Car of the Week — Week 140: Mazda Roadster Touring Car

There are certain cars that seemingly define the market in which they reside, that everything else gets compared to and benchmarked against, such as the 911, Golf, and 3 Series for example. The Mazda Roadster however, seemingly stands alone both in its market and history books. While itself an imitation of an extinct class of cars, the Mazda Roadster has become so successful both critically and commercially, it seemingly created an inimitable market of itself, and could even be credited for giving Mazda's current identity of being the "fun-to-drive" car company, picking up the torch from the Rotary powered FD RX-7 and JC Cosmo, both of which were abysmal failures commercially, fun to drive in their own rights as those may have been. To sing the praises of the Roadster would be like trying to count the water molecules in the ocean, but chiefly for a racing game, its cheap, down to earth, fun to wring out, impeccably balanced, straightforward and endlessly engaging package lends itself well to grassroots racing events, as engaging and exhilarating to drive for both the amateur and professional alike. And this is proven by how the Roadster is the single most raced model in motorsports. To not include a Mazda Roadster Cup Car of some variant in your racing game then, would be an omission as glaring as excluding the Nürburgring; you simply can't call your software a racing sim if it lacks either.

Curiously, the variant of a Roadster Cup Car we got in the e-sports focused simcade, Gran Turismo Sport, is based off the first generation Roadster of the current four, chassis code NA6CE. In pre-release builds and trailers for the game, and even remaining in unused assets in the product we now have, there exists a fourth generation, ND Roadster with an obligatory carbon wing, lowered suspension, roll cage, and with tow hooks that look to have been lifted straight from the factory fresh, race ready NR-A spec, though oddly missing its bucket seats and harnesses. Residing in N200, it was clear that this ND Roadster was as much show as it was go, but with it being ultimately cut for unknown reasons, that's all we'll seemingly get to know. It is very possible that at one point, Gran Turismo Sport's take on a Roadster Cup Car would have been an evocatively sleek and modern ND Roadster, but instead what we wound up getting is a rehashed NA Roadster Touring Car from 2010's Gran Turismo 5.

The Roadster Touring Car as it appears in Gran Turismo 5.

The cut ND Roadster N200 (Source: Gran Turismo Wiki)

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, however. With flared arches, even more carbon bits, a roll cage, bucket seats, racing harnesses, and fire extinguishers, it certainly looks more the business than the "ND200". While Polyphony Digital could've easily copied and pasted the car as-is from GT6 to GTS, there are several substantial changes made to the car in its transition from the PS3 to PS4, bringing the pop-up headlight flaunting, chrome door handle wearing, Eunos badge bearing rust bucket of a NA up to date and e-sports ready while giving it a new flame spitting attitude: Power is upped from 197HP to a whopping 205 (147kW to 153), and to help keep your neck from snapping in the corners and straights, the car is given more aggressive bucket seats and 6-point harnesses for both the passenger and especially the driver, who has a seat so all encompassing all you'd see is fabric if you turned your head. Also, yes, you read that right: it has a passenger seat! And turn signals! Reverse lights! Even a license plate! Hence why it's put in N200 just like the "ND200", together with the rest of the production, road legal cars in the game. Just... pretend the whine from the straight cut sequential gearbox is a supercharger whine, and uh... pray it doesn't rain... and that the roads are smooth as mirrors, because the car has no roof, and the suspension feels to have been stiffened even further, now being able to wear even Racing Tyres with no perceptible pitch or roll. Six other paint choices join what used to be the sole offering of Dark Green with White Stripes, not to mention you get to repaint it as many times as you want at no cost! All this work to bring the Roadster Touring Car up to date, and yet the price has been more than halved, from 167,000 Credits down to just 80,000! It'd almost excuse the updated car not having a fuel gauge in its revamped racing display, which is now finally able to read up to 9,000rpm, which the engine always had been able to do. But who cares about a fuel gauge? It's road legal! (I think!) You could utterly humiliate the poor chap and their Atenza diesel in an N200 race easy!

