That is… Actually quite unexpected. I figured this was going to be the challenge that showed the Astrion to be painfully slow.
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Thank god I learned from this not to make my MR cars perform like understeery FR cars lol
Feels weird to see that past tune
I like how consistently average my car has performed.
Stage 5 Analysis
I think I’ll just post this first.
When it comes to punching above weight, a striking list forms. It’s no secret that the Tanaka, Ishu, Mitsushita all have excellent traction and turn-in and are quite nimble. The Akuna has excellent traction… but is less nimble. And the Haapala also sneaks up near the top of the order, as well it should for while it had less traction it is particularly nimble. For the most part the big fat chonky AWD cars generally did pretty well considering that I had to back off a lot just to squeeze them through the narrow streets.
The bottom half is… well, pretty much as expected. In this case I would say nothing which scored a ratio delta of above -1 had any fundamental issues with the setup.
Next will come a side by side comparison of all the values, and hopefully an overall consideration of how cars performed, both objective and subjective. After that, I will be able to tell you which 5 cars I’ll be featuring in a video review!
Edit: not a big enough reveal yet, so just an edit. Here are all the times of entries arranged by username.
There’s only one blue square, because that was an outlier of outliers. Not surprisingly it happened on Mount Glorious. Otherwise for the most part the results were pretty linear. This table will only show trends within each entry, of course, and their approximate overall performance, and whether there were any aberrations. That in turn gives a slight indication of each car’s strengths and weaknesses.
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Rocinante was faster than expected, not bad for an old horse! I shot myself in the foot on comfort with that build. It started as a fwd trucklet, and grew into nearly what I entered over 15 iterations. Then I discovered my comfort rating was at (or below) 0, and had to soften the suspension quite a bit (it was nearly due and I didn’t have time for another fresh build…). It was actually more composed over the bumps in Italy with the stiffer setup. Some surprising results, especially the downhill given R’s 80/20 weight split! I figured I’d be slower on the faster tracks, too.
Stage 5 Analysis Continued
Now comes the next part, which obviously would be putting all the relative performance indicators together. I calibrated them to be roughly commensurate (not a perfect measure I know) so I simply averaged out all 5 rounds and here you have it.
There are many ways of crumbling this cookie, of course, and this doesn’t tell the whole story, but purely with regards to the actual versus expected performance I can use the following table to comment:
So I’ll go from lowest to highest:
- BCT T1001S 525TS– no grip, super laggy turbo. Did have speed and was AWD hence not completely last in everything
- Ponni Pistero - RS– sharp as a razor balanced on the tip of a needle. More grip would solve a lot of things
- Nohda Strato (82) Super Strato Turbo (87)– RR and widebody on a super short wheelbase makes bad time
- JHW Lynx S5– also not enough grip. With more grip the gearing could be shorter and it’d probably shoot up the rankings
- Stelvio O-56– very interesting handling set which suited some conditions more than others, plus a horrible power curve
- Pulsar Defiant– not significantly different from the Strato except softer suspension, which made it harder in some places, easier in others…
- Petrov Ferro Coupe– not impossibly difficult to drive, just not designed to go fast
- Rocinante– the only reason this is so far down the list is because it’s in outlier territory as far as power:weight is concerned. And also the fact it has a trailer bed for a rear end made it hard to turn tight corners
- Polski Bomba Street– The lightest car in the lineup had to work hard to overcome the inherent difficulties of its layout as presented by the Pulsar and the Nohda and mostly got there but it had to do a lot
- Iserim Sol– slow and not grippy and FWD which masked some subtle balance issues uncovered on the downhill
- Cyanide Motors 1982 Terrier - S1– Seemed like it was good to throw around but some caution was required when the tail-happy characteristics got out of hand…
- Geschenk Gato– It had some more heft than its weight let on due to unusually soft sway bars, if not for the downhill this may have gone largely unnoticed
- Scarab Nova GT-X26– The biggest, most powerful car was built to be the fastest, which in general it was, when it actually fit on track…
