Just checked for real. I will post open disclosure out of principle. Make of it what you will.
Y’all know me, I would never put quality into interior unless I had to, and even then, I would try to avoid it like the plague 
1 Like
well, just hope @abg7 put some consideration on final review draft on that especially when comparing to others. then again he said comfort and drivability isn’t really priority which weird if you say that my car interior is a disappointment
@strop
i have same strategy on interior except on safety which i carry from my experience from BRC, bumping entertainment and interior only make the price mark skyrocketed faster than anything. putting sport and premium are the best strategy for prestige/perfomance approach at this point
There’s only one principled justification I can offer for this: the consideration would have to be something like “did the car allocate sufficient budget towards its performance? If not, then how well did its road manners and livability shape up?”
Let’s go back to the original rules:
Huh. I can’t remember where I saw the “40 comfort, 40 drivability” bit. Must be in a subsequent post. Either way it’s true, judging from this text alone I did expect to lose out heavily with either: “the comfort is way subpar compared to everything else I drove” (which is what I usually get, because you should harden the f*** up 
), or “this car is really hard to drive, I think I would die if I tried to drive it like it’s clearly trying to get me to.” But, well, that hasn’t happened yet. Don’t get me wrong, exceptions are perfectly okay if they’re exceptional but it should be clear why. It could be as simple as saying: “sure, the interior of this car is a bit spartan and this is definitely a track car/land-speed record production machine poorly disguised as a road car, but with THAT much more power and THAT much faster around the track the penis-compensation factor was through the roof, and for that alone I was tempted… not because I have a small penis”.
You don’t have to disclose your penis size, of course. I’d never ask you to do that.
2 Likes
i’m a little bit miffed that you call my car too track focused because of the power it has, but it’s tuned for comfort. it has a 67 rating or so.
and you pick @strop’s car for short listing BECAUSE it’s quite track focused.
that is some shoddy consistency there @abg7
6 Likes
/actual review 
Meanwhile
Quality Basic Infotainment > The usual Luxury HUD Board Computer System and Leather Sport Seats.
Actually, that IS just a sliiight bit inconsistent, so have to agree with @JohnWaldock and @strop. Sorry, @abg7
Might also be a bit butthurt since a sunroof is apparently more aesthetically prestigious than a T-top, because if you remove that ‘scoop’… that’s how you’d get a sunroof with the way the fixtures are 
→ Actually, tastes can differ greatly, and we all should keep that in mind. Heck, I even find the newest gen Prius quite awesome aesthetically!
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for love of god, how on earth you love their transmission stick?
what???
wWHAT?!?!?!?!
nothing was said about transmission… or schtick
Simple, I haven’t looked it up yet.
Looking at it, the positioning is weird, and it’s quite small. Fortunately, there’s nothing I need to compensate for 
I might have to make a picture to actually point out just why I find anything on the Prius 
Hands-free phone system? Have a nice cup of [smartass]get the fuck out[/smartass]
As in Mercury, all GG top tier hypercars have two audio speakers which are capable of playing music but are really there for audio alerts to accompany the projector for the HUD. All of the prodigious amount of tech points I sink into that goes there. There’s no stupid in-car entertainment or iPlay or whatever the new bluetooth system is. I mean you can plug a USB or a phone in… for telemetry downloading.
Yeah, I build very expensive track toys. I don’t think I ever pretended otherwise
okay yeah, dafuq you been smokin’ bro?!?!?
5 Likes
Guys, guys… I have a feeling you have become a bunch of whiners and are nitpicking the reviews like crazy, just because this guy have a rich history of getting on your nerves.
For instance; yes nowhere did he said comfort is the key but if other cars that he likes are more comfortable than yours tough luck.
Look strop had almost random round (come on my car was kicked out because it looked Swedish) and we all enjoyed it. Maybe abg7 doesn’t need to be in fictional character to do some randomness
anyway, here is me bitchin’…
The gearing is quite similar to what is seen on modern day Porsche’s. A bit longer first few gears, 6 usable and one strictly overdrive for comfort and economy.[quote=“abg7, post:4401, topic:6447”]
Interestingly, while the front brakes use cast-iron rotors, the rear brake rotors are carbon-ceramic items. I suspect Smooth was trying to get as close as possible to a 50/50 weight distribution.
[/quote]
That and trying to get rid of fade without oversizing the discs or sacrificing aero.
Oh and I refuse to talk about reliability issues at more than 70 engine reliability 
woohooo let’s see the final 5!
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The Prius is an awesome car 
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I certainly won’t say anything to deny allegations of ‘forum karma’… but for my part I’m trying to remain as impartial as possible, which involves not acting in a manner that invokes any conflict of interest. Which means I have to support any reasonable grounds for protest against inconsistently favourable treatment of my entry.
