I don’t know why but I also had hard $10k limit in my mind…hmmm… Anyway I hope my light and prone to weight transfer coupe will do fine in bmg.
One more thing… I wasn’t around for a year or so and even back than cars were really nice. But now… Damn people you are making some fine ass vehicles.
Yeah sure if your engine is big enough to spool up the turbo in the first place, but not so undersquare that your valve train falls apart before you it really gives off maximum potential 
to find out how fast I could drive your cars around a track. So let’s start with the start:
As usual I’m going to go in precisely the same order as before, except at the end of each segment I’ll be posting a reminder of my own car’s stats. And as usual, each car gets their own personalised comment.
The Trial Mountain time is rounded to the second as it’s a composite of attack laps and should be assumed to have a margin of error of about 1 second either way. Don’t sweat the exact rank.
N.B. Both lap times are flying.
I’ll be blunt: with few exceptions nobody went particularly hard on the tune, except one user who went way too far. There’s a prevailing belief that tuning FR cars from Automation is difficult. Perhaps it’s not as easy as the others because the weight distribution is harder to control (most of the cars in this test averaged an FR balance of about 58:52), which means the rear end gets pretty flighty. On the plus side the physics tweaks in Beam seems to have made a significant positive difference to the dynamics. It’s possible to make an extremely fast, controllable FR car. It does however take some well balanced tuning.
The lightest of the FR cars certainly feels that way. On the low end of power, it seeks to make up for this with precise handling and great corner grip. In terms of immediacy of feel and the ability to modulate the car’s behaviour mid corner this is probably the best in class. The brake bias seems a touch rearward compared to weight distribution, so the rear end actually can get flighty under hard braking even if the wheels lock up, but if driven reasonably this is actually not a bad thing as combined with the controllable nature of the car this encourages very late braking even without ABS. Due to the low power and the blockiness of the body it struggles past 130km/h and so I’m anticipating that it will do well on the downhill but really struggle on Automation Track and the hillclimb, but not for a lack of 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
Probably the easiest most mellow FR ride of them all here. Has a very measured response to throttle but the steering is just so on point. A touch of limited slip might have enhanced the drive as I found a certain urge to push the throttle harder because it’s relatively low powered but even that made the inner wheel spin. I found myself frequently saying “if only this were just all around faster”, because the handling was just so nice that the car simply deserved a touch more speed to compete with this field.
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
I give up. I’m really not sure what happened. 223hp:ton isn’t that much but this car somehow makes it seem like a million. I went back and had a look at the configuration and I don’t think it’s any one particular issue so much as a little bit of everything: “civilian” profile tyres, somewhat narrow width for the power to weight ratio, the medium compound, the really low ride height making the springs all compressed from the outset. The front tyres just liked to scrub on corner entry, then when the brakes didn’t lock the wheels the rear started to wander because there was a slight rearward bias. Then applying the throttle even a smidgen too much on exit resulted in unrecoverable oversteer and the whole thing would slide out. I eventually realised the only enjoyable way to drive this car was to overwhelm the rear traction so much that it had almost no effective traction at all i.e. like a drift car. Up to that point it was a twitchy, slidey, spinny mess. So much so that after ten good attempts I figured there was no way in hell I was going to get a meaningful lap done on Trial Mountain, and… realised if I was going to achieve anything beyond a lot of fender benders I’d have to literally halve my throttle inputs. Hence the somewhat shitty time. I went back and decided to tweak everything just to see if I could actually turn it into something that could actually do the performance justice, and might be inclined to share the result if @NiuYorqCiti is happy for me to. Needless to say, when you have enough grip and don’t go silly on the suspension, it’s blisteringly fast.
