W215 Huracán '15

While I've come to feel little more than downright disdain toward the vast majority of Italian cars we've tested here in Car of the Week, even someone like me can't help but to find the Nyanborghini Purracan irresistibly cool. The story goes that Canadian musician deadmau5 wrapped his Ferrari 458 Italia with a Nyan Cat livery, going as far as to replace the Ferrari badges on the car with Purrari badges. Now, of course, Ferrari being Ferrari, fiercely protective of their brand image, quickly C&Ded the man, in doing so causing more damage to their image than any pair of pixelated rainbow–farting cats could. And so what's a rich man to do in this trying situation but to buy a Lamborghini and wrap it in the very design that Ferrari was so vehemently against?

https://youtu.be/kAuQJj40PJs

In essence, I think the Nyanborghini Purracan is the single coolest Lamborghini, at least in modern history, because it embodies the very spirit and sentiment that gave rise to Lamborghini as a car manufacturer to begin with: to do what Ferrari won't with a firm middle finger raised. And yes, in case you haven't figured it out by now, this livery is the entire reason why I bothered to choose an Italian car to begin with. I mean, I spent all this time making a livery for my own use, I might as well give myself the chance to actually like the car as a whole, right?

deadmau5 Nyanborghini Purracan by XSquareStickIt livery link (GTS | GT7)

Even before it gets wrapped up in feline shenanigans though, the base Huracán looks really promising on paper! It's brash styling masks a deceptively tiny car, one that can somehow house what I consider to be the idea drivetrain layout for a sports car: a big, but not too big, high revving NA engine mounted rear midship sending power to all four wheels via a close ratio 7 speed gearbox. With the blessing of Audi, this combination of the perfect drivetrain and diminutive body proved wildly successful both in sanctioned racing and production peacocking, with the Huracán GT3 scoring wins at Monza, Daytona, and Laguna Seca, and the Performante holding the (rather pointless...) Nordschleife lap record at one point. It seems to me that, despite the Huracán being the "baby Lambo", the flagship Aventador is only for showboating and reskinning into various other overpriced models, whereas the Huracán is the work bull of the brand that gets called upon when things actually need to get done. While usually the flagship car of a brand represents the very best and distilled essence of a manufacturer, it seems to me that we are yet to give modern Lamborghini a fair chance at an impression here in COTW until we've sampled its darling baby, the Huracán.

Even within the confines of Gran Turismo Sport, a game which ruthlessly distills away any sense of speed from the player, the Huracán is properly "HOLY BALLSACKS" fast in a straight line, even without feeling the g forces, motion blur, or camera pullbacks of going 0–100km/h in 3.2 seconds on its default Sport Hard tyres. Hell, 0–100 feels too shallow a test for the Huracán, because this thing just does not stop pulling until 180km/h at the top of 4th gear. That's right—this 601HP supercar from 2015 feels like it has the first four gears of a 1999 Impreza with well over double the power of a 1999 Impreza, and ripping through 4 whole gears within 9 seconds, each time upshifting as near to the height of the NA V10's stratospheric 9,000rpm redline as one can manage, is just as ridiculous as you can imagine it being. Now, of course, I've sampled cars that pull way harder, from hybrid LMP1s to EV performance cars, but you grow to expect such savagery in a racing machine and harmonise with it, and EVs have none of that drama, surprise, and involvement that the Huracán possesses. By contrast, the Huracán is savagely involving without ever letting you get too comfortable with it, because once you reach fifth gear on a racetrack where it mellows out just a little bit, you'll have other "HOLY BALLSACKS" things to worry about.

Those being the brakes.

For some weird reason, even on the default and strongest ABS setting, the Huracán's front tyres will be pushed to their absolute limit under full braking, even on a dry, level, and smooth racetrack, with whatever road legal compound you fit on them persistently chirping and squealing just with the brakes alone. This of course means that the front tyres have next to nothing left to actually turn the car when the time comes, meaning that you have to come off the brakes almost entirely for this rear mid engined supercar to even start considering biting into a corner. The news isn't much better on corner exits, either, where the front tyres will lift and gasp for air as though they had been forcibly held underwater and asphyxiating the whole time, which doesn't feel too far from the truth. The braking issue might be remedied by shifting brake bias backwards towards the rear, but since a Brake Balance Controller is an aftermarket part in GT7, I don't much want to fiddle with it back here in GTS, since, you know, we're supposed to be testing cars stock.

What this all translates to is that the front tyres are always at their limits around a track, and as such, they are also the limiting factor in everything that you do. Aside from off–track whoopsies, the rear end of the car just doesn't feel alive at all, like a dead carcass just along for the ride like an FF hatch, and I never once had to apply any counter steer in my time with the Huracán. The front tyres being constantly overworked and at their limit in any situation also means that the baby bull is a very "one thing at a time" car; you're either braking or turning, not both at the same time. You're either turning or accelerating, not both at the same time. While "one thing at a time" can be great life advice for some, especially for those suffering with anxiety, it's a pretty awful ethos for a brash, shouty, hard accelerating rear mid engined supercar, for whom the pace is often set by the track and the cars around it rather than its driver. Overall, its cornering prowess, or lack thereof, feels completely disproportionate to its straight line bursts, and after a while, it just feels like I as a driver have to fight the car at literally every turn to get it to... turn.

Some might argue that the whole point of a Lamborghini is that you have to fight it a little to prove your worth as a driver, but because the Huracán never really threatens to actually kill you by spinning out or flipping over, fighting it just to get it to turn like a car ought to feels less like a testosterone filled fight to prove your worthiness against a feral beast and more annoying like trying to get your bratty kid to do their homework. I don't know about you, but if I want to feel like a disgruntled dad, I'd have bought a Honda Shuttle, not a Lamborghini Huracán.

To be entirely fair, the Huracán can corner, it just has a lot of "safety understeer" baked into how its set up, erecting a gargantuan barrier the driver has to overcome each time they attempt to take a corner at speed with the Huracán, making everything else about the car hard to appreciate when then understeer takes priority and dominates your every thought on the racetrack. It'd be too easy to blame Lamborghini's overbearing parents, Audi, for that understeer and the perceived safety said understeer brings, but really? Lamborghinis have been understeering like a house in a landslide without anything resembling a paddle even as far back as the 25th Anniversary Countach. Plus, I took a 2009 Ferrari 458 Italia to race against the Huracán on race day, and to my utmost surprise, the two cars drive almost identically, with a nose that is wont to lift, and the entire experience dominated by "safety understeer". It's a trait that is shared with most, if not all of the modern supercars I've tested here in Car of the Week thus far, from the 2017 Ford GT to the Aston Martin Vulcan.