With the Roadster Touring Car's reintroduction into the series in Sport, one has to wonder if the floodgates have been opened for other cars in the Touring Car DLC pack, such as the RX-7, GT-R, and even the CR-Z and Prius Touring Cars could possibly be reintroduced sometime later in Sport's life span, or even in Gran Turismo 7, seeing as these DLC cars seemingly have the prerequisite poly count for the current generation of hardware, quite a feat considering these were put on sale in 2011. It's not at all often that we get a fictional car returning to the series, especially one that's so relevant and realistic, and the unmistakably retro look of a NA Roadster offers a very fitting nostalgic look at the franchise a decade ago, brimming with ideas and ambitions, perhaps to a fault. I do quite miss these fictional "tuned" cars, especially when afforded with the ability to customise them further, be it with actual tuning options or a livery editor, and it's such a shame that these cars have seemingly taken a back seat to VGT cars and e-sports. It's why I'm personally so disappointed to find that the GT Auto logo on the back of the roll cage has been erased; it'd have been such a throwback, akin to seeing Grand Valley East's layout as the Course Select icon.

Okay, enough of the old man whining. How does it drive?

With the Roadster being such a staple both in real and virtual racing, it is, of course, really plucky and agile as one might expect a race prepped Roadster to be. The stiffened suspension setup of the car now feels equally happy to wear racing slicks as it is for economy rubber, which is a feat that is quite simply magic. Its taut suspension makes weight transfer as immediate and no-nonsense as a full fledged racing machine, immediate and intuitive in equal measure. Despite its looks, it doesn't have race destroying downforce, fully encouraging closely fought racing in one-make races that is popular in all areas of the game, be it Daily Races, FIA, or even private lobbies (like ours!). All this attention, with all its history, and Japanese heritage means that the Discover section of the Roadster TC is absolutely flooding with liveries, from classic Gran Turismo Racing Modification replicas, the omnipresent 787B and Asparadrink liveries, Itasha, Mad Mike Red Bull drift machines... Hell, because it's a road legal car *wink wink*, you can even do up your own street special and role play a tuner! The possibilities with this car just seem so endless, and you can seemingly never go wrong with it. After all, "Miata Is Always The Answer", no matter what question you're being asked.

...or can you go wrong with a Roadster?

It goes without saying that no car is perfect. It's just that, with a Roadster, you'd really have to stuff your grey matter where your butt cheeks are to screw up something so simple and perfect... which the good folk over at PD seemingly have. Yes, it's lightweight and stiffly sprung, which makes the car every bit as darty and jumpy as a Gr.4 machine. Yet... somehow, the car just doesn't seem to stop as well as one might think a car weighing 795kg (1,753lbs) would, especially on the higher grades of rubber this thing can take without complaint. Over the course of our weekly meet, I never got used to how much distance the Roadster TC needed to slow for a corner. It has roughly half the power and two thirds the mass of the Cayman GT4 Clubsport, yet the Roadster can barely brake any later than the GT4 machine when shod with the same racing rubber. Sure, maybe if you're adaptive enough of a racing driver, you can learn when to brake with it and use trackside markers as a guide, but over the quick succession back-to-back races of our weekly meet, I simply could not believe or adapt to how long the Roadster TC needed to stop, overshooting many corners. I can't stop seeing the claustrophobic bathtub of an interior of a car I'm driving, the signature squarish pop up headlights staring back at me, and I expect the damn thing to stop like a Roadster should, but it simply doesn't!

Perhaps the wide spread five speed ratio and the accompanying lack of engine braking is partially to blame, but I think I have a more plausible theory as to why the Roadster just doesn't seem to have the stopping power its petite silhouette and racing car bits promise, and it's down to the alignment of the suspension. I usually only whine about the default suspension setup for racing cars, as I think those have less of an excuse to handle horrifically, and have more unforgivable consequences for doing so, but the Roadster TC... let's face it, it's a racing car that should never have been put into N200. It's every bit a racing car as a Gr.4 machine, just with less speed. I think the alignment of the wheels simply isn't right, as the car squeals its inside tyres before the outside during any turn, and the tyres themselves seemingly let go very suddenly with little in the way of warning or transition, nor do they feel like they've anywhere the bite that they should've. Honestly? Whichever tyre you fit on the Roadster TC feels almost like one and a half compounds less grippy than whatever you've put on as a result of having too much camber and toe in them, which can go some way in explaining why it doesn't stop like I think it should. Couple the misaligned tyres with its anorexic mass, and the Roadster TC will comically oversell any small bump or contact from its competitors, the likes of which would make Hall of Famers like Shawn Michaels and The Rock blush.

