Remember when I said that BMW has three cars eligible for Gr. 3? Well, that's surprisingly debatable, actually, seeing as the M6 GT3 comes in two liveries with slightly different lights between them, and are therefore technically different cars as per traditional PD car count bloating logic. Heck, according to Car of the Week's tame Otaku, the 2014 BMW VGT should have been a Gr. 3 car to begin with.
And really, why wouldn't it be a Gr. 3 car? While BMW's successful Group 5 racecars in the 70s may have been cited to have inspired the silhouette of the 2014 BMW VGT, the car itself bears more than a striking resemblance to the 2 series BMW eventually unleashed into the world in 2015, and can even be interpreted as a "M2 Gr. 3 Race Car", sporting flared arches, air dams, carbon aero bits, and a roll cage over the road car. As far as specs and numbers go, the BMW VGT has just 33HP (25kW) more and 10 kilos (22lbs) less than the 2011 Z4 GT3 "we" tested two weeks ago, packing 541HP (403kW) at 6,700rpm and weighing in at 1,180kg (2,601lbs), and they even produce the exact same amount of downforce of 350 front and 730 rear if the arbitrary units of downforce this game uses can indeed be interpreted this way, while also coming default with Racing Hard tyres and a sequential 6 speed gearbox like any other Gr. 3 car. The only reasons I can see as to why the BMW VGT isn't already in Gr. 3 is that the car's power and ride height of all things oddly cannot be adjusted at all in this game, which makes BoPping this car impossible, not to mention it will scrape on anything but the smoothest and prettiest of paved tracks. Still, in a game that has taken a topless Golf and neutered a 873HP, 875kg, AWD Peugeot VGT to shoehorn into Gr. 3, what's unlocking the two sliders in comparison to those aforementioned crimes against motorsport?
As the numbers might suggest, the VGT car has a slight edge in overall pace in comparison to the Z4 GT3 when the latter is ran as–is without applying BoP, ranging from 0.7 to 1.5 seconds depending on track from what I could tell running the Z4 against the rest of the crew. Trust me when I say that all of that is down to the straight line speed advantage of the VGT, because it can be quite the feisty box to wrangle around a track. The torque... table, is such that you have peak torque from near idle at 1,900rpm to about halfway in the rev range where the power curve overtakes the torque table, which makes the rear end of the car rather pokey out of corner exits, and I have no idea why BMW obsesses over an artificial tabletop torque "curve" over a more natural feeling climb. Maybe it makes sense in the real world, but in GTS, I've just never been able to get used to it, either in the M4, Supra, and now here in the VGT. The alignment of the tyres do feel like there's potential left on the drawing board, as the front end isn't as keen as I'm led to believe a short wheelbase sub 1.2 ton car with a 50:50 weight distribution shod with racing tyres should slice into a corner at low to mid speeds. At high speeds, the advertised downforce of the car seem to do nothing perhaps due to the fault of the tyre alignment, requiring drivers to brake markedly harder to navigate high speed corners such as Eau Rouge and Blanchimont of Spa in comparison to bona fide GT3 and Gr. 3 machinery that can much more easily cruise past those fast sweeping corners while barely losing any speed.
The most glaring Achilles' Heel of the VGT however, has to be its lopsided gearing: 1st and 2nd are almost unusably short, barely allowing drivers to hit 100km/h (62mph), and 3rd feels completely lost in its own universe between 2nd and 4th. As noted by many of us during race day, "2nd gear is a death trap", because the large gearing difference between 3rd and 2nd when you downshift results in a rev climb so high on downshift that the spike in engine braking is more than capable of breaking grip on the rear tyres in an instant. I think drivers are much better served avoiding 2nd entirely and just using the abundant torque of the engine to lug the turbocharged car out of low speed corners, which does mean that you lose out on engine braking helping to rotate the car into a corner. Downshifting into 2nd requires as much meticulous planning and pussyfooted approach as conceiving a baby, not just because of the aforementioned rear tyre and fender destroying tendencies, but also because attempting to downshift into 2nd using "normal" racing car instincts just results in you blowing up the engine. What do you mean I can't downshift into 2nd when I'm doing 120km/h?! Bruxelles of Spa is comfortably a 1st gear corner in GT3 cars, and I'm approaching redline in 2nd in the VGT? The rest of the car is mostly fine, but the gearing really did give me that sense of, "did no one test drive this before releasing it?" vibe that is rife in the land of VGTs. Even though its performance and specs are close to those of Gr. 3 and GT3 cars, the gearing alone is enough to make me immediately dismiss the car even if it were eligible.
Overall, the car looks great, sounds amazing, and it has a lot of potential as a racing machine when set up right and if given the chance to be relevant. Still, the lack of an interior is something I find personally aggravating, and I do wish it at least came with a reverse light and much more prominent turn signals up front. I don't like how it drives however, but it's not nearly bad enough for me to hate the car, which I think is a huge achievement in itself given that it's a BMW and a VGT, both of which are so easy to associate antagonism with. As the now mysteriously banned TonyJZX might say, I'm "ambivalent" towards the car.
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