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
Ride height of 85mm. This would explain the nasty crunching sounds every time I cut a corner LMAO (Edit: actually no it’s not, even when I fixed the tune for some reason this setup really hates bumps and the suspension arms like going straight through the mesh… not sure why. I’m just going to not cut corners). The dampers are also stiff as all get out so that would explain why the handling just feels so taut. It’s ultra direct. On a good surface the car is nearly unflappable but it’s the low power (and the very prematurely truncated powerband and that awful laggy journal-bearing turbo… points for period correctness) that really keeps it in check, though if you try hard enough you can get it unstuck in first and second. In fact with a bit of suspension optimisation my real life comparison would be like a stage one turbo tune of an MX-5 NB. It’s cramped and not that fast but it just feels so naked and immediate.
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
This is one of the few times I will comment on the gearing: it’s a lot shorter than most sports cars. Almost every entry here tends to let first reach nearly 60km/h. The short low gearing here means a punchy takeoff but also very long gaps up top which significantly robs it of straight line speed given the higher drag and lower mechanical advantage. Aside from that it also feels much softer, gentler even, though not unpleasantly so. Mid-corner grip is still excellent, rather the response is quite slow, espeically over uneven bumps. That’d be the product of the thin sway bars. You could say therefore that this is not really a car attuned to the track, where the surface tends to be nice and smooth. I wonder how it will fare on a rough road.
Cost: 9928
Format: FR
Seats: 2+3
Comfort: 4
Fuel Economy: 9.5L/100km
Power: 180.5hp
Weight: 1103.7kg
Power:weight ratio: 163.54hp:ton
Just as I said, the insanely low ride height makes for an ultra responsive ride but any bumps really do unsettle the car. And I think I lost a lip. It certainly has some speed to it, and noses in extremely nicely, and thus as far as track times go if you know what you’re doing one can punch above weight in this, but watch out for the terrain.
Cost: 9413
Format: FR
Seats: 2
Comfort: 5.3
Fuel Economy: 10.8L/100km
Power: 171.5hp
Weight: 977kg
Power:weight ratio: 175.54hp:ton
It drives real smooth. Too bad it’s on mediums and not sports, as it really deserves sports for the extra grip. As it is the car is well balanced and has a nice rhythm to it as long as you don’t forget you have somewhat limited traction. It’s not the sharpest or the fastest but it certainly lends itself to some nice fun. And if you really want to, sliding the tail around. Of all the FR cars it’s one of the best at steering with the throttle.
That is to say I really liked this. I’m tempted to swap in a close ratio gearbox and some sports tyres.
Cost: 9989
Format: FR
Seats: 2
Comfort: 16.2
Fuel Economy: 8.2L/100km
Power: 186hp
Weight: 976kg
Power:weight ratio: 190.57hp:ton
A great racing driver (in fact more than one) said that steering is done with the throttle. In this front-heavy RWD car the hints of such are there and that’s where the real fun in this car lies. On paper it is an oddity: unnecessarily staggered tyres somewhat lacking in grip with a rally-style turbo tuned i5 but on the track it actually comes together a lot better than suggested. The top end is a bit anaemic, yes, and it is hardly glued to the road, no, but despite still feeling very front heavy, it does carry more immediacy and control than I thought it would. Fortuitously, on this track the brakes (barely) did not overheat, but I suspect one would run into issues on a track with more consecutive hard stops.
Cost: 9894
Format: FR
Seats: 2
Comfort: 0.7
Fuel Economy: 8.7L/100km
Power: 195.2hp
Weight: 1072.6kg
Power:weight ratio: 181.99hp:ton
Remember the Top Gear episode where the guys attempted to make a Renaul Avantime drive like not shit? Yeah. I mean they bollocked it up pretty hard but turns out that it’s really hard to make a beige MPV go like a Lancer Evo on even the same money. Now take this Petrov. Actually it’s almost stock, by the looks of it, and barely has had any money put into it even, just the fuel mix cranked up for a bit more go. At least it has some degree of grip to corner like the rest of them… when it wants to, which is to say most of the time, it doesn’t, because the springs were designed to soak up bumps, not accurately transmit the road feedback through the chassis. And of course if you’re driving a civilian car hard it’s not wise to slam the brakes repeatedly on the freeway because they overheat after two or three hard stops, which is exactly what happened here. I don’t know what else anyone would expect.