The drivetrain of the car is... equally unfortunate. No, I'm not just talking about how it lacks power; that'd be like saying water is wet. Rather, the fact that it has a five speed is just woeful, and the tall final gear ratio of the car certainly doesn't help move things along. As a result of all this, it can barely wheelspin from a standing start with its default Sport Hard tyres, fifth is completely unnecessary around most tracks, the car can't even hit its drag limited top speed of 241km/h even at the never ending home straight of Toukyo East, and you'll need to shift it at varying points for optimum acceleration, depending on which gear you're in, balancing mechanical advantage with the torque curve of the engine. In no other car did I feel the surge and recess of acceleration when shifting gears as much as I did in the Roadster TC, which means that you'll need to be very cognizant of which gear you're in and what speeds you're doing, which some may argue makes it a very involving, technical drive, but personally I just find it annoying as it really highlights the car's lack of power instead of masking it, not to mention the task of learning when to shift it isn't exactly intuitive, either.

For some odd reason, the car's newly fitted shift lights for Sport, and the game's HUD are both horrendously calibrated, filling and flashing respectively at around 8,200rpm, which is 800rpm below the redline of the car, and with a wide spread five speed ratio, 800rpm can mean a difference of 22km/h (14mph) in fourth, a big difference no matter who you ask. It's a small annoyance you'll need to learn to adapt to as a MT driver, but for AT drivers, the poorly calibrated in-game HUD means that the AI will upshift the car too early on acceleration, harshly punishing them for not changing cogs themselves.

The Roadster TC isn't just fussy with its gears in accelerating, but also for cornering as well, as I find that you'll need to damn near blow up the engine on downshifts just to get the rear end to rotate into a corner. For many corners taken below 60km/h (37mph), I find it imperative to take a quick dip back down into the first for the car to rotate into the apex of a corner, before quickly upshifting into 2nd to power out of it, which is another way the Roadster TC demands to be driven on MT. For some reason, the Roadster TC has an overly stable and tight rear end that's difficult to coerce into cooperating, at least for my tastes, and its utterly lopsided, Daihatsu Midget II-esque weight distribution of 54:46 F:R really doesn't help with the understeer, which is all the more astounding to behold considering the differential of the car I find is way too lax, meaning that the understeer is almost certainly down to the alignment of the tyres, seeing as there isn't much downforce on this car. Even with the accelerator pedal pinned to the floor and all the weight over the rear, turning the steering wheel too hard will invite the rear end out very quickly as the diff sits idly by watching, almost mimicking the road car's lack of one, and when it starts to slide, the diff is similarly content with sending what little power the engine sputters out to the outside wheel, converting all precious momentum into useless over rotation and smoke, meaning that hanging onto precious revs in this tall geared, naturally aspirated unit in the middle of a corner via spinning the wheels in a well managed drift is but a dream, and as you attempt to correct the car mid corner, the shifting weight can often cause the car to snap suddenly between over and understeer. This car literally has issues with both under and oversteer in all the wrong places, and I've had to set my Brake Bias all the way to the rear at +5 for it to rotate into an apex semi willingly under braking. To me, +5 BB currently feels like it should've been 0, with ±5 from there to cater to more driving styles.

While I personally find a lot wrong with the car, that's not necessarily to say that it's a bad car, per se. It's still very competitive in N100 with BoP applied, it's still an undisputed top choice for one-make races, all while looking amazing as it does all that. It is a very good car, a buy that's more a requirement in this e-sports focused title than an optional investment in my opinion. And why wouldn't you, at a mere 80,000 Credits? At the end of the day, it's a Mazda Roadster. It could stab me in the stomach and spit in my face simultaneously, and I'd still smile and say I love it. But I think it's because I love it so much that I hold it to loftier expectations in my head, and want it to be so much better. I want it to stop better, I want it to turn better, I want it to be better balanced. Hell, I even want it to drift better. I want it to feel more cohesive a package, rather than just a bunch of mismatching racing items thrown onto it with no thought of how those components complement and communicate with each other. After all, with a car that has established for itself and its manufacturer such a strong niche and reputation as the industry standard, is fixing something as trivial as the shift lights too much to ask? To me, the Roadster TC just doesn't have that Jinba-Ittai feeling I associate with Mazdas; only a feeling of itai sometimes. It doesn't have much ease and intuition in it, it doesn't "talk" to me, it doesn't make me smile when I drive it, nor does it make me want to drive it on whim. It simply doesn't feel like a Mazda to me, despite the modern emblem on the retrofit wheel staring straight at me every drive. Remember that part where I said you could even role play a tuner with this car? You might end up actually having to get your own hands dirty with the sliders to get this thing to drive like a Roadster should.