And so I find myself at an awkward impasse in writing this review, because I don't know what conclusion I can come to for the Huracán. I don't know if it's a good car relative to its contemporary peers or not, because they all blend together seamlessly to offer the same driving experience of "much power, such understeer, wow". It doesn't matter what engine they have, how much they weigh, what they look like, or what their drivetrain layouts are; if they all drive the same, none of them have a distinct trait or a personality of their own that set them apart from the next car. If not for my Nyan Cat livery and the real life story behind it, the Huracán would feel like a 458 clone in this game. I may not like these cars, but from an objective standpoint, are they good? Which would I recommend over the other and why? I can't answer that at all.

Fortunately, I have some friends that sometimes make my desk job easier for me... by making my job on the racetrack way harder.

Here at Car of the Week, I'm not the only one with a darling Porsche I like to whip out unsolicited at every opportunity; Vic has a dung beetle coloured 991 911 GT3 RS he likes to sashay around from time to time, and the last race of the day at Suzuka was one such occasion. On paper, you'd think Vic was sending his Beetle to the Slaughter: it's a whole 110HP down on the Huracán, and while normally only 2kg (4lbs) lighter than the Huracán if you can believe any statistic the Italians give you about their cars, Vic had a few more scones and Earl Greys just before the race to get his car and driver combo to meet the minimum mass requirement of 1,422kg (3,135lbs), the mass of the Huracán according to this game. Also, remember the part where I said that I consider rear mid engine all wheel drive to be the ideal drivetrain for a sports car? The 911's RR layout is easily the worst layout ever mass produced, putting aside forklifts. So can anyone please explain to me HOW THE HELL I got utterly destrolished and humiliated by the 991 during the "race" at Suzuka?

First, Vic gave the whole field a 5 second head start. He then overtook everyone else in the race before hunting me in my Purracan down for the lead. The whole ordeal didn't take him too long, and by the midway point of lap 2, the dung beetle was already getting a very strong whiff of the distinct odour of cat poo. He then decided to start a smoke show by drifting and sliding around, before casually overtaking me at his leisure.

So what the hell happened?

My guess is that Porsche actually made a sports car that can actually handle, when everybody else was too preoccupied with "protecting" their drivers and clientele. Porsche made a car that's meant to be driven, whereas everybody else was obsessed with making trophies on wheels. Porsche will actually let you have your car and play with it too, and they didn't even have to lie about their mass figures to beat some cheaters. Above all else, Porsche has shown me that other car makers have no excuse to not do better; they just choose not to. Armed with that context, I can now confidently tell you that the Huracán is a bad car... at least, in base LP 610-4 form.

Yes. Yes, I'm aware that it's perhaps unfair to the Huracán that we ran the base model against a track focused, hardcore 911 GT3 RS. Perhaps a Performante or an STO would've been a fairer comparison, but oh would you look at that, we only get one road going Huracán, and it's the base model. How convenient.

Even when I actively try to like them, Italian cars just make me mad without fail.

W216 Lexus RC F Gr.4

The RC F Gr.4 is what you get when you throw good parts onto a bad car.

It has phenomenal brakes. It's arbitrarily blessed with a 7 speed gearbox in the same category where Corvettes and NSXes have only 6 speeds. The suspension soaks up bumps and kerbs to the point where they almost aren't felt. The tyres on this car actually feel properly aligned; a rarity in this game. They'll bite on trail braking and corner entry, and the inside tyres aren't the first to give up mid turn. Plus, slides in this car can even be easily corrected with just a flick of counter steer. Hell, I even recall at one point in the game's life when the powers that be blessed the RC F with OP straight line speed. Unfortunately, all that is thrown at a fat, ugly car with a half assed prototype interior and a lopsided 54:46 weight distribution, largely owed to having a hulking 5.0L V8 up front.

The end result is as mixed a bag as they come. Due to the Gr.4 RC F being based on the 2016 RC F GT3 prototype, it not only shares the awkward interior still featuring an out of place clock, but it also inherits the prototype's even more awkward 2nd to 3rd gear shift, which makes the car feel like it choked on its own engine oil. With the gears that close and an engine that peaky, you'll be making that shift many times across several tracks. But, just like the RC F GT3, the RC F Gr.4 is a very neutral, stable, and predictable drive otherwise, one that earns and begets a reckless amount of trust from its driver, and shouldn't require too much time to get to know. The front end bites in wonderfully on corner entry, so much so that the rear end starts hinting at a slide in the tighter turns, helpfully rotating the car as a whole into a corner, and the car even puts down power really well for an FR. But, on the flipside, it does struggle a little with high speed sweepers owing to the heavy front end, and you'll have to make the front tyres scream slave labour to squeeze that cornering prowess out of them. I like my RC F Gr.4 with -1 front brake bias for that extra biting edge into a corner, but I suspect for longer races, that will have to get knocked back a bit to even out the tyre wear front to rear.

I'm tempted to say that the RC F Gr.4 is a good all rounder, a jack of all trades that you can default to if you had to pick a manufacturer for a season for which you're unsure of what lies ahead. The reason I can't say that is that, despite the GT3 cars fitting the bill and the Gr.4 car handling well, the latter is just SAH-LOOOOOOW in practice; I recall Vic of all people driving his RC F Gr.4 being harassed by my Cayman GT4 around Nürburgring GP during Week 205 when we tested the 86 Gr.4. The RC F just couldn't compare to the mid engine menace in the corners, and it's not like it pulled away at all in the straights, partially due to the slipstream it was providing the Cayman. That doesn't sound like much of a knock against the RC F in writing, until you realise that the Cayman is one of, if not the slowest car in Gr.4 with BoP applied in a hot lap scenario; it has much less power and weighs so much more than the RC F with BoP applied. It's essentially a 5 speed toy going up against a 7 speed Kaijuu. That such a thing can more than harass the RC F around a track then, is as atrocious as saying a paintball gun has the same stopping power as an AR-15. Why is the RC F so slow? HOW can it be this slow with those numbers and that good a driving feel?

To be more thorough in my test, I ran the Cayman against my peers mostly running RC Fs this week, and I overtook them all within two laps of Willow Springs before setting the fastest lap of the race. I might have thrown the entire race away, but don't let that distract you from HOW FREAKING SLOW the RC Fs were. It's almost like the "F" in RC F stands for "failure".

