NFSMW2005 comes out 2 years after this AGC takes place, I guess MicroSim will get to sue EA
Btw @Aruna race me bro
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1998 Pemhall Ascot and Ascot Cup Car
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Annnnd that’s a wrap! Thanks to everyone who submitted their entries, final results will be up in a few days.
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Heyo!
Since people might be wondering wtf is going on, I haven’t abandoned the challenge, it’s just taken longer than I thought. Unfortunately I won’t be able to finish today, but hopefully I’ll get something out tomorrow. Thanks for being patient with me.
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I’m going to be that guy and say it’s okay if you don’t have all the results done by now, but a quick report on where you’re up to or even partial release may help!
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Apologize for the long wait, I’ve just had less time than I hoped. I’ll try to get the first batch of reviews out today.
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can you not
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yeah but if you keep posting bumps like that you’ll be the first OP to manage to get a still-running theme challenge shut down through shitposting 
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Seconding this, even a tiny bit, just one car, would be nice to see results of.
Apologize for the long wait, but here’s the first batch of reviews! It took some time to get the scoring sorted (and learning how to formula in Google Sheets), so unfortunately I only had time to finish two; more will come tomorrow (honestly)
DQ’d: Strig 16 RR Motorsport Mirae Sport Package
Design: 8/10
The Strig 16 RR is rather pleasant to look at, with a well-proportioned, french-inspired front end and vertical taillights that pleasingly wrap around the C-pillar. Probably not too hard to pull off, but effective. The vents on the rear quarter windows and roof hints that this is not a front-engined design. The livery is also very clean and stylish, with a two-tone paint and tri-colored stripes. Not a huge amount of fixtures and no sponsor decals, but very pleasing to the eyes.
Engineering: 5/10 (DQ’d)
Unfortunately, this is where it all falls apart. First off, the elephant in the room: the car didn’t meet the regulations. The production version is miles away from meeting the desirability scores, partially because of the insistence of using corrosion resistant steel (expensive) for both the panels and chassis. The race variant that has fixtures complies with the rules (except for the trim year which is set to 1996), but the version without fixtures that I’m actually supposed to drive has a different number of gears (not allowed), ABS (also not allowed) and power steering (again, not allowed).
The rules compliance isn’t the only issues; the engine has insane turbo lag while not making very much power, and the suspension tuning is, uuuh, interesting:
Like, I know the Automation graphs don’t tell the full story, but they’re not supposed to look like this. I’m kind of scared of finding out how this thing drives.
Driving: 5/10
First off, the positives: the car is reasonably balanced and doesn’t suffer from extreme understeer nor snap oversteer, and the gear spacing kind of compensates for the extreme turbo lag. The negatives: you know in some cartoons when a car is driving it’s like, bobbing up and down on its suspension? That’s what this car does, and it’s not something cars are supposed to do, much less race cars. Furthermore, the suspension is so soft in general that the car nearly does stoppies when slowing down; aginan, not good. Thankfully Hirochi Raceway is really smooth; on a bumpier track this would be a real handful.
Lap time: ~6,1/10
Because of the jacked-up suspension, the best time I could manage was a 6:08:443 over 5 flying laps.
Costs: 7/10
The car has a manufacturing cost of A$18 900, which while not the best is far from the highest in the lineup, and the service cost of A$616 is actually in the lower end of the spectrum. Not much more to say, really.
Overall score: No
(would’ve been a ~6,35/10 had it actually complied with the rules)
#18: SRR
Design: 4/10
To be bluntly honest: this is not very good. There are only a handful of fixtures on the entire car, the taillights look really odd and out of place, the body choice simply doesn’t suit a 2001 car, and the livery is honestly lazy (like, at least mirror the text properly). At least it’s not a literal “three-fixture wonder”.
Engineering: 5/10
The weirdness continues with a glued aluminium monocoque chassis with partial aluminium panels, which was absolutely not common outside of limited production supercars. The engine, mounted in the rear, is an all-alloy, very oversquare 1000cc I4 with 5 valves per cylinder, which, again, was basically non-existent in the car world, especially in this segment. It does make an impressive 230 horsepower, though. The engine is mated to a four-speed gearbox which was subpar even in the 90s. The rest of the part choices are rather sensible, though.
The tuning, eeh, not so much. While the engine is reasonably well-tuned, the gearbox is spaced quite wide and is geared way too tall, and the brakes suffer from massive brake fade. The real sin though is the suspension:
Having positive camber is a stupid idea, as it reduces grip while increasing service costs compared to having no camber. The front suspension is also way too stiff and will definitely hamper turn-in. I’m guessing this was done in an attempt to curb the massive oversteer the car supposedly has, at least according to Automation, but it would’ve been much better to just make the front tires skinnier.
Driving: 6/10
In Beam, the car handles the opposite as to what Automation wants you to believe; instead of massive oversteer, the car instead has extreme understeer. You really have to enter corners slowly to not end up in the sand traps. The gears are miles apart and very, very tall; I don’t think I even left second for most of the time trial. This was also the only car to suffer heavily from brake fade.
Lap time: ~7,5/10
Surprisingly, this car is actually reasonably fast, managing a 5:48:488 over five laps. Far from the best, but considering the tuning issues it’s actually quite fast. I’m guessing most of it is down to the engine power and the fact that the engine layout gives it decent traction.
Costs: ~7,6/10
Despite the expensive chassis materials, the car stays at a reasonable cost of A$17 100, though the service costs are quite high at A$744.
Overall score: ~6,17/10
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I wish I’d had more time to spend on this, pretty sure I was up till 3 in the morning yelling at beam which kept crashing after seeing this competition on the due date fair criticisms though I definitely need more practice tuning in beam. Thank you for taking the time to review it!