Especially when it had been specially revised for an e-sports focused title, the Roadster Touring Car can ill afford to have this many faults, as this game has no shortage of cars that would make for excellent one-make races. Cars like the Renault Sport Mégane Trophy or the Audi TT cup are much more of a requirement to own as they're the "meta" cars in Gr.4, while being their own one-make racecars as their names imply. Hell, the aforementioned Cayman GT4 Clubsport, a personal favourite of mine, is Handling Nirvana, a Bible on how to make a car handle delightfully, intuitively, playfully, yet precisely enough to make for amazing racing, while looking and sounding impeccably. Against these better engineered and more relevant machines, the Roadster TC doesn't hold a candle in terms of refinement, and criminally, even in the fun factor. I mean, sure, the Roadster costs a fraction of what those Gr.4 machines do, but if that's enough of an excuse for it to suck, then is that to say that the Roadster's only selling point is in its cheapness? I don't believe that. I believe it's something that can offer the most exhilarating of driving experiences at any price point, especially when race prepped. It's hard to tell if its shortcomings are deliberate to test the driving skill of its drivers, if it was built with GT5's expansive tuning options in mind, or if it's just good old fashioned laziness on PD's part.

The Roadster Touring Car doesn't quite suck, but as a fictional, bespoke cup car that's garners so much attention in an e-sports focused title, it has no excuse to not be better, either.

Here's a video from 2 years ago when I was actively racing in Sport Mode.

...and here are two excellent races from this week's meet!

Car of the Week — Week 139: McLaren 650S Gr.4

The direct successor to the company's reemergence into to supercar market, the MP4-12C, is logically called the 650S. I don't suppose "MP5-13D" or whatever other fax machine catalog part number has quite the same ring to it. The "new" car shares 75% of its parts from the old, and is therefore still a 2 door, rear mid engined supercar with a 3.8 litre twin-turbocharged V8 sending power to the rear via a 7 speed DCT, with a "entry level" version of it called the 625, a convertible version, and a "LT" version of it, called the 675. Situated below it is the "entry-er level" McLaren, the 570S: a 2 door, rear mid engined supercar with a 3.8 litre twin-turbocharged V8 sending power to the rear via a 7 speed DCT, with a "entry-est level" version of it called the 540, a convertible version, and a "LT" version of it, called the 600. Above the 650 is the P1: a 2 door, rear mid engined supercar with a 3.8 litre twin-turbocharged V8 sending power to the rear via a 7 speed DCT, a track-only, non road legal version of it called the P1 GTR, a road legal version of the non road legal version of the road legal version of the car converted by an independent, aftermarket specialist, denoted with adding extra numbers to its name.

The specific car in question for this week however, is the 650S Gr.4 (the green car in the photo above), a fictional car in a fictional category based on a real category in a real driving simulator that seemingly has more arcade fans than sims. As an entry level racing category, Gr.4 cars are faster than the road legal versions of the cars, acting as a mid-ground between the road cars and the full fledged racing machines. As such, the non road legal, race prepped car produces only about 58% of the road car's power, while weighing more with the current BoP applied. The 650S Gr.4 borrows more than heavily from the 650S GT3, a real car in a real category slotted into a fictional category in this game, with pretty much a copy-and-paste interior from the GT3 car. But not the exterior, though; because while you only get one livery for the GT3 car and eighteen coats of paint with no livery to choose from on the road car, the Gr.4 car bridges that gap with six colours of one livery to choose from.

a-are you still with me...? Quick, where's my picture with the cute anime girl on it?!

プレイブルー　ノエル仕様 by Chinese_yuna Livery Link

So yeah, as you can probably tell, McLaren cars confuse the ever loving bebuddha out of me. Competition against the established Italian brands in the exotic supercar scene is much needed in my opinion, but I never really "got" what they're supposed to be about beyond competition existing simply for the sake of existing. They haven't the graceful appearances or the soulful songstress capabilities of a Ferrari, nor do they have the balls to the wall attitude, in-your-face attention grabbing presence of a Lamborghini. They've always struck me as a "we're just here to go around this track faster than anyone else" kind of manufacturer, which is roboticism I more readily associate with the Germans than the British. I guess the fragility of their cars gives them some flavour? Thankfully, I don't much have to try to figure out what's what this week, because the 650S we're putting on the track today is a racing car. So, is it the fastest thing in like, EVARGH?