The main difference was that because I’m well attuned to how people can interpret things differently and this is even murkier when it comes to subjective criteria, I was very keen to emphasise the subjectivity (and arbitrary criteria) where it applied, from the outset, through to the results (and yes, this especially includes your otherwise legit but extremely unfortunate submission of a Swedish homage to a Danish client ). Here, as I said above, variances in impressions can be explained but they do need to be acknowledged and mentioned in a way that gives people the impression that yeah no you’re not trying to sweep inconsistencies under the carpet.
twin turbo ls swapped would have been a awesome car indeed
I appreciate the writing you’re doing for the reviews, and they do seem pretty good so far. Just a couple minor things I noticed:
You seem to mention that my car runs on “Super unleaded” when, on my side, it runs on 95 Premium. Also, you mention that you are “disappointed by the average quality of the lightweight sports interior and luxury infotainment suite”, and go on to describe it as “cost cutting”.
Beyond the lack of quality sliders (+1 interior and 0 infotainment), I fail to see how this is “cost cutting”. It was meant as more of a compromise between weight and comfort, if anything.
But yeah, good enough reviews so far. More than I could be arsed to do anyway 
3 Likes
CSR26 Reviews and Results, Part 4
29 cars were entered in this round, and to be honest, I had a field day reviewing each of them. Some of them, like the Sofa and Vapour, were absolutely horrendous in every way; others, such as the Taipan and Buffalo, were not attractive enough to be finalists despite their performance. There were even a few cars (such as the TwoFourtyFive and Socala) which looked the part, but sadly didn’t have a drivetrain befitting of a hypercar. In the end, from 29 cars, my shortlist eventually consisted of just five outstanding machines: the Ventnor Bambino, the Solo Lightning SM V8, the Smooth Keelen GT, the Pragata Prima 1, and the Gryphon Gear Jormungandr. I deliberated for the next few hours on the final finishing order, but it was very tough indeed considering the caliber of the finalists. So I had to recap the pros and cons of the top five.
The Bambino may have been underpowered, with just a twin-turbo V6, and should have had a carbon-fiber tub instead of a steel space frame (although I was surprised that it would have remained under budget if it did - just), but made the most of what little power it had, and in fact wasn’t the slowest car around the test track, although it was the slowest finalist. What really sealed its place among the top five, though, was that it was the most comfortable, and that plenty of quality points had gone into the body, chassis and fixtures. It was also beautifully understated, though not to the point of blandness. On top of that, it was the least expensive and most economical car of the five finalists. One question remained, however: could a relatively sensible supercar really compete with a few unhinged hypercars, or would it just be out of its depth?
By comparison, it was easier to make a case for the Keelen GT. Yes, I was aware of reliability issues caused by the combination of a stratospheric redline and an undersquare engine, but it was the only normally-aspirated car in the top five, and also the only front-engined one as well. It was, without doubt, the most conventionally beautiful car in the whole field, and had a weight distribution closer to 50/50 than anything else in the test. Certainly, the Keelen GT put driver involvement first and foremost, and incredibly, I could happily live with this car on a daily basis. But what about the other three cars, which were on another level of performance in comparison?
The Prima 1 was a scorching performer, but unlike the Jormungandr and Lightning, it had much less turbo lag, which made it far more tractable in daily driving. As I had stated in my earlier review, however, the interior and infotainment system should have been better built, although this is understandable given that Pragata wanted to save some weight. I also found the Prima 1 to be almost as beautiful as the Keelen GT. Clearly, the bar had been set very high indeed.
Incredibly, the Lightning proved to be even more extreme. In terms of performance and styling, it was much more extroverted, and capable of turning heads everywhere for all the right reasons. It could also deliver white-knuckle thrills every time the boost built up to its maximum threshold. However, its rock-hard suspension made it very specialized indeed. And while using a standard infotainment system from a mass-market car helps save weight, I wanted something more advanced than that. Still, few cars this side of something from Gryphon Gear are as unhinged…
…and speaking of which, their entry, the Jormungandr, looks and drives like it came from another planet. It may be purely rear-drive, and was even more challenging to drive than the Lightning as a result, but the extra power made it the fastest in a straight line and around the test track, thanks to the most powerful engine of the bunch. It wasn’t as comfortable as the other finalists, though, which meant that using this vehicle on a daily basis would be even less likely than with the Lightning. However, as the most prestigious car in the top five, I would be stared at whenever I drove it, for better or worse. With the recaps out of the way, I had only one thing left to do: decide the final finishing order.
Given that my dream car needed to be usable on a daily basis (even if only just), the Lightning and Jormungandr were, somewhat surprisingly, the first finalists to be cut; after further deliberation, I had finally realized that they were actually too extreme for daily use, and that my sanity would be stripped away very quickly if I tried to exploit their performance envelopes on the road. The Keelen GT was the next to fall; some slight concerns about reliability prevented it from finishing any higher, but it deserved its place on the podium, since it sounded and drove as well as it looked. Yet, surprisingly, this was even more true of the Prima 1, which offered most of the Lightning’s performance in a more user-friendly package. In complete contrast, the Bambino, proved to be the lovable underdog of the round: underpowered compared to most of the entrants here, but still fast enough to mix it up with the big boys, and with plenty of comfort to boot.
