Citroën usually isn't the first company to come to mind at the mention of motorsports—not on tarmac, anyway. And so when the need arose for an RMR racing car bearing the chevrons of Citroën, it should come as no surprise that the car that wound up with that weird honour is a fictional car: meet the GT By Citroën Gr.4 racing car.
With its roots so deeply intertwined with the Gran Turismo franchise, I thought it fitting to attempt a "Stealth" livery on the winged racing car variant of the Citroën, a style of livery that is signature of the Gran Turismo series. The original concept car may have debuted as far back as 2008, but when slapped with just the basic aero parts of Gr.4 and brought to life with custom liveries, the GT By Citroën really looks like it would be right at home in a modern grid consisting the wildest looking cars of today like the Ford GT and Lamborghini Sián. But, because it's a concept car with no need for road legality or ease of access, it HAZARDOUSLY doesn't come with any reverse lights (wink), and sits at a mere 1,211mm (47.7in) tall. If your brain can't process numbers like mine, here it is lined up next to a production based 981 Cayman GT4 Clubsport, the best sports car money can buy, don't @ me.
My freaking helmet's in a higher position than the roofline of the GT!
While the Road Car that was never sold was said to be powered by a 5.4L Ford V8 producing 501HP (373kW) in a package that weighs in at 1,450kg (3,197lbs), the Gr.4 variant has been brought down both in power and mass to be inline with Gr.4 specs at 394HP (293kW) and 1,300kg (2,866lbs) before the current BoP applies, letting it run on level playing field with its equally eccentric peers in Gr.4 from Atenzas to Veyrons. What hasn't appeared to change much is that the GT retains the use of a 7 speed gearbox, being one of the arbitrary select few in Gr.4 to be blessed with a seventh forward gear, giving it an almost literal leg up to its competition in fuel efficiency, acceleration, and even braking.
The good news doesn't end there; in fact, that's just the beginning of a very long list! The GT drives simply impeccably, with instant and proportionate responses from both its featherweight front end and its NA engine. Despite this, the car exhibits incredible stability in the bends like the AWD car that it well might have been, incredibly composed and unfettered by bumps and rumble strips, and generally needing some incredibly stupid driving to upset. The only time I've ever felt the rear end of this car perk up is if I downshift early into 3rd or 2nd with a +2 rear brake bias, and even then, it only helps to rotate the car into the corner if you can handle and exploit it.
Not only does the car turn well, it stops well and goes way better than any fuel sipping car has any right to, too! The GT feels incredibly light on its feet from braking to cornering. Its 7 speed gearbox means that the car can be kept in the meat of its powerband all the time, or letting the car retain much of its acceleration if you're short shifting to save fuel. Case in point, often I find it much more advantageous to downshift into 2nd when braking for a low speed corner for example, only to shift back up to third before accelerating out, and the car doesn't shrug it off nonchalantly as much as it acts as though it were the most natural thing in the world; it's so capable to the point that it doesn't care, because nothing you can throw at it on a racetrack seems to faze it at all.
Now, this is the point in my reviews where I turn around and give you the flipside of the coin, but this week, I genuinely am at a loss for any bad things to say about the GT. It looks good, drives great, is competitive, stable, safe, and consistent. It's everything you'd want in a racecar. And so, when BoP was enabled in our lobby around halfway through the day, I decided to see how well the fictional car made for a fictional class fares against a real car in a real class, and a real favourite of mine, the aforementioned 2016 Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport.
At the risk of this review completely derailing into yet another rave and drool session of the 981 Cayman GT4, the me that had been tired and groggy all afternoon from that inhumane heat of Singapore suddenly perked up and started smiling the moment I took a corner in the 981. It's nigh indescribable magic how much that car suits me and behaves EXACTLY as I would think and want it to, almost as though it knows what I want better than I do. One corner, and I knew everything about my decision and verdict in this review, and yet, I have no idea at all with regards to how to justify or even explain it. The Cayman plays with you while retaining the stability and predictability of the GT. It even sounds so much better than the GT (fight me)! It has an indescribable, magical quality, a fun factor that no words can describe that the GT completely lacks. If I had to illustrate with an analogy, the Cayman is a toy and the GT is a tool that both happen to... have the same goal.
...see, I was about to end that last sentence by saying that they happen to do the same thing, but that would be implying that the Cayman can actually hang with the GT on the track.
It can't. Far from it. I felt almost like I was in an entirely separate car class lower than that of the GT, because I was getting out braked into corners and dropped like a sack of hot potatoes on the straights in my 5 speed Cayman. I had nothing with which to fight back to the GTs, nowhere I had an advantage over the Citroëns, aside from them fighting amongst themselves. It was a complete slaughter, even before they dropped me out of their slipstream. Now, the host of our weekly lobbies, Vic, is not only tremendously fast, but also creepily patient, something he proves with giving obnoxiously incompetent morons in our lobbies second chances to prove their malice or innocence before kicking them, but even I suspect he has to be thinking something along the lines of, "That sodding wanker in his fancy Posh had better piss off right this instant!" while somehow being stuck behind me for more than two whole laps. You'll just have to wait for him to say that exact line in his review of this car to confirm it.
(Yes, I do seem to be going through a bit of a Bri'ish phase in my life for some reason.)
I know the Cayman is hobbled by BoP to be incredibly slow on the straights, and its gearing is much wider spaced out than all the cars built for Gr.4 from the ground up, but mind you, my Cayman can still outrun a 4C Gr.4 in the straights! Surely the "Balance" in "Balance of Performance" must mean that a 7 speed fuel sipper car might be slower than my Cayman when both are being ran full tilt? Nope! The acceleration and fuel advantage afforded by its seven forward gears is completely free and seemingly unaccounted for in BoP. I want to stress again that having seven speeds in Gr.4 is completely arbitrary; Yes, the actual GT By Citroën does have a 7 speed gearbox, as does the M4 and 458. But then how do you explain the NC1 NSX and C7 Corvette having only 6 speeds? Hell, why does the GT By Citroën Gr.3 still have a 7 speed?!
And so what did we learn this week? That it pays to be in bed with Kaz if you want a strong representation in his game? Regardless of the hows and whys, it remains an indisputable fact that the GT By Citroën is really, really good in Gr.4. Faultless, even. It's so good that I've had to pull bullcrap excuses out my butt just to say anything bad about it, like how it "never made me feel awake", and how it doesn't sound as good as my favourite car in the class, and perhaps even ever. Maybe what's missing is... a reputation. A legacy. If the GT By Citroën has had any success in real motorsports, then I'll probably be writing things like "the sound of the ICONIC Ford V8 is perfectly encapsulated in the Gr.4 racing car", or "it's not difficult to see how the GT By Citroën earned its countless victories in endurance racing all over the world with this rock solid stability". In other words, Citroën, please make this car a reality? Please? Because the GT By Citroën is so, so close to perfection, and the only semi–valid criticism I can direct towards it is that "it doesn't exist".
...yet.
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