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!