Actually about what I expected. I’ll keep it in mind for when I decide to revisit the Gunslinger in more modern years. M-AWD will be kept, but I’ll definitely be adjusting to match what was said here.
As for the stereo, yeah, I probably could’ve gotten away with a cheaper radio, but I didn’t want to feel like I was giving too little car for too much money. Still, I’ll keep it noted for the revisit down the line that a more standard stereo package will be just as easily appreciated if the car isn’t trying to murder you.
I’ll listen to the game’s recommendations next time when tuning Mid Engine, because I really have no clue what I’m doing with that layout. As for rear camber increases, also noted.
Still, always nice to hear from one of the masters of the mid-engine layout. At least I know the things that need to be tweaked for future mid-engine cars to make them less… hazardous to drive.
Sportiness, driving pleasure, refinement, high-end performance, design, handbuilt… This is the description about the Montes Amagosta, one of the best GT cars of the History.
This version of the Amagosta, the MRP biturbo, it features a low-lag and high-revving biturbocharged 5.8L V12 handbuilt engine, with 651HP at 8200RPM, and 644Nm at 2600RPM, attached to a manual 6-speed MRP gearbox, making an explosive cocktail, mixing high-performance for trackdays, with luxury and comfort for everyday.
The AWD ensures security and increases the mechanical traction and drag…
REQUIRED MODS (from Steam):
-All VMO (a.k.a el chasco) mods.
-All mod wheels.
-NormanVauxhall exhausts.
-Felgen indicators.
-Weasel 918 lip pack.
-Raz Aventador Vents.
I’ll do it since I’ve built a Hyper GT too so I have a point of reference.
The Amagosta is Montes’ latest hyper GT, a fine one at that. If excess can be boiled down to one car this would be it. Why did you use a carbon body? Because we can. Why did you use a V12 because we can. Because we can seems to be defining point of this machine.
And what a machine. On the outside it has the ideal blend of aggressiveness and muscle with subtlety and grace. Although if I’m honest, personally not a big fan of that massive chrome grill and GT wing. Latter kills the subtle and dignified look, while on the former the chrome is just too thick.
And you get to the inside. What an interior! It makes a Gulfstream jet feel like an economy class flight from Rynair, abundant very soft and smooth leather on the dash and seats stitched in such a beautiful shade of black for this model. A very smart interior system too, capable of excellent sound quality and a navigation system that isn’t annoying to use. Sound proofing is excellent too, it is quieter a top end luxury car at highway speeds while still having the distinctive V12 wail when pushed.
And for regular driving, it is flawless. Smooth, comfortable, efficient, quiet while packing enough punch to deliver smiles when you want it to. A truly peerless GT. However, it is honestly quite lackluster on the track. On the edge, the car understeers quite severely, not helped by it’s all wheel drive system and rear ward traction bias. Despite highly effective carbon brakes, the car feels very out of it’s element when taken to the track. No lift at high speeds, but not nearly enough down force for it to be a track weapon. The all wheel drive is also more of a liability at high speeds, the car struggles to accelerate at the top while not offering increased cornering speeds.
Also a few design choices warrant some headscratching. Why if the car was to be lush and luxurious, would you put a carbon fiber monocoque? Seems to counteract it’s purpose completely, as the car with a full carbon body still dials in at 1654 kg. Also the semi slick tires simply kill regular road drivability especially when wet, forcing it to rely on assists and the driver to be very very careful. The very hard suspension setting seems to be rather counterproductive as well.
Again, no other car will provide the blend of refinement or comfort and speed that this car does. The big big problem is, it is just quite frankly not a good track car. 7:27 on Green Hell is barely quicker (4 seconds) than a (I apologize for abit of self promotion, but they’re in the same bracket performance wise) Dimension Hypero, a car with slightly worse power to weight ratio and tires. Montes should simply focus and providing peerless luxury and speed and not focus on track capabilities, especially in it’s price bracket, which creeps dangerously close to the likes of the KHT Eau Rouge, and that car is 40 seconds quicker on the Nurburgring.
A peerless tourer, an outclassed track car, the Montes Amagosta is like a 747 trying to be a stunt plane. While with enough effort, it is doable, Montes has gotten so many things right with the car that they should emphasize rather than try and cover more bases.
Likes:
-Excellent interior and sound proofing
-High fuel efficiency
-Punchy torque curve and turbo
-Smooth engine
-Manual Gearbox
Dislikes:
-It really should stay away from the track
-Rough suspension
-Semi slicks are awful for daily use
-Understeers hard on track use
Suggestions:
-Make it the greatest GT, not a GT1 racer. This thing is the most refined luxury machine I’ve seen.
That’s about it really. A superb machine that’s simply trying to be so much at once.
(I’ll be trying to avoid comparing to real-world cars from now on. As for me, I’m playing it as not being owner of Storm Automotive, so yeah, this car’s a bit out of my league. However, I will not be having my character, Luke, review this car. As much as I somewhat want to, I feel the main review covered everything that has to be said.)