After three days of testing, followed by several hours of determining and judging the finalists, it all came down to my final decision. It was an extremely difficult one to make, considering the merits of the Prima 1 and Bambino, but I could not declare a tie. So, after many hours of deliberation, the winner of CSR26 is…
…
…
…
…
…
…the Ventnor Bambino.
I was originally going to award this round to @Denta and the Pragata Prima 1, until I realized that a modern supercar should have build quality commensurate with its price tag. In that regard, the Prima 1 just fell short, and that’s why it takes second place. But that doesn’t take anything away from the fact that the Bambino deserved to win this round as much as the Prima 1, if not more. Understated yet attractive, comfortable enough to serve as a daily driver, and more frugal than most other supercars and hypercars, yet fast, nimble and exciting enough to put the driver on the edge of his (or her) seat every time, Ventnor’s supercar is a true giant-killer. And so, after the most difficult car-buying experience in my whole life, I chose to buy a Ventnor Bambino.
Congratulations to @BobLoblaw, the winner of CSR Round 26!
Many thanks to all the users who submitted a car for this round. Special mentions go to @thecarlover, @strop, @AirJordan, and @Denta for creating true world-class hypercars. Now, I will wait to see what rule set @BobLoblaw comes up with for the next round, assuming he doesn’t pass on hosting duties. I have to admit, though, that this is the first round of CSR I have ever hosted, and it could be a long time until I host another round, so hopefully I will have improved my writing style by then.
9 Likes
Thanks for the round! Admittedly caused some heat, that’d might actually be down to the theme in hindsight. Many would like to pride themselves of building the most prestigious, prettiest and most performant super duper ultracar there is, while expectations actually differed. If the round was about econoboxes, it might’ve been a bit more casual
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Wow, I took a gamble with the V6 and it paid off, I’ll have the next round criteria up shortly.
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The Car Shopping Round 27: Municipal Decisions
Setting: The year 2000, in the city of Tatum Heights.
The Tatum Heights City Council has just approved a vehicle renewal millage with the goal of replacing several dated vehicles in their Police Department. At present the city is using a fleet of older Police Cruisers due to limited budget. Our newest Police cars are three 1991 Petoskey Gran Romeros which were picked up at a large discount since they were going out of production. Our goal is to replace as many vehicles as possible within our budget, but also to make sure that they are improved over our present fleet. Our vehicles currently consist of:
Two 1978 Petoskey Romeros
Five 1980 Petoskey Gran Romeros
Fifteen 1985 Petoskey Gran Romeros
Three 1991 Petoskey Gran Romeros (Identical to the 1985 model year only these are in better condition since they’re newer)
The Millage has granted us an operational budget of $250,000 to use towards acquisition of new Police vehicles. This means you will be balancing quality vs. quantity as our goal is to replace as many cars as we can, however also to make sure we have decent cars to use. We will be testing the cars close maneuverability as well as durability and ability to hold up in a pursuit. As mentioned above, the City of Tatum Heights has had to deal with very restrictive budgets and despite this millage, that is still the case today. Therefore not only are we looking for good cars, but ones that have relatively low service costs as well.
Here is a rough breakdown of what I am looking for:
Must have at least 4 doors.
Driveability is a factor as the cars should be forgiving when driven hard.
Sportiness is not on the top of my list, so long as the car is capable in a pursuit scenario.
Comfort is also on the lower end of priority within reason, we don’t need luxury cars, but on the other hand our boys in blue do work long shifts and would appreciate something that is at least decent.
Practicality and Utility are also factors to consider as the cars will need to carry hardware at times (barricades, speed cameras and such)
Reliability is a major priority for both engine and the car in general. With most of our fleet being considerably old, breakdowns are more common than we care to have. The more reliable, the better.
Safety is also a high priority in case our officers are involved in a dangerous pursuit.
Fuel economy also sits high on the list as fuel costs for municipal fleets is a considerable expense.
Environmental Resistance is something to be considered as we may end up hanging on to these new cars for a while.
Individual vehicle prices will be based on 10% markup.
I will leave the rest to your judgement, just bear in mind that Tatum Heights (A fictional community, unless there’s one that actually exists somewhere) is a suburban community with access to the freeway. Think about what would be involved in maintaining a fleet of vehicles and base your designs off that.
For reference I have included the Gen II Gran Romero Interceptor (1985-1991)
El Rushbo - Gran Romero.zip (109.0 KB)
Deadline is Saturday, December 3rd.
Entries must be named as follows:
Car model: CSR27 - username
Car trim: any
Engine family: CSR27 - username
Engine variant: any
Good luck to everyone.
18 Likes
Sweet! Couple of questions right away:
is 4 doors a minimum? I mean, are we allowed wagons/SUVs/vans if we think they’ll be good?
As far as comfort, would there be any room for a stereo within that or should that be avoided in place of police equipment? Or would you count the stereo as the quality of the police computer/radio (or something of the type)?
Edit: Also, does the trim/variant have to be in 2000, or can we make something older to save money (but get a stats penalty from the older tech).
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