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RR cars with short wheelbase and wide track width are a real nightmare to handle. Just from looking I can suggest the following:
- you probably don’t want to use a lot of offset on this config because it increases the car’s propensity to rotate and in a car that behaves like a pendulum under braking and hard acceleration that’s kind of what you don’t want
- having the front tyres be the same width as the rear tyres is the big problem and why you struggled to control the steering. The relative sizes of the contact patch to weight distribution means that the front has way too much traction compared to the rear.
- It’s possible to make the car cheaper by having the tyres be the same size but… as you can see you need to do some seriously wonky things with the suspension. At this point the handling graphs no longer correlate well with Beam, not to mention that turning graph only works for static speeds going in a perfect circle.
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Yeah this was a whole calamity of fuck ups on my end, lmao.
The Production version was pre-existing, and I never checked it against the rules, then I cloned the beam version before the rules were finalised, changed the livery car to match the rules, and not the beam one, and then tuning was a mess.
Oh well.
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Crickets
Really though, just tell us if you need a few more days until you can find some time.
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Next two cars are here; had to think over the scoring a little bit, but I think I have it sorted now. Hopefully I’ll get more reviews written tomorrow.
#17: Alfora Boli 1.0T ART
Design: 8/10
The base design is a typical early 2000s hatchback, with decent proportions, but the livery definitely takes it up a notch, with a stylized team logo, a flashy red and white design and a n g r y h e a d l i g h t s . The aero is a little aggressive (har har) for the performance level we’re talking about, but at least it looks good.
Engineering: 5/10
The car uses a rather advanced suspension setup, with double wishbones up front and multilink in the rear. Despite this, it manages to stay reasonably close to the PU/ET limits. “How?”, you may ask. By using a ladder frame chassis of course!
<disbelief.jpg>
Because of this, the car weighs ~150 kg than other cars using the same body, and is in fact one of the heavier in the competition.
Moving on, the engine is a 999 cc four cylinder with a turbo, made entirely out of cast iron and with a SOHC-4 head and VTEC YOOOOOOOO, making approx. 230 horsepower. Speaking of the turbo, the tuning is… strange. Both the compressor and turbine are very restrictive, and in an attempt to compensate for this the boost is cranked all the way up to three bars. Just by dropping the boost to two bars and upping the turbine size a couple notches I was able to free another twenty horsepower. The weirdest decision has to be the stupidly high redline; peak power comes in at 7700, and at 8700-8800 the party is basically over. Despite this, fuel cutoff doesn’t happen until 10 000. Like, why?
As for the trim, the biggest concern is definitely the brakes. While they’re strong enough, the brake have wayyy too much rear bias. I can’t imagine slowing down to be much fun. Other than some oddities such as the unnecessarily tall final drive (no, I’m not going to hit 278 kph on the straight) and active suspension (doesn’t do anything except cost money and add weight), there’s not much to complain about.
Driving: 6/10
The good: it has good turn-in despite the weight, the corner grip is nice, the gearing works alright once you get off the line.
The bad: the brakes, the brakes oh and did I mention the brakes? The rear brakes are WAY too overpowered and it’s very easy to lock the rear wheels which inevitably results in the car spinning out of control. You have to be extremely careful when slowing down, which doesn’t help when you’re trying to set lap times.
Lap time: ~7,1/10
Despite the handling…difficulties, I managed to get down to a time of 5:54:549. Not the worst, but I could probably have done much better with a more sensible brake setup.
Costs: ~6,4/10
The price comes out at a whopping A$20 700, making it the second most expensive car in the entire competition. The service costs are more sensible at A$664, but sadly it doesn’t help the score much
Overall: ~6,58/10
#16: Ishiiruka MP-2 Track 2k3
Design: 6/10
There’s definitely some effort put into the design, like using multiple fixtures for the head- and tail lights, making custom bumpers using fixtures instead of just using the ones integrated into the body and a reasonably complex livery. Unfortunately it just doesn’t come together, with really odd proportions - especially the taillights and side mirrors - and it looks like the graphic designer went home when he got to the rear wheel well. I’m, but I can’t give a higher score when the rear reminds me of a SsangYong Rodius.
Engineering: 7/10
The chassis is a rather standard affair: treated steel panels, galvanized monocoque chassis, transverse engine. What is a little more unusual is the double wishbone front suspension due to the width it takes up and the issue with the struts being where the half shafts should go, but there were some cars with this setup (notably the Honda Accord) so I’m not going to score on it. What I am going to score on though is the engine. Not only does it have a DOHC head with only two valves per cylinder which essentially nobody used after the 1970s, but it’s made out of cast iron while the block is aluminium, which is a terrible combo; just look up the Chevy 2300 if you want to know why. On top of that it only makes barely 130 horsepower which is just pitiful.
Moving on, the trim setup is mostly decent, with the only obvious issue being the stupidly wide gear spacing; first gear tops out at only 46 kph, making it essentially useless. There’s also oddity of using adaptive dampers even though they don’t matter in Beam, but whatever.
Driving: 6/10
On track the car completely falls apart (figuratively, not literally); while it’s not leary or unpredictable, it suffers from massive understeer and is incapable of carrying any corner speed; it was the only car to not break 130 kph in the first turn. The brakes are alright, but they cannot save the score.
Lap time: ~5,6/10
Due to the lacklustre cornering grip and absence of power I couldn’t get a better time than a 6:16:847, which is by far the slowest of the bunch.
Cost: ~8,5/10
At a price of A$16,500 and with a service cost of around A$510, the Ishiiruka MP-2 is one of the cheaper cars on the grid; sadly, it does not make up for the lacklustre on-track performance.
Overall: ~6,70/10
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This is quite a detailed review format you’ve chosen. How many cars do you have to review?