Another day, another car in the driveway to review. This time it’s the SSP Nine-50. I’ve heard a little about this car before, and it’s supposed to be a really powerful hypercar. To be honest, I’m a little nervous, as while I’ve driven some high-horsepower things to review them, this is my first time dealing with upper triple digit horsepower figures. After all, I’ve not been able to contact any of the big companies to get some bigger horsepower numbers here. But enough about other companies, this is about the Nine-50.
The first thing that hits me is the almost-Bogliq blue paint-scheme. On some cars, it’s a little jarring, but here, it’ll knock you out, and in a good way. Honestly, if this car were red or yellow, it’d lose some of that sharpness, that unique factor that draws you in. The second thing I noticed is the aggressive profile. This car looks a bit mean, a little angry. It looks like it wants to outright kill the tires while blowing the doors off of the competition.
The Nine-50 is low to the ground, and the lowered line of the front lights and grill makes the car appear even lower. The hood is modestly ventilated, which makes sense given the 7 liter V12 hiding underneath. This modest ventilation continues down the side, with a vent near the side-marker turn signal, as well as numerous air passages near the side exhaust.
Near the rear wheel arch, there appears to be more vents, which I can only assume are for brake cooling. The ones on the roof, I’m still puzzled about, although I suppose they do have a function.
At the back end of the Nine-50, there’s a thin LED strip as the main tail light, with short vertical turn signals, and short horizontal brake lights. It appears that SSP decided that placing the reverse light and rear reflector in the middle of the diffuser was the best idea. And it kinda works, actually. Speaking of diffusers, this thing is massive. In contrast, the rear wing is rather small. However, if it works, it works.
Inside the Nine-50, it’s equally impressive as the outside was. These bucket seats are extra soft, but they still have enough firmness to hold you in place through the twisty stuff. In the middle of the car, a modest six-speaker sound system sits above the seven speed stickshift. Good thing I’m comfortable with rowing my own, because that’s a lot of gears. Turning the radio on and connecting my phone, I’m pleased to say that the radio’s actually pretty average. Not a bad thing, given that this car on the outside screams to the world “I’m a race car.” I suspect when I turn the key that I’m going to never hear that radio again.
Wrong! Amazingly, this car makes 950+ horsepower while staying quieter than a mouse fart. I suspect it could be quieter if it had standard intakes instead of performance, and I suspect the race exhaust headers also help punch up the noise on the big engine, but, it’s not bad. And the V12 has a good strong note to it. Revving it in the driveway, I can almost feel the valve lift change at just past 5000 RPM.
So, I know what everyone wants to know, how does it drive?
Well, it’s a little bit scary, but not entirely unexpected. You see, it’s 900+ horsepower, but SSP decided that the Nine-50 was going to fire all of this through the high-quality transmission, electronic differential, and out through the rear tires. Which is why, even with the street-legal semi-slicks on it, the Nine-50 will still burn the rear tires if you’re too harsh on the gas. Even with the traction control trying to keep you from doing so.
Now, I will admit, it took me a lot of time to get up the courage to drive this car on the street. First, I had to wait for it to quit raining, because heck no, I’m not driving semi-slicks in the bloody rain. I do not want to wipe out in a nearly $200,000 car. Then I had to pick my route to drive on, and even that took a lot of planning. Again, I didn’t want someone else bumping into this very-expensive driving machine. Especially because I still had to return it when I was done.
But, once the rain stopped, and once I had a basic route set up, I got some basic numbers. The Nine-50 will quite happily, with Launch Control active and suspension set in Sport Mode, thanks to the semi-active dampers, blister and burn the rear tires all the way to a 3.7 second 0-60 time. If you happen to be doing about 50, and you feel the need to go 75 for some reason, it’ll do so in a little over a second-and-a-half.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find enough stretch of unpopulated road free of speed limits to see if the 222 MPH top speed was exactly true or not, but I suspect it is, given how happy the car is to accelerate rather quite violently. What I did do was take the Nine-50 to the local drag-strip and pulled an 11 second quarter mile. Which, let’s face it, is seriously fast.
Now, all this power comes at a price. The Nine-50 gets almost 16 MPG on average. But, that’s 16 MPG with 950 horsepower.
Driving the Nine-50 for a week, I’d describe it as pleasantly nervewracking. It’s a lot of fun to drive, and it’s certainly quite capable of handling the power, and that makes it easier to drive, though it’s not exactly easy to drive. It’s rear-wheel-drive with a lot of power. Despite the luxury grade seats, it’s not super comfortable, but it won’t kill your bottom on a road trip, either. It’s safe enough that you’d likely survive the wipeout at 222 miles per hour, although no one ever wants to find that out the hard way.
I’d rate my Week with the SSP Nine-50 as an 8/10, and recommend that if you’ve got the money to buy one, seriously think about test driving it.
Pros:
-Very sporty
-Keeps to the traditional F-RWD layout
-Safe
-950+ Horsepower
-Decent fuel efficiency for the amount of available power
Cons:
-Semi slick tires means it’s more suited to the track than the street.