Cost: 8419
Format: FR
Seats: 4
Comfort: 16
Fuel Economy: 10.6L/100km
Power: 150.7hp
Weight: 1116.5kg
Power:weight ratio: 134.98hp:ton
Very tight. The open diff requires very careful throttle control otherwise all one acheives is spinning the inside wheel and actually losing speed. Recommended technique is to steer this straight and narrow and keep it as clean as possible, because the moment it hits limits it will either run super wide or it will snap out, and while it’s not hard to bundle it back up again, that requires that one wasn’t already being silly to begin with. Maximising performance here more than ever requires some kind of driving perfection, and a lot of sweating. I notice that the rear wheel almost has a tendency to cock hard in the corners, so the rear swaybar is probably a touch too stiff and that probably contributes to the slippy feel.
Cost: 9628
Format: FR
Seats: 2+2
Comfort: 5.7
Fuel Economy: 6.7L/100km
Power: 161.9hp
Weight: 973kg
Power:weight ratio: 166.39hp:ton
Compared to my reference car:
This was never designed to be a track car. It was designed to be something fun with naturally aspirated V6 power (sexy times), and not be too expensive. And also seat a reasonable number of people. But it turns out that actually yes you can track it and pretty hard at that. I admit, this is probably due to the sporty profile 235 wide tyres, which is the widest tyres of any of the entries here. They were the kind of tyre used by the FD RX-7, so perhaps I overdid it a little. Packing a good 15-20% more effective traction meant running insane cornering speeds, braking insanely late, and having the liberty of being really aggressive on the throttle and suffering less slip (this base trim has an open diff). So it’s not surprising it goes really quite a lot faster considering its weight, even on the tightest of tracks. But I won’t engage any other false modesty: I also balanced the car’s dynamics really well.
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
In a table, then:
P.S. remember what I said about comparing the colours between power, weight, the ratio and the times. I’ll show you the numerical metric measuring this after I finish all the entries.
P.P.S. this is just a note to remind myself that my next intermission will talk about how the small circle test handling graph correlates with the steering feel in Beam, because it actually does mean quite a lot.
I guess my car actually did pretty good on the first and second stage, but I bet I will get beaten by powerful or nimble cars in the later stages.
I’m going to say that my car did better than anticipated so far. But yes, power-wise, it will probably have trouble on other tracks.
Trying to be “realistic” on the choices is what happened. My dumb brain thought that going with a set of grippier and wider tires may end up being too much for the era and, because of that, those would be seen as overkill decisions. I was wrong it seems lol. Forgetting that BeamNG.drive gives you about 90% of what the real grip of the cars should be (imo) also really fucked me up. Because I knew the car would totally suck, I still submitted because in my eyes it was a good looking car (and I do admit that it looks more like a car from ±1994 tbh) and in the papers it still is an impressive machine.
Sure it was. Because, basically, I just can’t play BeamNG. I only have a keyboard (well, no longer really, got me a G807 a few days after submitting), a 3-core processor, 4 mere gigs of RAM and a 1 gig GTX 460, those things speak for themselves. Both BeamNG and Automation like to crash very often and loading times for each game are humongous (5+ mins to load the ATT in BNG, if I’m lucky enough not to get a crash before that happens). Imagine if I wanted to test different tires, gearbox and suspension setups, it would literally take me 8 hours (6 of which would be from loading times) in front of the computer just to make it a decently handling car. And, even after those problems, I just can’t drive in BeamNG, so the setup would end up being way too conservative: lots of understeer, excessively front biased braking distribution and so on.
I don’t see why you shouldn’t. You took the time and effort to try and tame that tarded beast, which is something that makes me really happy. Go ahead boi, show me your moves.
I just would like to say thanks for this post. It gives a good amount of insight on tuning for the transfer to Beam.NG, and after getting my hands on at-least a decent controller, I have been able to tune my RR into something that is quite drivable now, it is far too late to fix the submission, but the information gleamed from this post has been valuable.
Thanks.