It made for some tremendous one–make races, but the RC F is proof that, to make a good race car, it's better to start with a good base that requires minimal work than to throw expensive parts at a bad base.

W214 Mini Cooper S '05

Very rarely even for those who drive many different cars for a living, they will come across that one car that just completely breaks every preconception of how things should be, what can reasonably be expected of a car or a category, and in doing so, unearths every yard stick in their mind, with every car they drive henceforth having to be measured against that new standard, spoiling that blessed person beyond any mere mortal's conception. A Lotus Elise's steering feel, for example. A Porsche Taycan's acceleration, or even a Honda Fit's packaging. When it comes to the way an FF sports car drives, the car that blew my overstimulated, desensitised sim racer mind and spoiled my cynical brain silly was the DC2 Honda Integra Type R, a car so magical that Honda themselves have never really replicated that magical feel all these years later.

I'm here to tell you that the DC2 ITR has itself been DC2 ITRed by the 2005 Mini Cooper S.

Just as vehemently as understeer usually dominates the experience of driving an FF sports car, the driving dynamics of the Cooper S is so unexpectedly fantastic that it could almost render irrelevant the fabled history of the Mini marque. You really needn't know any of the original Mini's successes in rally, how it revolutionised drivetrain packaging, or whether you can steer it from the roof to appreciate this modern Mini, because the R53 generation Cooper S does all the talking for itself without needing to rely on nostalgia when driven on the racetrack—not something many modern cars wearing old namesakes can lay claim to. Despite the sacrilege of being more than double the size of its forebearer, the Bayerische Mini Werke is, in my millennial eyes, in just that perfect sweet spot of both power and mass for a hot hatch; big enough to fit most, pack some grunt, and be seen and safe, but small enough to be chuckable, intuitive, and engaging to drive, before all the modern safety regulations and demand for insane power bloats and neuters cars to where they can no longer offer these sensation of an agile and responsive pocket rocket in the palm of your hand. Almost as if they knew they had to capitalise on that golden moment in history when such a car is possible, BMW fitted a supercharger onto the sporty version of the Cooper, the Cooper S, only for this generation of Coopers, making this week's car a special standout even in the long, ever growing history of Minis.

...which makes the peculiar omission of the supercharger whine in Gran Turismo Sport all the more sorely missed. This 2005 Mini Cooper S has been with the Gran Turismo series since 2010's Gran Turismo 5, but it took Polyphony Digital twelve years to finally give the Cooper S its supercharger whine in 2022's Gran Turismo 7, giving the quirkily styled car a personality to match. Here in GTS though, you'll have to make do with just the rather uninspired sound of the transversely mounted Tritec T16b4 inline four banger, though the extra 54 horses herded by the supercharger are all here and accounted for. The resultant 167HP (125kW) then goes through a close ratio 6 speed manual gearbox to the front wheels, another first for the now big boy, business meaning Mini, which can now bring its 1,180kg (2,601lbs) body up to 100km/h in somewhere around the 9.3 second mark on Sport Hard tyres.

As with any Mini, its acceleration isn't going to set anyone's pants on fire, not unless they had just jumped out of a burning Mazda Roadster. Even with all that gleaming and bespoke hardware, the R53 Cooper S only truly comes alive when it comes time for the supercharger to shut up and the Getrag gearbox to drop some gears. German this car may now be, but the R53 Cooper still embodies the spirit of a good David punching up against Goliaths with little power but much finesse, just as the Queen intended. Chuck this thing into a corner, and the car's four main strengths immediately become apparent, those being its diminutive body, light weight, incredibly direct and talkative steering, and some shockingly stiff 1.5Hz springs to prop it all up with. Despite the car not accelerating fast, the close ratios enabled by the 6 speed gearbox ensures that the engine can be kept screaming at all times, like it naturally wants to, making it sound and feel fast. Backed up by readily available responsiveness and some serious cornering speeds, the Cooper S is not only a serious track toy, but also one that never stops bombarding you with information and requests for your input, making it among one of the most engaging and technical drives I have ever driven here in GT Sport!

What that all translates to is that the car is so easy to learn and such a natural fit that it somehow skips the due process of feeling intuitive and jumps straight to feeling familiar, despite the fact that it was my first time helming one during race day, almost as if I met a younger, hotter version of my high school sweetheart I never knew she had. I'm usually someone who needs a few races to learn a car's idiosyncrasies before I can really bring it to my peers during race day, but in the Mini? I went at them hammer and tong from race 1! Despite our small group representing a range of driving abilities, most races ended up with about 6 cars all within three seconds of each other, a testament to how easy the Mini is to learn and how much it encourages close–knit tussles, a.k.a. the best kind of racecar, certainly better than Formula 1. More than inspiring immediate confidence, the way this car handles brings out the hooligan in every person. During race day, all I could think of were naughty thoughts, like, "Yeah, I can fit into that gap!" "Yes, I can take that hairpin at 120!*", and "hell yeah, I can take that gap in the hairpin at 120!*". I usually feel drained and tired at the end of our ~90 minute sessions, but the Mini gave me so much zest for life that I actually had a hard time winding down mentally after the session, wanting to drive it more! In other words, instead of draining me, driving the Mini somehow energises me!

*For legal reasons, these are exaggerations.

Drawbacks? Mostly just one if you can ignore the irony of an impractical hatch: The Cooper S, despite being the sporty variant of the Cooper, ironically still has an open differential, and it's an irony that will be at the forefront of the driving experience on the track that's quite literally impossible to ignore. It's not a super big deal on the Comfort Soft tyres the car comes default with in GT7, but in GTS where every car is slapped with Sport Hards, the extra lateral gs the car will gladly pull in the corners does transform the inside wheel into a Sports Hard mechanical eraser for road markings. Past the apex of a turn, you could be doing a middling 6,000rpm when you give the Cooper the beans, and well before the corner exit, you would have already smacked the limiter set at 7,000 several times, owing to the inside wheel spinning so fast and bringing the engine to the limiter, forcing a fuel cut and robbing the car of all momentum coming out of the turn. As an example, the car tops out at 172km/h in 4th gear, but you'll be smacking the limiter constantly while doing a mere 160km/h on Miyabi's centre section chicane, taken flat out. 12km/h (~7mph) doesn't sound like much in writing, but in a close ratio box mated to an engine that begs to be revved out and rewards the driver handsomely for doing so, it's completely counterintuitive that I have to take corner exits a gear higher simply to prevent the limiter from cutting in, which, while mechanically disadvantageous, does work out to be much faster. I don't even want to imagine this thing on anything other than the smooth, dry racetracks we ran. I mean, come on, an LSD isn't sorcery; Mazda can fit it on a Speed3 and a diesel Demio, why can't BMW on a sporty version of a sporty icon that has a history of winning dirt rallies and revolutionising drivetrain packaging?