- Bradford Vector R– A deft touch was required to pilot this machine, but when it came together it was pretty on-par
- Matteo Miglia Legatus– razor sharp handling meant going from grip to complete understeer at the drop of a hat. More power than it probably should have had in 1983 to be honest
- Kuma SU Si Coupe (2+2)– a bit too much power for the tyres, a bit too long and heavy to take full advantage of the FF drivetrain, but if driven within limits it could haul some ass
- G&W Stamford 85– being slow and soft worked in its favour on this metric, being one of the easiest cars to keep on the (not very high) limit
- Kettenblitz 950QD– this car was tuned to be pretty competent but also was one of those where there was a very fine line between good grip and one-wheel peel
- Jade-Gemin GLX– a surprisingly high finish for the car on actually realistic rubber (which was on average thinner, taller and medium compound). Probably because it had good control and not as much power
- Shromet Interval GTS– tuned to be quite neutral, it’s not so much the performance as its handling and the communication that this car truly excels. Would have been a few places up if the brakes didn’t melt so much
- Kitanishi Fleuris SP2000– A solid AWD, the “sensible cousin” so to speak. Not overly competitive but also won’t bite your head off
- Toreer Sommet 250S– a bigger car trapped in a smaller body with a smaller engine, aside from some bugs from the suspension and ride height it was a solid handler
- Akuna Sprinter HF– the chief advantage here was mid-corner grip thanks to loose front sway bars and wide tyres. Horrendous at sudden direction changes and accelerating past 3rd
- TX7 B6– the ultra muted handling does make it very easy to throw around even in challenging conditions
- Haapala CupSport Streetlegal– light and well balanced, like a punchy FWD should be
- Smooth Notsomuch– an unusual experiment that worked beautifully. Contrary to the name, it was in fact very smooth
- Armor Cricket GT4– the little AWD that could, it really excelled at almost everything
- Marquez CDD SWS 270i6– the big surprise package of the lot, FWD bias actually improved its turn-in if driven to match
- FM Cerberus Track– sharp, precise and grippy, the low-rider squad can rep it even in somewhat harsher conditions
- Ishu Astrion 700T– the little mouse roars the loudest? Largely got away with the funky suspension tune because it’s so light and can be thrown around extra hard, so carried some ludicrous speed in the corners
- Fuji RMS GTR Homologation– the other low-rider squad member, taking nearly maximum advantage of its drivetrain. Shame about the brakes
- Mitsushita Jesta Baleno TCS– this is the embodiment of old-style FWD tuner. Supremely engaging
- Tanaka Aventis (4th Gen) - 2.0 TR (3DR)– goes extra lengths to get the nose in. Huge extra lengths, because that nose really goes in
- Matteo Miglia Excelsior Rosso Corsa– I would have said this proves FR can be up there but that’s mainly because the tyres were really fat. So is the car for that matter.
- Armada Motors Fore Gen II Eagle GTi– This was
SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAsheer madness. I was expecting this to be a factory release? Fastest in 3 tests, 2nd in one, and it takes an extra 100-130hp to actually beat it on the speed track?
Note again that these are only impressions based on the car performance. They will have some but far from the most bearing on how I assess the cars overall, and therefore which ones I review in a video… more on that within the next 24 hours! (and no I’m not reviewing my own cars lmao only if there’s time to add in a “tips and tricks” section)
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I can’t believe my car is still in the running! Not that anyone falls out but you know… I have expected that my wheels were just to rubbery or something 
Joke aside, Strop the is all super informative and we are getting a lot out of this. i’m really enjoying it. Kudos!
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whenever strop looks at my car:
b r a k e m a c h i n e b r o k e
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For a car I did that was designed literally to use parts I almost never used in UE4, I’m surprised. The Astrion literally started as “Let’s use options and parts I don’t use often, and really step outside of my comfort zone.” So because I hadn’t, to that point, used T-FWD (I since have, and actually in a lore car), I used T-FWD. I’m not comfortable with small turbo engines, so I made a 700cc turbo I3 because I was then forced way out of my comfort zone. (Otherwise, I may have whacked in a 2.6 liter I4 in a different body.) Then I used the fixtures I used the least, making a “perpetually smiley” car (which initially I didn’t like, but it grew on me) because I figured if I was going this far, I was going all the way.