Ah, sorry. If I had known you had hardware issues to that extent I should have offered you some basic feedback and a retune. This will help me refine the rules for the real run in a later version. But as it stands it’ll become helpful information to set some guidelines to get everybody up to speed.
Oh boi. That was also what i was getting until recently. +3mins to load up automation. Fix, export, which takes +2mins, close automation if i want to even hope to open Beam. Open bng, 3mins load, 3fps main menu at that, open att, another +5mins loading time. All that for about maybe 2-3 mins of testing time… Probably. I ain’t doing that.
#lowspecgamers right?
haha no, thank fucking god i got an upgrade recently
Fixed it for ya. Ed.
Except to say it wasn’t that boring. Boring would be “numb and understeery on every corner and absolutely refuses to let you shift the car around no matter what you do”. This one was nice and direct but had a lot of threshold so as not to kill you if you so much as blipped the throttle too early.
With maybe 20hp more and a viscous LSD it would feel like a winner.
The rationale behind the Elan M100 was that of all the drivetrains, for any given weight and power, the FWD was faster. That was chiefly because Lotus only really concerned themselves with lightweight cars with not ridiculous power outputs, of course, but that’s precisely the kind of situation this test is about. I expect lower power to weight ratios on average, but I expect these cars to punch well above their weight, especially on the more technical circuits.
The big thonk is mostly redeemed by being a very pleasant handler. It’s not so much playful as it is purposeful, where everything is well measured and with the composure of something more advanced than its time. Left foot definitely comes in handy once the springs have achieved maximal compression. The sway bars are quite well sorted and give good response without making the ride too harsh. By some miracle the front brakes are just capable enough of not overheating under maximal hard use. The main disadvantage it probably has compared to all the other cars in this class is that it’s older and the tyres are therefore less grippy.
Cost: 10187
Format: FF
Seats: 2
Comfort: 7.1
Fuel Economy: 13.8L/100km
Power: 173.1hp
Weight: 906.6kg
Power:weight ratio: 190.93hp:ton
Why did you have to put such a big fat heavy lump of cast iron up the front end and then drive the front wheels? It handles like a Toyboata Camry, except with a lot better grip because actual sport tyres. The mid-corner grip is good but the front end is effectively a battering ram carried by Vikings that wallows and rolls and ploughs its way through everything. The front end body roll is so severe I’m pretty sure the body suffers from extensive flex. I hit a curb once and the damn thing flipped from the body roll. And as I mentioned, the drop in power when changing up a gear! And then to add insult to injury, due to the pedestrian pad settings, the brakes were a molten pile of slag by the end of the 2nd lap around Trial Mountain! Not ideal for track use!
Cost: 9448
Format: FF
Seats: 4
Comfort: 16.6
Fuel Economy: 5.7L/100km
Power: 182.4hp
Weight: 1001.4kg
Power:weight ratio: 182.14hp:ton
Wow this really does take the fight to the best of them in terms of sheer corner speeds. What it lacks in power it makes up for with the willingness for the nose to stay on the line. This is amply helped of course by those ridiculous rear sway bars which really want to do nothing more than kick the tail out. The result is driving with a butt under constant threat from a firecracker. It works wonderfully on smooth roads and good race tracks. I wonder what’s going to happen if I take it onto a rough surface. The major glaring issue is that after 2 laps of hard driving the brakes started fading. They just got hot enough at the end of the big straight that it became an issue there and only there but that’s hardly ideal for something that’s tuned and equipped like a cup sport car.
Cost: 11743
Format: FF
Seats: 2
Comfort: 4.2
Fuel Economy: 9L/100km
Power: 167.1hp
Weight: 985.4kg
Power:weight ratio: 169.58hp:ton
This is one from the “thick rear sway bar” school and it shows. Firm and responsive, this car is full of character. From the slightly twitchy front end that is so eager to nose in (always a good thing in a FWD car), to the brakes that lock up (not so much), this puts the driver right in the driver’s seat. How you drive is how the car moves. And fast drivers like cars like that. It’s this connectedness that allows the confidence to come through and push a little faster, a little harder until the limits are found and just stay there. Very enjoyable.