Open diff or not, one thing for sure isn't open for interpretation: the R53 Cooper S is among some of the best FF cars you can drive in the game, even shaming some FR sports cars in the process; I genuinely think the R53 Cooper S is a better "traditional British recipe made better by foreigners" car than most Mazda Roadsters. As you can probably already guess with my heavy mentions of Mazda cars by this point, I'm a HUGE sucker for Mazdas, and so I hope it comes across how high a praise I mean it to be when I say I would rather a R53 Cooper S over most Roadsters. The supercharger of the Cooper S gives the car some real personality where the Roadster has none. Both cars heavily emphasise weight transfer and momentum driving, but the stiffer FF car won't kill you if you muck something up, whereas the softer FR car wouldn't hesitate to snap on you if you take liberties too far with it. In essence, I think a Roadster is more of a dance partner you have to respect, and a Mini is more of a toy you can just keep ragging on endlessly, and I don't care what it implies about me as a person that I prefer the toy over the dance partner. Short of the Japan–exclusive NR-A grade, a Roadster has never given me that serious liberating track toy feel before, and it'd need some serious bloat from a 2.0L engine just to share a track with this not–even–a–JCW Cooper.

Hell, I love it so much, it just might get my Car of the Year vote in a year where we tested the ND Roadster, S-FR, and R34 GT-R.

W212 Tesla Motors Model S Signature Performance '12

You ready for a hot take? Here it is: I'm indifferent towards the Tesla Model S.

ワタナベコーヒー by XSquareStickIt livery link (GTS | GT7)

Tesla Mobile Service by LuckyStrikeID livery link (GTS)​

Tesla cars are things you either love or hate, what with the stereotypes of a typical Tesla owner, stereotypes of anti–EV petrolheads, the shenanigans of the company's CEO, the list goes on. Simply put, there are a plethora of reasons to form an opinion about this week's car even before driving one. Me personally, I think I've exhausted my list of complaints regarding EVs in my horrendous Taycan "review", and so as someone who's at his wit's end being woken up by pops and bangs at 4 in the morning from a fart can Golf in his neighbourhood and on the verge of sticking the piping hot exhaust up the owner's rectum and vigorously popping both, even someone like me looks forward to a future when cars can't make noise anymore, or snap my neck in a jam like my DCT equipped Fit Hybrid.

Cayman GT4 entry cost aside, what I like about the Tesla Model S Signature Performance P85 is just how unassuming it is; no crazy doors, no fake ICE noises, no gearboxes, nothing of the sort. It's just a car. It does car things. It just happens to be electric. As a result, it feels a lot more consistent to drive than the Taycan, and we needn't mention the i3 beyond dismissing it in one sentence. More than just fine however, the way a Model S drives even made me go, "wow!" a few times, despite me experiencing it solely in a game that flawlessly distills away any sense of speed from the player. That is to say: the Model S is more than just a one trick pony, and it shows in the corners of all places where EVs usually tend to fall apart in comparison to ICE cars.

The first thing that will grab your attention almost literally are the brakes on this thing: they each are deserving of their own verified checkmark, and not the piddling 8 dollar variant, either; they'll bring the Model S to a halt in distances I'm sure will put many legendary 90s sports cars to shame. "But how can that be in a car weighing over two tonnes on the same Sport Hard tyres GTS slaps on every production car?", you may be asking at this point. Quite frankly, I don't have an answer for that. The Sport Hard tyres on the Model S feel nothing like the Sport Hard tyres on every other car I've tested here in Car of the Week; they feel more like Sport Softs, with damn near racing slick levels of grip, and I kept going back to double check on my setting screen to make sure I wasn't going insane on race day. Combine the ravenous brakes, black magic tyres, and suitably stiff 1.6Hz springs, and the end result is a car that never feels its 2,018kg (4,449lbs) kerb mass. If I had to make a guess purely from the driving sensations behind the wheel and never had a chance to actually look at the spec sheet, I'd guess this thing was 1.6 tonnes (3,527lbs) at most.

Being of a middling P85 grade, the Model S is technically an RR car, if we have to force ICE definitions onto it. Only the rear wheels are driven, and the tiny motors that directly drive each wheel sit behind the centreline of the rear wheels, still entirely within the subframe. Don't let that turn you away from trying to drive one however, because it's the batteries that weigh the most in an EV as opposed to the motor, and so the implications of the motor's location isn't as massive as the engine's location in an ICE car. Case in point, the RR P85 has the same weight distribution of a front engined GT3 racing car, at 48:52 front to rear. Now, of course, with its peak torque of 600.2Nm (442.7lbf⋅ft) driving only the rear wheels from near idle, it should come as no surprise that the Model S will kick out its rear end on corner exits, and you will need to pay it extra mind to keep its rear end in check coming out of a corner absent the sound of an engine revving disproportionately quickly, which I didn't even realise I had come to rely on so much until I hyperlooped my Model S around during Race 1 at Tsukuba. This is definitely a car you'll want to drive with headphones or earpieces on, just so you can hear every little tiny chirp of the rear tyres, as they're the only warnings you get from the car that it's about to break loose absent real world sensations or a semi decent steering feedback simulation in the Gran Turismo series.

Even more terrifying than its tail happiness on corner exits however, is the Model S' tail happiness on corner entry, where it will snap and spin faster than even an air–cooled 911 if you attempt to give it any steering angle while on the brakes. I theorise that this is where the omission of typical drivetrain parts, such as a locking differential, hurts the Model S, because the Model S is just disproportionately nervous under braking for the grip and balance that it has, as if the individual electric motors can't figure out how aggressively to regen brake, especially relative to each other, causing such snappy behaviour on trail braking. Again, I can't say for sure—I'm only guessing here, because the only thing I know for sure is that a car with this much grip, springs this stiff, and such a balanced chassis cannot possibly be this awful on the brakes unless some wizardry has gone wrong. Regardless of the cause, that near uncontainable rear snappiness makes corners with deep apexes, like Turn 1 of Tsukuba, very precarious to tackle, as you'll have to fight the car from wanting to spin out in the long, arduous tiptoe journey to the apex of the turn. I find that I'm forced to under utilise the front tyres' grip to keep the rear end in check, which is as backwards, counterintuitive and disappointing as thinking with your ass rather than your head. That, or firing staff of a newly bought company, only to beg them to come back when you realise you're in way over your head. Pick whichever analogy works for you; they're in no way related.