Haha, of course not. It's Gr.4 post-2020. If you aren't in a loathsome FF in a Gr.4 race, you're obviously not in it to win it. However, when put in its RWD and MR company, the 650S is certainly... "rather brisk", I believe is the British way of terming it. While I didn't get to spend as much time with everyone during this week's meet, I did at least manage to sneak in my personal favourite, the Cayman GT4 Clubsport, and the formidable NSX Gr.4, a favourite in Gr.4 racing prior the BoP changes that made FFs overpowered. Even in the slipstream of the 650Ss (650S'? 650Ses...? AAAAHHH), I was barely able to do any more than simply keep up with the McLarens, which was a bit of a surprise in the Honda, given that it's also a fictional car built from the ground up to be a Gr.4 car, also arbitrarily blessed with seven gears like the McLaren, in contrast to the maladjusted Porsche with gears long enough to make the far fetched claim that it's the single best car in Gr.4 ever and anyone who disagrees needs to be shot on sight.

(Also, the NSX Gr.4 should've been this week's Car of the Week...)

To drive however, it's a little... blah. One might expect a rear mid engined racing car to possess the sharpest of turn ins and perhaps a bit of a cheeky rear end, but the 650S Gr.4 feels like it has the wheelbase of a 675LT with how... *ah-hem* overly stable it is. To illustrate, the 650S Gr.4 is one of the very, very few RWD cars in the game where I'm forced to set the brake bias towards the rear, just to get it to roughly imitate how a MR racing car should rotate into the apex of a turn. This problem I think is down to the downforce imbalance of the car, having too much in the rear relative to the front, because I think the understeer becomes more prominent at speed, such as at Kyotou. Even at lower speed corners however, the front end just feels numb and the tyres don't feel like they've much bite to them, in contrast to the aforementioned NSX and Cayman, lively and lovely at any speed. Also, the M838T engine, despite being heavily detuned from the road car, annoyingly retains its torque curve pixel for pixel instead of becoming flatter with an variable air/fuel restrictor, meaning that this turbo 3.8L V8 is all mid range shove and nothing else anywhere else. I personally find the best result shifting just before 8,000rpm, or about a whole thousand revs before its Honda-shaming 9,000rpm redline, which is just before halfway into the rev counter of the game's HUD. Yes, that means it bogs on standing starts as well.

Capable for sure, especially in the right hands. It's just no fun at all to drive, nor is it the fastest thing ever. The latter is usually easy to forgive in a car, but a McLaren? A racing car McLaren? That's like saying your perfume's only shortcoming is that it doesn't smell nice. At this point, what even is the point?

Car of the Week — Week 138: Honda RAYBRIG NSX CONCEPT-GT '16

Having adopted DTM rules wholesale in 2014, Super GT's premier class of GT500 has turned from exciting clashes of different ideologies and methodologies from the best of Japan's top three manufacturers into a one-make race with only different drivers, tyres, and body shapes. Under the barely recogniseable bodies of the Nissan and Toyota's flagship performance cars are all the same turbocharged Inline 4s sending power to the rear. It doesn't even take leaving the paddock to ascertain this: an R35 GT-R would make the exact same startup and engine noises as an RC F, and if you lined them up on a standing start with traction control engaged, they'd all similarly bog. At this point, you might as well be watching a Mazda Roadster Cup. There's no dirty air to destroy the racing there, and you can even walk into a showroom and buy a car that largely resembles what you're seeing on screen, instead of just the top three automotive giants of Japan duking it out in a hollow condom measuring contest.

Hidden somewhere in the middle of that drab chaos of GT500 however, lurks a car that, while singing the same turbocharged Inline 4 tune, has its heart in a different place. Replacing the HSV-10 as Honda's representative in GT500, the NSX Concept-GT is not only a mid-engined car in a category that stipulates that only FR cars may compete, but it's also hybrid assisted too! As the name and model year of the car may have already given away, the NSX Concept-GT was fielded even before the road going car's design was even finalised, much less put up for sale to the general public, bending yet another rule of GT500 which states that the racing cars must be based on a production version the public can buy. With the NSX's many special exceptions to the rules, about a third of the field in GT500 breaks the rules of GT500. God GT500 is stupid. Just go watch GT300- *cough* oh sorry, we're here to review a car, not the category it's in. It's just really difficult to divorce criticism against a car from the category it's built to race in, you know? Especially when said category is simply a thinly veiled one make race with different body styles.