Cost: 9672
Format: FF
Seats: 4
Comfort: 7.7
Fuel Economy: 8.8L/100km
Power: 175.3hp
Weight: 959.6kg
Power:weight ratio: 182.68hp:ton
Supremely stable. The ride is firm but planted, the steering very direct. It has great mid-corner grip but all that stability comes at the almost total expense of being able to modulate turn in, so one has to be very careful with getting the braking point exactly right and there is very little margin for error or you’ll just lose time going wide. This is the heaviest car in class and it shows: You can feel the weight over the front wheels in a way that’s less evident in other cars. Same with the brakes: they feel front biased and will pull you straight on hard application. This basically means the best way to drive this car is with exactly the right amount of pedal pressure and steering input and find the limit of the grip, and NEVER brake late.
Cost: 10173
Format: FF
Seats: 4
Comfort: 7.1
Fuel Economy: 11.3L/100km
Power: 209.5hp
Weight: 1138.1kg
Power:weight ratio: 184.08hp:ton
For some strange reason this car is very fond of understeering. I thought on paper it would have a more similar handling characteristic to the Armada Fore but it just likes to plow directly on ahead and actually takes very precise steering and throttle control to get the most out of the cornering. That is to say it’s very stable, but it also feels like it’s self-limited. Even the brakes are very front biased and prone to locking the fronts early (and when not locking the fronts they do indeed fade by lap 2). I took a look at the suspension tune and found nothing too far out of the ordinary. It was only when I took another look at the tyres that I realised: 65 profile belongs on a civilian car, not a sports tune ROFL*. Well, scratch this car for responsiveness and handling then.
*doing a bit of research, sporty profile tyres for road use back in 1994 would have been 55 or so, but proper track tyres were between 50 and 40
Cost: 8537
Format: FF
Seats: 4
Comfort: 9.5
Fuel Economy: 7.8L/100km
Power: 144.2hp
Weight: 945.2kg
Power:weight ratio: 152.56hp:ton
As suspected there is not a huge amount of grip on offer here. The car also has fairly slow response because of the softness of the tune. Thus lift off oversteer and left foot braking are imprecise techniques and the car really rewards patience and control, which is not the kind of experience I exactly expect from something under 900kg (I would hope for something a bit more frenetic, you know?) but definitely the kind of experience I expected given the relative lack of tyre. Also discouraging from driving fast is the fact that the brakes don’t even last a lap before they overheat and by lap 2 they’re well, useless. Slow-fast? How about slow-slow!
Cost: 7717
Format: FF
Seats: 4
Comfort: 5.1
Fuel Economy: 8.3L/100km
Power: 120.3hp
Weight: 887.5kg
Power:weight ratio: 135.55hp:ton
Well it’s not fast, that much was made abundantly clear in the brief. It’s not even that nimble. Actually I lie. It must be something in the chassis because despite having a very roly-poly ride up front (soft sway bars), the corner speeds are actually very good. It’s just that it doesn’t feel like that at all. There’s very little play or briskness in the handling, and the steering is awfully vague. It could be that the seating position is relatively high as well. Either way it doesn’t feel like an 860kg car at all, except when the exhaust note rises astronomically high and then you remember you’ve got a motorcycle engine powering the thing. Odd experience.
Cost: 10130
Format: FF
Seats: 4
Comfort: 10.9
Fuel Economy: 6.9L/100km
Power: 114.9hp
Weight: 860kg
Power:weight ratio: 133.6hp:ton
Compared to my reference car:
I’m not going to lie, I tuned this thing to be an absolute weapon and that’s what it is. Not only did it have to make the most of the traction it had, but it had to be able to take advantage of all the characteristics of the FWD drivetrain. Lift off oversteer, left foot brake, this will respond to all of it and reward the FWD master with a blistering pace that can’t be matched by far more powerful (and expensive) cars. It’ll definitely lose out on Automation Test track, but I don’t think adding power is going to improve its performance on the likes of Hirochi and Trial Mountain. If you haven’t tried it already I again encourage you to do so, it’s ludicrous.
