2005 WM Warrior SE
This would’ve been my CSR162 entry if I hadn’t submitted something else in its place beforehand. Although built on the same body set ('05 Mercy, 2.63m wheelbase fastback coupe), its shorter overhangs make it easier to place on the road. Also, I originally wanted to use an all-aluminum body/chassis combo, but cloning the whole car and switching to an AHS steel chassis with partial aluminum panels allowed me to use more of a $40k budget.
Power comes from an all-alloy, DOHC-per-bank, 32-valve 420-bhp 4.0L naturally aspirated V8 driving the rear wheels via a 6-speed manual gearbox and helical LSD, while 4-wheel all-independent suspension (dual-wishbone front and a multilink rear) incorporates semi-active dampers and active sway bars for a smooth yet involving drive in all road conditions.
With large ABS-assisted disc brakes behind each 19-inch alloy wheel, wrapped in staggered high-performance tires (245mm front/265mm rear), the Warrior’s tenacity in corners and under braking matches its straight-line performance - 0-60 mph in 4.1 seconds and a top speed of 186 mph, along with a 200m skidpad figure of over 1g, are truly world class numbers for its time.
A high-quality premium interior and stereo sound system (plus sat-nav), combined with six airbags and electronic stability/traction control (both of which are fully defeatable if/when necessary) ensure that both occupants enjoy a level of comfort and safety that is more than acceptable for daily use.
With hindsight, though, it would still have had a tough time breaking into the top 10, but it would’ve been a lot closer to the threshold, especially after tweaking the techpool distribution by using the values shown above - resulting in the stat boosts shown below.
Combined with swapping from all-aluminum construction to an AHS steel/partial aluminum combo for this platform, the resulting cash savings allowed me to invest additional quality points elsewhere; trading some unnecessary reliability points for more budget headroom by dialing back the weight optimization slider to 50 also helped.
This car also comes equipped with hidden first-person BeamNG camera fixtures (set to transparent) - a handy feature for Beam testing if a first-person viewpoint is required.
Update (30/07/24, 10:20 pm UTC+7): After upgrading to a full luxury interior and satnav (but without altering the car’s aesthetics in any way), I scaled back some of the quality cheese to stay at or under $40k:
It hasn’t lost too much of its sportiness, though, and gained even more prestige and comfort in the process. Aesthetically, it remains unchanged, with the exception of woodgrain (instead of aluminum or alcantara) interior trim accents, along with a different set of wheel fixtures and interior door handles.
In short, although it’s more of a grand tourer than before, it’s still a true sports car at heart.