As far back as GT500's inception in the Japan Grand Touring Car (JGTC) days back in the mid nineties, NSXes were subject to mass, aerodynamic, and air intake restrictions unique to them just for being mid-engined, and that tradition continues with the NC1. Immediately obvious is the mass of the NC1 when compared to its contemporaries; at 1,049kg (2,313lbs), it's 29 kilos (64lbs) heavier than the rest of the field set to 1,020kg (2,249lbs). Also, happily for the programmers over at Polyphony Digital I suspect, the car we have in Gran Turismo Sport, the #100 RAYBRIG car driven by Izawa Takuya and Yamamoto Naoki, made do without the hybrid system due to supplier shortage, leaving propulsion of the silhouette car solely to the mandated 2 Litre Inline 4 producing 603HP (450kW) and 614.9N⋅m (452.1lbf⋅ft) from high octane racing fuel. And so what we end up with is a GT500 car that is, when all is said and done, only slightly different from its competition in that it's mid-engined, but weighs 29 kilos more. Is slinging the engine behind the cockpit worth the extra mass of a small child in said cockpit, though?

Not if you're serious about winning a race, no. Even with its original specifications unmolested by Balance of Performance currently, the 2016 NSX has never been top dog in Gr.2, shared with the MOTUL AUTECH GT-R and the au TOM'S RC F of the same year, also with their specifications untouched currently. Gr.2 races are just a shortened way of saying, "bring the 2016 RC F or GT-R, whichever one you have the better looking livery for", with nary a NSX to be seen in either qualifying leaderboards or in the actual races. Why is that, though?

In actuality, I find that the NSX doesn't lag very far behind its FR competition in a hot lap scenario. We're talking like maybe a tenth or two per two minute lap or so, even in my very unprofessional hands. What really dooms the NSX I think is the fact that online races involving Gr.2 always has accelerated tyre wear and fuel use, which makes its extra 29 kilos sting exponentially more when it comes to race longevity in addition to not having the hot lap pace of its FR competition. Perhaps it's because MR racing cars are all horrendously represented in this game (see: the 458 GT3 and Huracán GT3), but I find the NSX Concept-GT to be overly crippled relative to the other two cars in Gr.2. It should at least have equal hot lap pace with the FR cars, if not better in exchange for a hit in longevity, right? That's how the vastly more varied Gr.3 cars seem to be balanced, at least. While the viability of individual race cars tend to vary in this game with changing BoP, history thus far has shown us that Gr.2 is seemingly centred around these 2016 GT500 machines, and the NC1 has always had this mass handicap relative to its FR brethren, with no sign of bucking the trend in the foreseeable future according to my murky crystal ball.

Granted, I'm not very good with these high downforce racing cars, and so I think you might want to take my subjective opinions on the car with a grain of salt, or seek out a second opinion. I personally find it a little difficult to put weight over the front tyres. Initial turn in is good, as with any MR car, but I do struggle to get it to bite into deeper apexes, and corner exits can be a similarly hairy affair, especially out of tight hairpins such as that of Suzuka's, due to the Inline 4 having to make 300HP per litre of displacement, which can only be achieved by turbocharging the nuts off the engine up to an asphyxiating 3.5 Bar (50.7psi) (according to an uncited Wikipedia claim...) — which the game's HUD can't even properly display — resulting in a fiendishly peaky and moody engine whose personality can flip on you in an instant like a switch. Its mind boggling aero may let it clear 130R flat out on even worn tyres, but it destroys racing more often than not, and its suspension has to be set up stiff as bricks to withstand the competition-crushing downforce, meaning the car will skip and slide like a fish out of water on anything but the flattest, prettiest and neatest of paved racetracks. In fact, even the wide open, fictitious racetracks of Gran Turismo Sport, seemingly built to facilitate racing across varying classes of cars, make the GT500 cars feel precariously out of their comfort zones, a predicament that seems to hit the NSX harder because the MR car is already markedly more twitchy than its peers to begin with. Tracks like Dragon Trail and Maggiore for example, where the rumble strips are as much a part of the track as the paved asphalt, will greatly upset and unsettle the NSX. To keep it pointing in the direction the driver intends to head towards then, requires unreal reaction times that can only be provided by steering feedback telepathy, the fidelity of which is completely beyond my 6 year old Logitech G29's and/or the game. That's my racing driver excuse, anyway. It utterly baffles me how everyone else is making these things go round a racetrack without incident, much less having a race, because I never know what the hell the front tyres are doing or going through. If the car isn't turning as much as I need it to, does it need more speed for more downforce? Should I be backing off the throttle to let the front end bite like a normal car? Are my wheels even in contact with the road or in the air? How and when do I transition with trail braking into a corner? I genuinely have no idea until the tyres let go and they scream bloody murder, which happens all too quickly with little to no warning or buildup. And if a rear wheel dips over grass or the kitty litter, the chassis of the car will very quickly match the rotational speeds of its engine as well.

