, and encourage you to actually try it in Beam.
Cost: 9352
Format: FF
Seats: 4
Comfort: 6.2
Fuel Economy: 7.5L/100km
Power: 182.1hp
Weight: 908.6kg the 5 door version is about 50kg heavier
Power:weight ratio: 200.4hp:ton pretty ludicrous for a '91 hot hatch come to think of it
ATT time (Automation): 2:22.25 at least, that’s what the game thinks…
strop’s Hirochi Short time: 1:05.946 zero bullshit, and if you think it’s fast here just wait for the touge
AM Fore Gen II - Eagle GTi.car (23.3 KB)
1995 Matteo Miglia Excelsior Rosso Corsa
The budget 4 seater coupe in MM form. Also originally appeared on the forums in 2015 in pretty much the same format with almost the same specs. Not designed to compete with the big boys, but with plenty of spark for the driver, at least in theory.
Cost: 10758
Format: FR
Seats: 4
Comfort: 15.5
Fuel Economy: 10.3L/100km
Power: 202.1hp
Weight: 1194.7kg
Power:weight ratio: 169.2hp:ton
ATT time (Automation): 2:21.16
strop’s Hirochi Short time: 1:07.782 not bad for having the big thicc and down on power right?
MM Excelsior - Rosso Corsa Beam.car (41.5 KB)
If the files don’t import or export properly, I’ll put the Beam files up later.
11 Likes
For my selfcrit session on the car, @strop. It is “comfy” because it is very quiet and the engine is very smooth that combined being mounted transverse means that there is more cabin space. At least I’ll learn how atrocious the cars I make are in Beam
Don’t get me wrong the Automation metric is an imperfect measure, seeing as it’s one overall number. It’s also changed, such that back in the Kee engine your car would be scoring closer to 25, if I recall correctly.
I have no doubt your car will ride over bumps without so much as a rattle, has A/C and nice seats, plenty of room and also has handling that isn’t too sharp or twitchy. All great things which either have nothing to do with or get in the way of driving fast and sporty 
And if you’d read the brief you would know what I was actually looking for so… anyway yes, there’ll be plenty to say in the Beam test and it’ll all form part of a larger body of advice.
Tomorrow I’ll start revealing the cars by class, starting from most common to least. At first, the only things I will reveal are the information that I’ve given with my reference cars. Over the next couple weeks I will be able to fill you in on the other stages of the test, after which I will decide my five favourite cars (not necessarily fastest, but favourite) to make a detailed video review. The rest will get a one minute vignette of what I liked and what could be improved.
8 Likes
Okay here we go people. You’re going to start finding out where your cars stack up (on paper) compared to the rest. Remember, there are multiple metrics by which I measure each car and numbers on paper is only semi-relevant to one of them. Now is also a good time to remind everybody that I am not necessarily looking for the fastest car on every track. You’ll see a lot of graphs and charts as is my custom, trying to extract information about how effectively each car went about extracting the most out of what they had, according to cost, power, power to weight… and that’s mainly related to the criteria set about outright pace. There will also be detailed comments about the driving experience and how easy and fun (and their ratio) it was to get the most out of each. This is going to take some time. The whole aim of this is to explore how Automation translates across to Beam in the scope of this application.
So with that said, here is:
The Breakdown
As promised here’s the list of each car broken down by class, then in order of least recent to most recent. I don’t know if I’m going to hit some kind of limit in each post so I may be multiposting.
Also note, I’m literally going off the filenames so apologies if some of you specified model names that differ from the filenames, because most of you didn’t.
FR
Some say these are the true driver’s car. I would say they’re wankers entitled to their opinions. Regardless, judging by the number of entries people were more than willing to buy in. A properly nice FR sports car is difficult to tune. They need to be able to point nicely despite having the big lump of engine up front. They need to be responsive to throttle and the rear should shift around but not too much. There’s definitely such a thing as too much power… so who here hit the right balance?
JANXOL – 1982 Cyanide Motors 1982 Terrier - S1
I thought this was another hot hatch until I realised it was FR. That’s a bit rarer. It probably loses a bit on the comfort because of the rear seats, because it’s surprisingly well appointed. Could also be because it’s actually really small so it’s probably cramped in there. The suspension isn’t excessively tuned but it’s probably going to have a bit of play in it under throttle. I’m not expecting fast, but at least decent handling.
Cost: 9984
Format: FR
Seats: 2+2
Comfort: 2.9
Fuel Economy: 12.9L/100km
Power: 150.2hp
Weight: 907.8kg
Power:weight ratio: 165.45hp:ton
ATT time (Automation): 2:29.52
stm316 – 1985 G&W Stamford 85
This car is kind of from 1985. I say kind of because all the years are kind of different. The chassis is from 76. The block is from 77. The internals are from 84 and the trim is 85. It also has some thick safety gear which makes it relatively heavy for the power, and a loose front suspension setup. I’m guessing it’s going to be relatively tame, but also not particularly quick.
Cost: 10480
Format: FR
Seats: 2
Comfort: 15.4
Fuel Economy: 13.2L/100km
Power: 154.8hp
Weight: 1112.5kg
Power:weight ratio: 139.15hp:ton
ATT time (Automation): 2:32.31
NiuYorqCiti – 1989 Ponni Pistero - RS
Big chunky V6 with plenty of power for 1989. Space age bubble body departing from the 80s ahead of time, and performance to match. I’m a bit perplexed by the analog focus and sharp, almost oversteer handling characteristic but the use of Medium Compound. Also it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a bottom out penalty in Automation. I wonder if that’ll mean anything in Beam.