If (or more accurately, when) the car does begin to slide, either from corner entry or exit, the Model S quickly becomes the single most playful and manageable thing to drift I've ever slid in this game, bar none, making it such an instrument of hoonage. While cars like the AE86 and Cayman GT4CS allow me to half grip and half slip my way through a corner with just a hint of yaw angle, the Model S is the only car in the game I feel allows me to not only initiate a full on sideways smoking slide, but also hold, adjust, and retain it for long periods of time without spitting me out from whence I came! Not even Yoshihara Dai's D1GP BRZ is this easy to drift! Again, the tyres on the Model S just feel different from anything else in the game, and I think it's bloody beautiful and I want to try fitting them on any other ICE car. This arcade racer "driftability" means that you can carry some mind bending speeds into tighter corners, such as the last corner of Laguna Seca for example, simply because the car is mostly already rotated when it hits the apex, meaning that it can unleash all of its 422HP (314kW) that much sooner. And in case you were worrying about that overeager slide sending you into a kerbside sausage and launching your Tesla into Mars, fret not; kerbs almost don't register through the car at all. I don't know how they've managed to set the car up to be stiff and responsive, yet soft and compliant on the racetrack! You can mount and molest sausage kerbs in this thing all day, any day, from Laguna Seca to Red Bull Ring; the car simply wafts right over them. Simply put, this is a car that will almost make you drift and cut corners and look like a flamboyant jackass whether you mean to or not.

With its strong, sustained acceleration, surprising cornering ability, and even just some real life stuff like having two boots and a flat rear legroom, the Tesla Model S makes a lot of sense on paper. Unfortunately, my heart doesn't follow my head as usual, and I can't find myself liking or loving the Model S. A lot of that is due to its tail happiness on corner entry, and how I always feel like I had to under drive the car to save myself and it from itself, like I have to baby it constantly, and it's just tiring. Might just be me being a dinosaur and not having sampled many EVs yet, but nonetheless, the Model S is not a car that ever enticed me to dance at the limit with. It's not a car that I ever feel like I really got to know as a result. It might not be saying much about the car itself, if not for the fact that a bone stock WRX STi, a cheaper, underpowered, manual gearbox saddled, much more stable, similarly compliant and plush AWD car, gave me that communication, trust, and enticed me to bring it to its limits more where my peers died in their Model Ses, all while I set the fastest lap of the race in my WRX at Bathurst. At this point, I don't even know if it's my head or heart that's saying "no" to the Model S anymore. All I know is, I'm indifferent towards it. It won't get a Car of the Year vote from me, but if we had a Sleeper or Surprise of the Year award? The Tesla Model S would get my vote for being that damn good when it had no right whatsoever to be.

W211 Aston Martin DB11 '16

If pony cars and pickup trucks are cultural icons of the Americas that don't appeal or make sense to anyone else in the world, then I argue that the Grand Tourer is Europe's similarly wasteful and unwieldy counterpart. After all, what the heck am I supposed to do with a 1,770kg (3,902lbs) turbo V12 2 door coupé that not only has a longer wheelbase, but also weighs more than most four door sedans? Drive from Singapore to Russia with it? We have planes for that sort of nonsense.

DB11　AMR Edition by mshow1215 livery link (GTS)

I sure as hell am not taking it anywhere near a racetrack; with springs softer than muah chee without even the peanut sprinkles, the Aston Martin DB11 is similarly difficult to keep in shape on a racetrack. Wrangling the heavy, floppy car under some semblance of control feels like trying to grasp thick, wet and slippery noodles, and the car feeds back to the driver just about the same feedback, precision, and confidence as disposable chopsticks. I never really know how the car will react any time I turn the wheel or depress a pedal, and it struggles in equal measure with both oversteer and understeer. It's the sort of car that you have to drive with the next three or even four corners ahead in mind and set the car up accordingly even before they come into view, as the DB11 will lean as desperately as I'm leaning into my Asian heritage in this review if treated with any sudden or rough input. There is zero sophistication in how the DB11 tackles corners, so much so that it seems like corners tackle it rather than the other way around. It will kick up a fuss at unassuming, unnamed kinks in the road that are unnamed because they aren't corners in any other car, like the uphill left hander before Suzuka's Degner turns, where the DB11 is liable to kick its rear end out on an upshift from its lightning quick, but also rambunctiously rough ZF 8 speed gearbox. In short, I simply could not find any point to mentally relax on any track I took the DB11 to, because it seemingly finds ways to make mountains out of molehills and hairpins out of kinks. The driving experience of the DB11 on track is like materialising anxiety attacks, distilling them, and then sticking four wheels onto it and then calling it art.

Thing is, it's really hard to say if it's a good GT car or not, as we have so little in the game. It could be a really great handling GT car relative to its competition not in the game for all I know, and the DB11 for sure has some redeeming qualities to make a case for itself: It looks indisputably stunning for something of its size. The balance of the chassis is really nice when I'm not too busy freaking the hell out at trying to keep the car from spearing off into Australia. The turbo V12 has a very usable tabletop torque curve, and the gearbox is pretty quick. It comes in many colours, interior and exterior. Still, I really do wish it had a sport mode that at the very least stiffened the suspension to non–trecherous levels at speed, because as it stands right now, a V8 Vantage will more than harass it on twistier tracks, and a 2017 NSX will match it blow for blow on most balanced tracks despite the Honda carrying more mass with less power. Mind you, neither of those are out and out track toys in their own right. The NSX in particular I wrote a scathing review for because I found it too heavy, soft, and inconsistent, yet it felt like a racecar when ran alongside the DB11. The Vantage proves that Aston understands enthusiasts and can make cars that are properly exciting, and so it's doubly disappointing as someone who genuinely lusts after the Vantage to feel almost none of that spunk and eagerness inherited by the DB11, a flagship car ushering in a new era for Aston Martin.

If it's going to weigh as much as a plane and be just as cushy and costly, I'm just going to take a plane. Those can go faster than the DB11's claimed top speed of 192mph (309km/h).