Again, it's very difficult to divorce criticism against the RAYBRIG NSX from the category that mandates it so tightly. A lot of what I said about the RAYBRIG NSX Concept-GT applies to the MOTUL AUTECH GT-R and au TOM'S RC F as well. As a racing car in such a drab category then, the only measure of whether it is good or bad is simply down to whether it's competitive or not, and it simply isn't. There are endless videos and streams of top tier Gr.2 races devoid of the NSX in the 3 year and counting lifespan of the category to attest to that, nor does it have the iconic looks, intoxicating howl, and blistering authenticity of its 2008 Epson counterpart to compensate for being utterly useless. Unfortunately for the NC1 GT500 NSX, where it resembles the road car strongly is that it simply isn't any good on a racetrack, seemingly destined to play second fiddle to the GT-R, and no amount of tasteless flared fenders, tacky aero bits, or fancy Itasha liveries can hide that fact.

Car of the Week — Week 136: Honda S660 α '15

The Honda S660 is a pure driver's car.

Let's be honest here, you aren't buying this Kei car for the reduced tax in Japan; at nearly 2 million Yen base (about 18,150 USD at the time of writing), you aren't saving much money even with a JC08 fuel economy of 21.2km/ℓ. And if you actually bought the only model that deserves your money, i.e. the 6 speed manual, you're going to want to keep this 658cc turbocharged three cylinder near it's 8,000rpm redline anyway, like any good Honda. You sure aren't buying this thing for practicality, either, because the view out the front of this thing feels like wearing a helmet two sizes too big for your head, the view out the back will trigger complex PTSD of staring down the sight of a rifle for some, the boot looks to be custom made to fit a tiny Ukulele and nothing more, and you get a grand total of ONE drink holder in the cramped cabin of the car. You sure as hell aren't buying this for the speed; a base model Honda Fit Hybrid with seven more drink holders would make the S660 feel like an S60 around Tsukuba, a tight, technical track often used to test low powered cars. And unlike a Porsche or a Ferrari, you can't even buy this thing just for the street cred of owning an expensive, exotic sports car either, because no potential life partner is going to take a look at someone driving an MR car with a 2,285mm (90in) wheelbase and think to themselves, "yes, I do think this person will give me the sense of security and stability I need in a relationship! Let's make babies together right this instant!"

The only, only reason you buy an S660 because it is --BLEEP--ing brilliant to drive.

Tony described the handling characteristics of the RX500 from Week 133 as such: "The handling is wonderful. It feels like it has no vices. The steering is perfect, it has all the good bits of an MR design with no downsides. When it breaks it does so gently and you can mitigate it." I think he either misspelled "S660", or just hadn't driven one yet, because the way he described the RX500 sums up my thoughts on the S660 perfectly. After having driven a Honda Beat, I was utterly convinced that there is no way, no way in hell a MR Kei car would be something that's even safe to drive, let alone fun. Yet, not only is the S660 superbly planted in any situation, but it will also outrun even the most expertly driven of Beats despite having the same power on paper and weighing more. This car... I can't even describe it. I don't claim to even understand it. But it is flipping magic both in the things it can do and the way it can make you feel.

With a 45:55 weight distribution, this rear mid engined car is shockingly balanced. The front end slices into the apex of a corner without any ambiguity or hesitation, and the rear end never threatens any shenanigans. Despite this, the rear end of the car can be wonderfully cooperative with rotating the car if you do decide to be boorish with your engine braking and steering inputs, while always being within an arm's reach of returning to the straight and narrow — almost literally. I legitimately have no idea how Honda engineers have managed to imbue a short wheelbase MR car with such confidence inspiring, intuitive handling. I know it has 195 section tyres in the rear. I know it has McPherson Struts all four corners. I know it has astounding chassis rigidity. I know it has some brake vectoring thing. I know it's supposed to have some flip up spoiler that doesn't work in the game. But even considering all this, it's still hard to wrap my head around this little package of what can only be described as magic. The edges of the car are so close to you as a driver, they feel as intuitive and easy to understand as a tool right at your fingertips. This car is so easy to place, so fun to pry and burrow through small gaps in traffic with, it's almost like a motorcycle, and it encourages almost the same recklessness as one as well. It's such a toy, this thing.