-May have performed better with a sequential gearbox
Neutral:
-Good styling that matches the type of car
-Very good performance
(Note: I know, 8/10 seems a bit low, but… In all facts, it’s actually really good. To get the perfect 10/10 from me is going to be really, really hard. I wouldn’t even give it to myself. 8/10 just set the bar with a high-performance two-door coupe.)
Excellent writeup on one of the craziest front-engined supercars I have ever seen! Reminds me of the Aston Martin Vulcan (and the V12 Vantage, and the One-77), for some reason…
Here is my Mott Works Apollo rcracer11m - Apollo.zip (158.7 KB)
It comes in 3 trims, BE which is the base trim designed to be cheap and efficient, the ES trim which is supposed to be economical and sporty, and the SP trim which is supposed to be very sporty.
Time for me to finally contribute something to society.
The year is 1982, and I’ve finally got enough money from my small car business to splurge on a nice luxury car… What better way, I figured, then to check out with the people at Storm Automotive, and their Sentinel, new for 1982, because it’s the eighties, and everything is new!
Now, Let’s talk about the looks… After all, with a car this prestigious, it should draw a crowd with it’s styling. Now, to be honest, and in a year where everything is new, Storm boldly declare to show a car with a classic style. Pre-War, I would have guessed. The type of car Stalin would arrive in. When I first laid eyes on the car, I really wasn’t too fond of it… The dual headlights and the dual grill remind me more of a truck than a luxury car… And particularly when you stare at it head on, it looks a bit dinky, even with the winged badge… But as I followed along the sides more and more, I could start to get a feel for the look this car was going for. Classic, Dainty, Elegant. Quite nice. I think the pillars in particular give the car a good shape. Up Unti- JEEZ THAT REAR END.
Okay, maybe I overreacted, but holy hell, did the manufacturing accidently order eighty billion too many rear lights, and the designers had no choice but to use them up? 3 or 4 lights would have looked just fine, and from a distance, so does this. But when you examine the fine details, it’s just a mess. Overall, classy. Not what I would personally purchase, but very nice. Not too shouty, not too subtle either.
Inside is a similar story. It rather follows the style of the Outside, which Is something I usually look for. Consistency is important, and it didn’t disappoint. Although, that’s where the compliments end. It’s a bit dissapointing for a car of this class. Yes, it is comfortable, but it’s certainly not gonna knock you out with it’s amazing style or luxury… It’s certainly high end, but I don’t feel like there was much attention to detail here. Like they where given 2 Hours to design the most luxurious car possible. Big deal? not even kinda. However, what IS a big deal is the Driving experience. This car should be an easy glide around town… And it’s not. It’s pretty miserable at low speeds actually. The throttle isn’t linear at all. You’ve got a few inches of pedal travel where little happens, but then if you tap it just a teeeny bit more, the car lets out a growl, and the whole body lurches forward, throwing all the occupants with it. Pretty miserable. Why? I wondered. Well, As I read the specs, this car has a 3.6 Liter DOHC Inline 6, with a turbo stuck on it. Turbocharging? on a luxury car? I started out my company with a turbocharged car just a few short years before this, and the technology has evolved since then. But that was a SPORTS car. Not a luxury car. I could only wonder why… Turbos are for boosting performance, and In a car like this, it would be perfectly acceptable for a giant engine with a terrible power to displacement ratio, and just be an easy drive. Look. I get it. I sound like one of those whiners in the 50s who claimed the Prince needed a bigger engine. (And It Did) But the power isn’t the issue here. It’s the delivery of power, and the rwd model is just a mess, and the tires don’t help. 175s. Front and rear, and steel wheels. Sigh that’s acceptable when you’re a little econobox with 110 Horsepower. If you nail it in the RWD model, even with the Fancy diff and 4 speed auto, you’re gonna spin this thing around. The AWD fixes these issues, and offers .1 Less MPG. If you’re gonna get this car, get the AWD one, no buts. My only complaint is that the lurchy diesel feeling hasn’t left.
Overall, What are my thoughts on this car? It shows promise. It’s not what I could call a prestigious car, but it’s snazzy, and pretty sleek. It’s got a pretty nice power curve, and an even nicer torque curve. Very flat. Much to my liking. once you get it rolling, and feels especially nice on the highway for doing pulls. But it feels unfinished. Very unfinished. They could stand to put more attention to detail in the interior, make the turbo softer or slower, or even ditch it altogether.
Well, I know it doesn’t excuse it, but it was built by the same factory that built the Duke, and was right at the end of the ultra-high-horsepower era.
As for the rear styling, I will admit, I was experimenting with an alternate style that I also felt didn’t work out.
If someone wants to review my mid 60s family car - the Braconash, feel free. Microwave - Braconash.zip (106.6 KB)
I’m not sure if it exported both the automatic and manual versions. If it exported both, then take your pick. If it only exported the manual one, then of course do the manual one.
Original post: MicroDesigns - Braconash/Hyperhatch - #39 by Microwave
Thanks in advance!
but I would love to see some compacts.