Cost: 10173
Format: FR
Seats: 2+2
Comfort: 7
Fuel Economy: 10L/100km
Power: 225.9hp
Weight: 995.4kg
Power:weight ratio: 226.94hp:ton class leading… on medium tyres… NANI!?
ATT time (Automation): 2:25.97
SideswipeBL – 1992 Toreer Sommet 250S
Since I used this body I quite forgot that it supports both front and mid engine placements so I got a shock. I shouldn’t have. The engine is all cast iron so it really puts a lot of weight on the front wheels and I’m fully expecting the rear to get flighty. Furthermore the suspension was tuned by hitting the “sport” preset, so the dampers are quite stiff. I suspect the cobblestones in Italy will give it grief…
Cost: 8629
Format: FR
Seats: 2
Comfort: 5.6
Fuel Economy: 10L/100km
Power: 163.8hp
Weight: 1089.2kg
Power:weight ratio: 150.39hp:ton
ATT time (Automation): 2:29.33
racer126 – 1994 Geschenk Gato
The only other car in the same body and similar age to the MM Excelsior. Lighter, and less powerful. The spring rates are quite high but the sway bars relatively gentle, which will make for interesting handling, as will the complete lack of ABS with plenty of locking power up front. I’ll be careful with this one.
Cost: 9928
Format: FR
Seats: 2+3 winner of the People Carrier award
Comfort: 4
Fuel Economy: 9.5L/100km
Power: 180.5hp
Weight: 1103.7kg
Power:weight ratio: 163.54hp:ton
ATT time (Automation): 2:28.56
Jaimz – 1995 FM Cerberus Track
This is a low rider! Any lower and I think I’ll lose the bumpers over a bump. It slots in on the lighter end compared to many of the other FR cars in the mix, but for the suspension that might as well just be a rock. That’s the part that’s slightly concerning to me: I’m not sure it’ll even get over the cobblestones in Italy.
Cost: 9413
Format: FR
Seats: 2
Comfort: 5.3 pretty impressive considering just how shitty the ride is going to be
Fuel Economy: 10.8L/100km
Power: 171.5hp
Weight: 977kg
Power:weight ratio: 175.54hp:ton
ATT time (Automation): 2:24.66
JohnWaldock – 1995 JHW Lynx S5
This one’s long and swoopy and looks like it means business. That is until I looked at the tyres, which are medium compound. And the gearing, which is ultra long for overdrive. No matter, it’s still light and rear wheel drive and the lovely sounding i5 engine revs high. It might possibly be easier to drive than the other FR cars here.
Cost: 9989
Format: FR
Seats: 2
Comfort: 16.2
Fuel Economy: 8.2L/100km
Power: 186hp
Weight: 976kg
Power:weight ratio: 190.57hp:ton on medium grade tyres, this is going to be “fun”
ATT time (Automation): 2:26
yurimacs – 1997 Bradford Vector R
I got sent this file twice and between then it had a rather perplexing transformation. At first it was an FTO with granite dampers and a torsion beam rear. Now it’s an FD3S with a Quattro engine except without most of the power. But also the granite hard dampers. And twice as much fart cannon. It could probably do with some optimisation.
Cost: 9894
Format: FR
Seats: 2
Comfort: 0.7 This is pretty much all down to the dampers
Fuel Economy: 8.7L/100km
Power: 195.2hp
Weight: 1072.6kg
Power:weight ratio: 181.99hp:ton
ATT time (Automation): 2:24.13
Mad_Cat – 1998 Petrov Ferro Coupe
Huh, this is like someone snuck lettuce in mayo into the hot wings. It’s a bit peppier than my ecobox Civic but has about the power to weight ratio of an AE86 Trueno and the handling of… well let’s just say it really didn’t need staggered tyres. Frankly I’m not expecting great lap times out of this one. It’d probably make the best daily if a couple of things were ironed out but it’s going to get slaughtered on the track.
Cost: 8419
Format: FR
Seats: 4
Comfort: 16
Fuel Economy: 10.6L/100km USSR engineering represent!
Power: 150.7hp
Weight: 1116.5kg
Power:weight ratio: 134.98hp:ton
ATT time (Automation): 2:34.94
MAX_POWER – 1998 Kettenblitz 950QD
What looks like a very reasonable sporty 2+2 proposition, almost like an 80s turbo RX-7 but in 1998. There are quite a few cars using this body and so the interesting comparison will be a matter of balance. I’m just getting promising vibes from this one, but how that translates to Beam is always the trick…
Cost: 9628
Format: FR
Seats: 2+2
Comfort: 5.7
Fuel Economy: 6.7L/100km best in class!
Power: 161.9hp
Weight: 973kg
Power:weight ratio: 166.39hp:ton
ATT time (Automation): 2:24.46
In a table, then:
and compared to my reference car:
(which had 4 standard seats and a radio w/ cassette deck, hence the extra expense and weight)
Something that you won’t be able to appreciate (that I should probably have put in but forgot) is the tyre compound, width and profile. They make a huge difference as to the handling and overall grip of a car. That said such will be plenty evident when it comes to the video reviews, so stay tuned.
22 Likes