The engine, despite losing out on the traditional purity of being Naturally Aspirated like Honda's best sports cars, is nonetheless a treat to experience and operate. Sure, the sound is muffled a bit, but it makes peak torque of 104 N⋅m (76.7lbf⋅ft) at lazy 2,500rpm while making drivers work it hard for its peak power of 63HP (47kW) at 7,000rpm, resulting in an engine that, unlike the high revving NA engines of Honda's bygone era, is a peach to operate in city commutes, while still abiding by the good parts of tradition by loving to be kept near its redline on the track. As with any Kei car, the S660 is very much a "momentum car", not just because it has no power and therefore emphasises minimising braking and preserving speed through corners via making use of millimetres of the track that seemingly didn't exist for other larger cars, but also because how you can almost use the speed to help the rear end rotate into and out of corners without much worry of it breaking away from you. To this end, Honda has helpfully fitted a large, centre mounted godsend of a digital speedometer, to help you monitor every sacred km/h you can hang onto for each corner better than any analogue speedo could. The tachometer however, is a little weird in the car. It starts flashing at 7,000rpm, which is as aforementioned, where the engine makes peak power, but that's also a whole thousand revs below the redline of the car, meaning it'd take some conscious effort to get used to and becoming very intimately familiar with the exact note of the car's 8,000rpm scream if you don't want to keep your eyes glued to the tach to leverage the much needed mechanical advantage of a lower gear. In Sport Mode, the tach glows all red to signify aggression and power, but it just feels at an odd clash with my favourite body colour of the car, Premium Beach Blue Pearl, an extra cost option on the already costlier α trim of the car, which lets you spec very welcome leather seats in the car seemingly designed to complement said paintjob, while providing much needed breaking up of the otherwise drab black interior.

Being the top of the line α trim, the S660 in this game also comes with carbon fibre accents on the steering wheel, dash, and door cards. Must-spec contrasting metallic silver and black wheels, along with any paint scheme involving hue, are also on the list of reasons why the costlier α trim is the only one worth getting, because the β spec of the car is only available with Premium Star White Pearl, Premium Mystic Night Pearl, and Admiral Grey Metallic, only the last of which isn't an extra cost option. What a ripoff for a car that needs to stand out in bright colours. For the Honda geeks out there, Carnival Yellow II is perhaps the colour of choice, a direct reference to the hue offered on the Beat some 20 years ago. In fact, I kinda wish Honda went full 90s NSX with the colour options on the S660, because I don't think an Estoril Turquoise Pearl II or a Newer Imola Orange Pearl would look amiss on this car, especially with the contrasting black cloth top just like the NA NSXes. Perhaps even a Championship White...?

Honda S660 - Mock Type R by XSquareStickIt Livery Link

S660 - Mock Type R (Colours) by XSquareStickIt Livery Link

Unfortunately, the cloth top cannot be repainted or have decals applied on them, unlike that of the Beat's, which means Modulo replicas aren't possible in this game, which is a crying shame. Also, while I'm nitpicking, the windshield glass of the car feels almost... too clear? Too transparent? If you race this thing with the sun in the sky, it looks so bright outside it's almost as if the entire world outside your tiny car is being set ablaze. It's such a shame, because Kei cars usually have excellent visibility and are such a joy to race in cockpit view. But not only is the S660 difficult to see out of in this game, but what little you do manage to see only serves to sear your retinas anyway.

Honda Beat cockpit view (Screenshot, not photo mode. No edits):

Honda S660 cockpit view (Screenshot, not photo mode. No edits):

Aside from small nitpicks like the tach, the ripoff options that should've been standard, livery editor shortcomings, and oddly enough, the windshield of all things, I really don't have anything bad to say about the S660. It's magic. I mean, sure, it's so slow a Honda Fit would outrun it. But it's such a tightly knit, rewarding drive, the likes of which makes an ND Roadster feel like an overweight, sloppy pig in comparison. If the low power output is off putting to you, Option will twincharge the 658cc engine to produce over 200PS, for the sort of crazed person who wants to test the limits of magic. If I had ¥3.2 Million (21,168 USD at the time of writing, ouch) too much in my bank and a 895 x 1215 x 1020 mm gap in my garage that already has my weekday needs catered to, I would buy the swansong version of this car, the Modulo X Version Z, in 0.660 of a heartBeat. And why wouldn't you? With Honda announcing that they're ceasing production of yet another one of their sensational drivers' cars, this time with a dark future of electric cars looming over the horizon, this really might be the last time Honda makes a true drivers' car, and it's highly unlikely the Kei car will have a future hell bent on big, heavy electric cars whose only selling point is their 0-100 sprint times. Forget the kidney grille M4, ignore the twitchy, tail happy Supra, and get one of these. Let Modulo or Option loose on it if you have to. Just snap one up while you can, for the love of all that can be considered dear and holy, because the S660 is nothing else but a pure drivers' car that needs to be celebrated and remembered.