The only thing I wish I’d done differently, so far, would be to not have used that particular yellow-orange metallic, and instead should have used my light-purple metallic. The color just had to match the car: Obnoxious.
Oh god it’s been too long. Chalk that up to brutal weeks at work and having a lot of life admin to do. At any rate it’s now time for:
The Written Verdicts (Part 1)
As I mentioned right at the start of the test, my original intention was to have 3 prospective buyers: the young gun who can only afford a daily but wants it hot, the established one who wants the fastest car possible to live out the racer dream before settling down and starting a family, and the retiree who wants to relive the glory days before they get too old and worn out to drive fast. I don’t know how that was to pan out, but essentially the judgement should be synthesised on a composite of various aspects which each driver weights differently.
So I’ve divided the cars into five attributes. One’s just for fun though and won’t really count towards anything.
- Sensibility: how much sense the car makes as a package, or whether it had some really weird and wild choices. This has no bearing on the final comments except maybe some flavour text
- Livability: a composite between comfort, fuel consumption, cost and how practical the car is (more seats is good)
- Chuckability: how hard the car likes to be driven. This is not about the outright speed so much as ease of direction change, accessibility of grip and the immediacy and directness of steering input which makes driving technical tracks so much fun
- Trackability: how fast the car is capable of being driven around a track. Times are the proof in the pudding here. Points were lost for parts that could not handle a track day like early brake fade
- Accessibility: how much did I work to wrangle the maximum out of the car. A bit different from chuckability, as it’s more about the projected level of skill required to engage with the car. A very high score means probably anybody could drive it 100% and maybe that’s a bit boring or easy. A low score may mean more than just being challenging, it’s also frustrating or unrewarding. My personal maximum enjoyment was between the 4-6 range
In a way, the maximum fun car would be something that had a high chuckable score and an accessibility score around 4-6.
So without further ado here are my (partially arithmetic, partially subjective) scorings for each. The detailed comments will come this weekend and then the rankings and therefore the “video time” allocation after that.
My main advice for people who scored poorly is that all the criticism has already been said, so don’t be surprised or too disappointed. It’s just that I’ve taken so long to get to this point I don’t actually mean to repeatedly kick you in the guts lmao.
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Hahahaha got last place.
damn 3/10 trackability, makes sense though considering how damn understeery I made it
at least it did pretty good on the other scores
I’m just ecstatic that I wasn’t last with the choice I made!
So, my car’s boring… I was right 
One thing I learnt about this is that there is like, a definite solid grip threshold on things. If you had sports compound tyres and probably wider rear tyres it may have been still very twitchy and tight but it would be much further up the order.
Related: I have this 800hp mid-engine RWD hypercar which is sitting on a 2.3m wheelbase. On sports tyres it’s impossible to get the power down and absolutely a nightmare to drive on the limit, but change that to semi-slicks and it feels like the most planted thing and you can push it hard and the step-out is actually quite progressive. It’s the grip threshold that helps.
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I guess I tend to learn things the hard way, lol. In my defense, I went with medium compound tires in the pursuit of making a sensible late 80s sports car (as I have stated a few months ago), thinking that sports compound would end up having way too much grip for what was achievable by rubber companies for street worthy cars in the era. As it ended up being, that decision would have made much more sense on a car more in line of what the NA Miata was back in the day with like, 100 hp less haha.
So, remember kids, don’t get guided by numbers alone and always test your cars in BeamNG.
EDIT: I’ll always be thankful to you for taking the time to try and improve the twitchy thing the Pistero was. Even with a controller and playing in the low 20s, I noticed a HUGE difference driving it in Beam.
comfort and b r a k e f a d e
It’s worth noting that tyre performance scales with the trim year, so sports tyres in 1980 will be quite inferior to sports tyres in 2019. At least as far as i can tell.
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Kinda knew that my car wasn’t going to do well.