W210 Huracán Gr.4

What is the secret behind speed on a racetrack? Is it assuring and trustworthy stability a driver can easily get used to and come to rely on? Or is it a loose, easy to maneuver car that can dance around opponents, and occasionally its own driver? If you were to pose that question to Lamborghini, I have a feeling their answer will be "yes", while presenting to you on one hand, the rock solid Huracán Gr.4, and on the other, the utterly diabolical Huracán GT3 '15.

The annoying conundrum here is that they're both wickedly fast in their respective categories, being mainstays on time attack leaderboards and podium finishes alike, all while being polar opposites in how they drive. Neither sibling requires an introduction, but the Huracán Gr.4 under the spotlight this week is the rock solid, stable Lambo of the two, one that most of us here at Car of the Week are already intimately familiar with, as my peers and I already have hundreds, if not thousands of kilometres on the odometers of our Huracán Gr.4s on race day. As you may have already surmised by now, familarity with the Huracán Gr.4 is a necessity, and mileage on the cars is a rite of passage, because for the longest time, it was an "auto win" car in Gr.4, and anyone not driving one in a Gr.4 race was just willfully running at a disadvantage—a huge one at that. So much so in fact, that even someone like me, who openly despises most Italian cars we've tested here in COTW, and who also happens to be artistically impaired, even designed a custom livery for my Huracán Gr.4!

To understand how a 1,365kg (3,009lbs) car with a detuned 404HP (301kW) can be such a menace, it's important to understand the category in which it resides: Gr.4. Gr.4 is, in the most polite manner of speaking as I can muster, an unadulterated, unabridged flustercuck of chaos and imbalance. That's just the reality of smashing together an FF hatchback Mégane, an FR 86 with weightless steering, and an AWD 5 speed Lan Evo all into the same category. It's precisely in this goop of barely regulated diversity that the Huracán flourishes, being blessed with the absolute best parts permissible within the slack Gr.4 regulations: a responsive and linear Naturally Aspirated 5.2L V10 engine slung aft the cockpit, sending power through a close ratio 7 speed sequential gearbox to all four wheels, wrapped up in a svelte, low cg, low drag package. At a glance, the Huracán simply has no weakness, no area in which it compromises, and thus one can only hope for tyre wear or Balance of Performance to rein in the Huracán if they end up racing one in something else.

Good luck waiting on either of those though. While most AWD cars chew through their front tyres with the hunger of a malnourished, rabid dog, the prizefighter raging bull has a much more balanced appetite, having a 42:58 weight distribution and a colon tangling 30:70 torque split, both of which largely rear biased to ensure that the front tyres last the whole course. Of course, AWD cars have a strong appetite not just for tyres, but for fuel as well. To this end, the Huracán retains the use of a 7 speed gearbox like its road going counterpart, which is one more gear than the vast majority of its peers in Gr.4, making it one of the very few cars arbitrarily blessed with an almost literal leg up in a category consisting of 6 speed NSXes and Corvettes. Not that the NA V10 was picky with revs to begin with—it has enough torque to lug from mid range no problem—but the seven speed box just means that the Huracán can save fuel by short shifting without sacrificing nearly as much speed as its NA compatriots.

Okay, how about we try outrunning the conservative car for track position then? Well, if the track is wet, forget it—the Huracán is easily the fastest and easiest Gr.4 car to drive in the wet, combining AWD stability and a rear midship agility without the mass and understeer of the Veyron, and guess what? Those are the only two rear mid engined, all wheel drive cars in Gr.4. In the dry? The featherweight and responsive front end will trace a neat line to the apex of any corner like only a rear mid engined car can with barely a hint of understeer, the sort that you as a driver subconsciously compensate for without even realising it, which is to say that you'll only note the understeer when jumping into or from something truly sublime. As you might expect from a car with understeer, the rear end of the Huracán Gr.4 never threatens any shenanigans on corner entry or exits. Power delivery? Don't even have to think about it—just gun it out of the corner; the AWD will hook you up almost literally, and the V10 engine has enough low end torque to lug from the mid range. When to upshift? Just rev it out, it's a NA V10. Downforce? Not enough to change the way you drive even in the slipstream of others. Kerbs? Don't feel them. It's such a rock solid and consistent drive in any situation, I almost want to say it's brain dead easy.

So what is it, then? If it's not its lack of longevity, not its handling, then surely the weakness of a Huracán lies in how it's been balanced by Balance of Performance, right? It HAS to be massively slow in the straights to compensate for its brilliant handling and superb longevity à la the 86 and Cayman, right? Surely no car without a Ferrari badge can be so blatantly favoured in a sanctioned racing category, right? Well, what better way to find out than to bring said Ferrari? You know what they say: Ima beat a fothermucker with another fothermucker! Or something!

Similarly Italian with its naturally aspirated rear mid mounted engine hooked up to a 7 speed box, Ferrari's elegant and svelte 458 Gr.4 trades brashness and AWD for a more elegant design and the aforementioned truly sublime turn–in, but can the Ferrari sashay its red buttock ahead of the raging bull when the cheque-

Yeah I'm not even going to bother finishing that sentence. No way in HELL can the 458 compete with the Huracán. I just wish I knew that prior race day! The Ferrari has actually been bopped to compensate for its razor sharp handling and stellar longevity, resulting in it losing out on both power and mass to the Huracán with BoP applied, and not even by just a little bit, either! Yes, the 2 wheel drive car has less power and more mass than the AWD car when raced in the same category. Why? Hell if I know, ask PD! The result of all this shenanigans is that the 458 barely gains at all in the slipstream of the Huracán, and can't hold off the raging bulls' charges even in the corners despite having a sharper front end. It was such an abysmal matchup that I couldn't even beat Baron's beached Bolognese bull to the line at Big Willow coming out of the final turn on the last lap! The Huracán is so disgustingly quick, it makes a Ferrari of all things look ethical!

So... Huracán perfect car, then? Why did I say that the Huracán "was" an auto–win car? Well, the Huracán fell out of favour because the type of races we have in Sport Mode changed; wear rates were exaggerated and pit loss times were elongated, shifting the tides and funneling drivers into the most fuel and tyre efficient car, the Mégane Trophy. That, plus the fact that PD suddenly decided to comically boost the power and drop the mass of FF cars in Gr.4 to be completely untouchable in races that didn't have any wear enabled (i.e. Daily Race B). Due to these extreme circumstances, Gr.4 races began to revolve around one trick ponies that performed their one trick better than any other steed in the stable, and it was just a matter of selecting which one trick the race demanded. Due to the Huracán not being the best in any single area, it just feels lost and purposeless for the first time in its life, a sad reflection of its category more than an indication of the car's capabilities. Make no mistake though—as a complete package, I argue that there isn't a single car in Gr.4 that can even come close to fantasising about being as good as the Huracán, and if I could only drive one Gr.4 car for the rest of the game's life, I would pick it. If dynamic and unpredictable weather ever becomes more prominent in Gran Turismo 7's Sport Mode races, there may well be a resurgence in hurricane warnings around every track the Huracán finds itself at.