Cost: 9352
Format: FF
Seats: 4
Comfort: 6.2
Fuel Economy: 7.5L/100km
Power: 182.1hp
Weight: 908.6kg
Power:weight ratio: 200.4hp:ton
In a table, then:
and compared to my car:
I was salty about XR6T’s fuel consumption and made my dream car.
I’ll gladly take having the least power and somehow not being the slowest. As for chassis, I can’t remember making any unusual choices in building.
If we were all on the same race-track, the Astrion would still have good company. Or at least, a good race.
I’m smacking myself on the forehead every time I read one of your posts for being too lazy to switch back to stable. 
Now that I see everyone else’s entries, I reckon mine would have been too powerful lol
i guess i sorta figured that was because of inaccurate controller steering and that it would be better on a wheel but i must have overestimated how different a wheel would be lmao
i also thought that that profile was reasonable, but i guess not, i thought 15 inch rims were reasonable
EDIT: just changing the profile to 50 and moving brake bias backwards it already feels much better, although it doesn’t seem much faster than before
Okay here’s another lot to keep us ticking over.
As you’ve no doubt by now noticed, the AWD cars generally carried a lot more power to weight ratio. They were also generally more expensive, as was to be expected. Must have been a certain confidence to have about twice as much effective traction under power. Is it worth it? Depends on your focus: AWD runs the risk of feeling a bit staid, the predictable reliable one that you run around a track like a slot car. But it’s also far more secure and can accelerate faster and these are the cars expected to be outright fastest, if that’s your thing. There is a strong parallel here to the current state of the hot hatch market, in fact… but just remember, on tighter tracks, a Type R is capable of beating a Focus RS (at least, in the dry).
This is an all-rounder Audi Quattro. It handles exactly the same no matter what the layout of the track is: dependable and with plenty of grip. As a true neutral, all that one needs is to know what corner speed any corner requires, and then take it at that speed. Modulating radius mid-corner is a breeze: just slow down to tighten and speed up to loosen. I’d almost go so far as to say that I’ve almost never driven such a satisfying front-engined AWD car before.
Cost: 10357
Format: AWD
Seats: 4
Comfort: 7.4
Fuel Economy: 11L/100km
Power: 233.5hp
Weight: 1078.4kg
Power:weight ratio: 216.52hp:ton
As predicted locking the diffs produced rather significant changes to the handling characteristic which suited different driving styles. To be clear this isn’t one of those 2 way geared diffs that has set limits of locking on coast and power, this is just either 100% manually locked or open. To that end locking the rear and central diffs made turning while off power very hard, but the turn in on power much easier which went a long way to counteracting the natural tendency of 50:50 split AWD cars to straighten out under throttle… but only suited styles where all the braking was done before corner entry, which one might be compelled to do here since piling on the brakes into the corner itself just results in understeer and going deep. This isn’t necessarily the fastest way around the track as evidenced by getting a faster time with the diffs open! It depends on the track and whether you drive like Stig Blomqvist or not.
Cost: 11702
Format: AWD
Seats: 4
Comfort: 1.5
Fuel Economy: 10.4L/100km
Power: 313.5hp
Weight: 1284.8kg
Power:weight ratio: 244.01hp:ton
A very straightforward car. It goes, it stops, and it turns all very predictably. There’s a hint of character under throttle but only enough to mitigate the natural understeer of the AWD drivetrain, and really not enough to push the tail out. The ride is actually pretty well balanced, being able to ride kerbs without becoming unsettled, and I expect that it will probably not be unduly put out by worse roads. The main trick to getting the best out of this car is to brake early: they’re front-biased and the car doesn’t like turning under braking so get it all done before nose-in, gently feel for the apex while feeding the throttle slowly then open up the taps as soon as the corner starts to loosen.