W209 Mazda Atenza Sedan XD L package '15

"Oh boy here it comes!", you're probably thinking. "XSquare is here to white knight a slow ass boring Mazda saying how we don't understand its appeal, citing some inane trivia, and then sharing some of his boring IRL experiences with the car while simping some Japanese girl who owns one before calling it the best car in the entire series of Gran Turismo, past, present, and future. Why do I have to scroll through this guy's crap to get to a valid opinion?"

広島カープ赤ヘル応援タクシー by XSquareStickIt livery link (GTS | GT7)

...except, no, not really. The Atenza is slow, boring, and completely useless in the e–sports centric title of Gran Turismo Sport, easily being the slowest N200 car in the game, stock or tuned. I have not come into contact with one IRL, nor do I know of any attractive Japanese woman that owns one. In–game, if you just want the experience or novelty of driving a diesel road car, the Mazda Demio is much lighter, maneuverable, cheaper, and has a manual. For nearly 40,000 Credits, you might as well just save up for a WRX STi, a much lighter and powerful sedan. At the end of the day, it's a car Alex picked, what did you expect?

But, the "but" changeover point comes very quickly in this review, almost as quickly as the Atenza revs from idle to its peak torque rpm of just 2,000rpm, because I think in this context, being boring is a compliment. To first lay out all the cards on the table, the Atenza is a full size premium(ish) sedan that makes only 172HP from a soulless, filthy diesel engine while weighing in at a whopping 1,600kg (3,527lbs), an uncomfortable 63% of which rests over the front axle. That it can even manage to be boring at all instead of being comically catastrophic to drive on a racetrack is in itself a feat worthy of praise, I think.

In fact, the sheer neutrality of this thing on a racetrack would shame some cars whose marketing departments would like you to believe are sporty. Slam on the brakes and chuck this gorgeous lump into a corner, and there is none of that protesting, hands in the air surrender understeer that plagues even some supercars we've tested here in Car of the Week—at least, not initially. The Atenza mostly complies with any reasonable request made of it, and it will hook up and bite apexes no problem with the right driving techniques. Of course, it's not invincible, but the beauty of how the Atenza handles is in how it lets go: slowly, steadily, and with plenty of buildup and warning, communicating with the driver every step of the way and giving them plenty of outs before the car completely lets go. That's usually praise reserved for some of the best sports cars ever made, like the 86 and Roadster. In similar vein to those acclaimed sports cars, the soft suspension and slow acceleration of the Atenza combine to become a valuable tool to teach a beginner driver about weight transfer and the value of momentum, but unlike your typical RWD sports cars, the Atenza won't bite at all if you get something wrong, making it an ideal car to start learning about driving fast in.

So, what's a 172HP AWD inert lump like once it does let go? To be honest, I can't much tell you, because the Atenza is so difficult to upset and lets go so slowly and with so much buildup, you'd have to be a proper Muppet on a road trip to meet your local friendly Barry R. to get the Atenza to bite back. The only time I've gotten into trouble with it is at Paddock Hill of Brand's Hatch, where the softly sprung car is already severely off balance being trail braked, only to have the road suddenly fall away from the car. That was the only instance in the whole night that I've looped the Atenza around, and that only happened because the car was so stable everywhere else, Paddock Hill was truly a freak exception that caught me by surprise. Oh, and it was wearing Sport Hard tyres way too grippy for its stock suspension on race day, subjecting the car to way more gs than intended, and Paddock Hill was the only corner the car gave up at. For reference, the car comes default with Comfort Medium tyres in GT7, two whole compounds less grippy than the Sport Hard tyres GTS defaults most production cars to.

Being a high end XD Grade, the 40,000 Credits Mazda asks of you for the privilege of owning their flagship sedan notably nets you Mazda's invaluable Active Driving Display, a pop–up glass panel atop the dashboard onto which the most important tidbits of information when driving, such as the car's speed and nav directions, are projected. It's a feature I genuinely wish were on every modern car. On the motorsports side of things, you get paddle shifters and AWD too, which carries over to the Atenza Gr.3 Road Car, making it the fastest accelerating and fastest shifting homologation car in the game, while the optional AWD saves Mazda the indignity of having its sole representative of Gr.4 be FF, as the Atenza Gr.4 is similarly AWD,, though the pros and cons of having AWD in this game is a whole 'nother warehouse of worms best opened another day.

Overall, the Atenza is a very composed, neutral, predictable, and communicative car to toss around a racetrack. It won't belt out a soulful orchestra, nor will it kick out its rear end playfully, and yes, it's a little soft and awfully slow for track use, all of which means it's a very sedate experience even when put through its paces. But that's more than okay, more than fine, it's great; not everyone wants to stand out or be the centre of attention. Some petrolheads know what they have and is content to quietly enjoy it instead of having to shout it out to their neighbours with pops and bangs. Oh and if you think it has absolutely zero performance credentials to boast about, it does casually outrun a 1.5L ND Roadster around most tracks if both cars are wearing the same tyre compounds. That I think is precisely what it means to be a modern Mazda: completely unambiguous to everyone else, but always worth hustling for the one behind the wheel, and the package of such opposites I find is such an incredible feat, especially considering that the Atenza can be had with an auto or manual, a gasoline or diesel engine, a sedan or wagon body style, FF or AWD, or any combination of the above (in Japan, anyway...). I think it's criminally easy to overlook how important and enthusiastic Mazda's presence in the automotive industry is today, and every time I get in one, I'm just pleasantly surprised. And you know what? If this is the worst Alex can do, I think we're going to be okay for a while.

...until we finally transition into GT7, that is. But Alex is NEVER getting to pick a Car of the Week come GT7. MUUHAHAHA!

W207 Mercedes-Benz A 45 AMG 4Matic '13

Alright, show of hands: who didn't even remember that this car is in the game?

I, for one, forgot. The 2013 Mercedes-Benz A 45 AMG 4Matic has a knack for eluding attention, even if taken out of the context of an e–sports focused game that largely ignores German sleepers. It doesn't have flared fenders, bonnet bulges, or fat exhaust pipes that are the rare but typical giveaways of souped up German performance, and even IF they're there, they're so subtle that I can't tell at all. I mean, for gosh's sake, even the "4Matic" in its name just makes it sound like it has a 4 speed automatic gearbox geared towards grandpas driving from the retirement home to their graves during morning peak hour jams, too scared to pass a cooperative cyclist. It simply isn't a shouty car that wants to be noticed. In fact, the only thing that even hints at the enthusiasts' intent underneath would be the utterly ridiculous 19 inch wheels optional on the AMG, an inch up from the standard items. I'm sure there are more giveaways to the trained eye, but by and large, the A45 is so good at making me forget that there's a 355HP (264kW) AWD hatchback lurking in this game that, even if I do remember its existence, it just ends up as background prop to populate a photo featuring another car.

At this point, I might become the GTS' version of SomePlayaDude, and my JCW Countryman is the Cayman GT4.

...if you didn't get that reference, you really ought to check out FH5's COTW thread, which has been pretty great so far.

So, the A45 AMG has got insane performance and a talent for flying under the radar. Sounds exactly like the sort of car we here at Car of the Week are all about, then?

To drive, the A45 AMG shows similar grace to its beautiful interior. Despite packing 50 more HP than the next most powerful hatch, the FK2 Civic Type R, the A45 never sweats putting all its power down to the road at any moment it's asked to in the dry. Of course, it's got AWD which helps to do just that—that's what the "4Matic" in its name stands for and I definitely knew that before writing this review okay?! But, even by AWD standards, the A45 AMG puts down power gracefully and effortlessly like a Mercedes ought to. I never got any inkling of the car struggling, any tyre chirps under power from any corner or anything of the sort, that would signify the car struggling to put down its power. Rather, the car simply understeers vehemently when the throttle pedal is pressed too much, putting all the cards back in your hands by forcing you to lift off that way, making the driver feel like the inept tool in the whole situation while it barely breaks its graceful demeanour. And don't think it puts power down neatly by hiding its 355HP behind a peaky powerband either, as a turbocharged 1,991cc engine having to make 178HP per litre is well entitled to do, because this M133 Inline 4 makes its peak torque of 450Nm (331.9lbf⋅ft) from 2,500rpm, and holds it all the way in a plateau till the power curve overtakes the torque table at 5,252rpm.

As you can probably already piece together by this point, the price to pay for that graceful power and effortless destruction of its hot hatch rivals is in... well, the price tag, yes, but much more so in the corners, I'd argue. The A45 may have 50 more HP to the next hatch in the game, but it's also 175kg (386lbs) heavier as well while costing around 50% more than an FK2 CTR. It is, after all, an understated luxury cruiser instead of a shouty track toy, and nowhere is that more clearly shown than in how soft the suspension setup is, which in my opinion is much more damning on track than its 1,555kg (3,428lbs) mass. It is definitely not a car set up with any sporting intent in mind, with just enough composure to make sure the car doesn't roll or spin out, nothing more. What that translates to in layman terms is "horrible, never ending understeer", which, when further translated into legal speak, means that "if you try to sue Mercedes for an accident in the A45 AMG, know that you don't have a case at all: the car was stable and composed; you clearly went in too fast". This I find is such an oddity, because the only telltale sign of this car's performance I can pick out is the ridiculously large wheels and accompanying low profile tyres barely hugging them, which you would think was intentionally fitted for more precise control and feel for the suspension so that they can work some real magic. On the contrary, the suspension is just... limp. Look, if I'm going to end up with a limp car anyway, can I just have softer, normal sized tyres and wheels and a stiffer suspension instead of the other way around? If you're going to make a car look understated and stealthy, why give it ridiculous looking wheels and puncture prone tyres?

To be fair, the A45 AMG isn't hopelessly terrible in the corners. To borrow a recurring quote from Pickle, the A45 is "still better than the MiTo" in the suspension department. The A45 as a whole doesn't excessively squirm, roll, or seemingly contort and decompose when pushed hard in a corner; it very much keeps its composure. It's just that there's annoyingly enough give in the suspension to take away any and all sense of control and feedback when this big red metal slug is thrown hard into a turn, and there's only a tiny friction circle to work with from the 235mm tyres up front. All that results in is the most frustrating kind of understeer that would kill any hope of a car becoming an enthusiast's pick: the kind you can't do a damn thing about other than to sit on your ARTICO man-made leather seat and wait in excruciating pain while the car slows down enough and regains grip to pull itself out of the sand trap. It has an okay initial turn–in, but at longer, wider corners that make up most paved racetracks, the A45 will struggle, with its unwillingness becoming uncomfortably clear at high speed sweepers such as the Schumacher S of Nürb GP.

Despite the 40:60 torque split and light rear end of the A45 might lead one to believe, the A45 has zero tail happiness to help with that understeer. In fact, it feels like it actively hates that side of itself and fights to hide it from the rest of the world, and it's very successful in that regard. Even in the few off road whoopsies I've had which has broken out the rear end, the car corrects itself almost instantly even when encouraged otherwise with throttle input and steering in the direction of the slide. I'd say the car is idiot proof if idiots can be trusted with a 64,000 Credit, 355HP, 250km/h capable, flame spitting monster.

That said, once you get used to braking early and taking corners slowly, there aren't many hot hatches in the game that can even dream of keeping up with the unbridled power of the Merc. In fact, I think only the GR Yaris can beat the A45 in lap times around Tsukuba, going by Alex's hot lap videos. Combined with its idiot proof handling, understated styling, and that pleasant interior, the A45 AMG is a tool for a comically casual destruction of the hot hatch competition. It is for someone who's had enough of trying, and just wants to win. As much as it's an unsportsmanlike thing to say, I think I'm at the age where I can understand that mentality. Even more frightening than that however, is that I truly think that there's a lot of optimisation that can be done handling wise with just its suspension setup that can unlock even more speed from the Red Slug. I mean, a much older R34 GT-R that is similarly AWD, comparable weight distribution, but with less power, more mass, and even softer suspension does just effortlessly leave the A45 in the dust around Tsukuba. Even though the A45 is a gentlemen's nuke, I think it is more than capable of becoming a genuine sports car if tuned right. Someone just has to take the initiative after being reminded that it exists in the game and told of its untapped potential.