Cost: 11993
Format: AWD
Seats: 2+2
Comfort: 7.1
Fuel Economy: 9L/100km
Power: 176.2hp
Weight: 1265.9kg
Power:weight ratio: 218.18hp:ton
Jesus Christ on a kebab stick this is a handful. I understand the rationale, I think, behind each of the decisions. It’s AWD with rear bias so that the nose tucks in under throttle. But everything is just struggling to overcome the sheer lack of grip. There’s a huge amount of boost also being piled in through the turbo and while we know that the Automation take on AR ratio is a bit suspect (this 0.9AR ratio turbo running 0.9 bar is more realistic than what the game likes best here which would be more akin to a 1.2 AR turbo running 0.6 bar), it does feel like it’s rushing a whole lot of hot air and a lot less than 300hp is getting used. The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter how well your nose tucks in under throttle if you can’t do good corner entries and this car can’t. You will spend most of your time braking early and then waiting for the front tyres to stop scrubbing before you can apply the throttle… and then have to wait for the boost to build. Hence it is slower around a track than cars with barely half the power.
Cost: 10000
Format: AWD
Seats: 4
Comfort: 2.7
Fuel Economy: 9.7L/100km
Power: 300.4hp
Weight: 1060.2kg
Power:weight ratio: 283.34hp:ton
This doesn’t drive like an AWD wagon, or a “RWD with some front power for stability”. More like a FWD with some rear power for extra character. The rear brakes must be biased to the rear or something because slamming the brakes produces some hilarious oversteer, though at nearly 1300kg it’s hardly lethal. Then apply appropriate amounts of throttle and the nose seems to come in nicely which is just so odd considering it’s a front-biased power distribution. Thus the car is actually significantly faster than expected… though not if one forgets it’s not exactly a hot hatch and tries to drive it exactly like one. That’s when the wheels start leaving the ground, the body starts wobbling and bad things happen. That said being heavier, the front brakes aren’t quite up to the task, and repeated hard stops will cause them to overheat…
Cost: 10000
Format: AWD
Seats: 4
Comfort: 6.3
Fuel Economy: 11.2L/100km
Power: 271.6hp
Weight: 1289.9kg
Power:weight ratio: 210.56hp:ton
Actually quite hard to muscle around. Despite a huge rearward bias the AWD never fails to bring the car back into line under gas. I suspect the relatively heavy front swaybar is actually causing the outside wheel to scrub more than it should so it understeers easily, combined with the, er, vehicle being very front heavy. Despite this it makes very quick work of the track mostly due to the sheer power to weight ratio that it packs. The springs themselves also feel quite soft, either that, or that’s a result of the unusual weight distribution and the rear bouncing around like an amateur with a yo-yo. Despite great cornering performance in Trial Mountain… it didn’t actually go as fast as I expected it to what with the huge power to weight ratio, and I suspect that this is more to do with the sheer drag from the big (very not street legal) wing as well as the body’s natural aerodynamics of a brick. I expect if it’s struggling here it’s going to fall even further behind on the ATT.
Cost: 9998
Format: AWD
Seats: 2
Comfort: 0.8
Fuel Economy: 13.2L/100km
Power: 209.8hp
Weight: 815.6kg
Power:weight ratio: 257.23hp:ton
In a table, then:
Unsurprisingly this lot had some serious speed (except the one that was borderline undriveable lol). Disconcertingly they were already showing their moves in the early stage where I thought maybe the other cars had more of a chance. Maybe it’s the product of this lot being made by people serious about putting down blazing track times. On the other hand most of these entries were kind of a bit lacking in the “fun” department. But not all of them.
well, if I didnt cut the budget, putting better tyres, better profile, brakes, etc. maybe the time will be faster. also I focus too much on tuning the suspension on automation. but being my first car here, it could be worse…?
I am going to test myself what can I achieve getting to 11k and tuning it better
edit 1: uff, getting those sport tyres is almost 1K
edit 2: 1.51.750 on trial mountain driving with gamepad. I’m gonna fire my financial advisor
edit 3: 1.08.6 on hirochi, quite hard circuit…
now I know that tyres are vital. at least 3 seconds per minute lost with hards
Thank you for your critique of my car. That means a lot coming from you.
