W190 take 2

Suzuki may be getting all the attention here lately as an esteemed sport bike brand taking their know–how on two wheels, squaring it, and then dominating a world of bespoke four wheelers. Lest we forget however, Austrian bike maker KTM has been doing exactly that for fourteen years now, and unlike Suzuki, they did that with a car that customers can actually buy and legally drive on public roads... well, okay, that last part rather depends on where you live with this particular trim we have under the spotlight this week; meet the KTM X-Bow R, a track focused toy that's so hardcore, it exists on the fringes of legality and road worthiness.

KTM XBOW R (15th A.E.) by GTP_RACECAR livery link (GTS)

Also, yes, it's pronounced "crossbow". I'm sorry to all of my readers out there who use text to speech to consume my ramblings, whom must think some mad lad at KTM felt an unfathomable need to invent a bow that fires axes instead of arrows.

For 100,000 of your hard earned credits, you get awfully little with the X-Bow—no sat nav, no radio, no leather, no carpets, no air con, no roof, no doors, not even windshield wipers... because there is no windshield to wipe. Awful value for money when you consider the fact that a comparably priced GT-R or Viper, the echelons of luxury in the automotive industry, has all the aforementioned frivolous toys while also being able to get you to and from your local racetrack regardless of where you live (unless it's Singapore. We DO NOT talk about Singapore). What you do get in exchange however, is a rear mid engined, carbon tubbed, ultra maneuverable cruise missile that weighs in at just a scant 790kg (1,742lbs), giving the 298HP (222kW) X-Bow R a much better power to weight ratio than the aforementioned cars.

...in theory, anyway.

In practice, it feels completely underwhelming. When you make more sacrifices in civility than a Viper, going so far as to rendering the car illegal to drive on public roads in some countries, the car naturally brings with it sky high expectations not only to its performance, but also in the sensations that it brings the driver as well, simply because it laser focuses on the one job it has, leaving itself no room for excuses. Going into my first test drive, I had been expecting to be able to brake super late into corners and the front end to slice in immediately into the apex with no more than mere brainwaves. But the X-Bow R oddly doesn't make any attempt to differentiate or juxtapose the experience of driving a road car from the experience of driving a purebred, dedicated racing machine; I brake for corners at Red Bull Ring in roughly the same points in it as I do an FD RX-7 shod with the same Sport Hard tyres. I struggle to get weight over the front of the tyres and getting them to bite on corner entry, and the rear end can get quite feisty on corner exits. There's no other way to describe it: driving the X-Bow R feels... like driving a normal car, rife with many of the same limitations and flaws that you might experience driving anything else less focused and more compromised that you could have bought off a showroom floor and driven home in comfort.

"But how can that be with a car with those numbers?", I hear you ask. Most of that I think is due to the disproportionately staggered tyres on on the X-Bow R—205/40R17 front and 255/35R18 rear, Most MR cars have a width difference of 40mm at most, but the X-Bow has a staggering (get it?) 50mm difference between the front and rear. Because of the rather slim front tyres, the X-Bow not only has to brake early for corners like a plebian road car with *scoff* roofs and air con, but it also has an extremely hard time biting into apexes when trail braking with a tiny friction circle, with the vast majority of the turning only taking place only when the brake pedal is almost fully let off. It also has a terrible time negotiating corners with deep, late apexes, and/ or corners with adverse camber. It would be such a shame if Turn 6 of Red Bull Ring has both the aforementioned characteristics, eh? The large difference in grip between the front and rear ends of the car also creates a dangerously snappy combination, wherein oftentimes, I'll be gradually feeding in steering angle and feathering the brakes, approaching the circumference of the front tyres' grip circle under hard cornering, fighting the understeer from the rear tyres and the prohibitive differential that binds them. When I cross that arbitrary threshold and "win", the thick rear tyres let go quickly and without warning mid corner, resulting in horrific snap oversteer you'd have to catch in an instant. This car forces drivers to quickly fight against and correct polar opposite problems in a minute amount of time, as though it has a split personality, neither of which are particularly pleasant to be around. It's rough.

Oh, and did I mention that the X-Bow doesn't come with ABS? Now, I'm no expert when it comes to driving without ABS, but I think I've driven my fair share of cars without ABS, from feeble, unassuming things like the AE86 to monstrosities like the Viper and Tuscan, but the X-Bow is easily the deadliest car of the bunch I've sampled under braking; once the wheels lock up, there simply isn't getting them back no matter how you pump, feather, or fellatiate the brake pedal. And of course, with any short wheelbase, turbocharged RMR car without traction control, caution has to be exercised out of corners as well. All things considered though, the X-Bow isn't even unruly or even unpleasant powering out of corners if you treat it with due respect and diligence... even if the engine sounds like audibly transmissible cancer.

Disproportionate tyres are one thing, but they're also attached to puzzlingly soft springs, especially for a track toy. It doesn't even take taking a corner to literally see what I mean; the exposed springs of the pushrod style double wishbone suspension up front visibly and prominently scrunch up on every upshift done with the 6 speed manual that is equipped on the car. If you can afford to keep an eye on the exposed springs, the car looks more like a Metal Slug boss rather than an actual, expensive toy when brought around a track at speed. The soft springs coupled with the not at all grippy Sport Hard tyres combine to make for an experience that is a far cry from that of a purpose built machines—it isn't face melting quick or mind bending sharp in the way that other racing toys like karts or prototypes overwhelm all but the most seasoned and trained drivers with, which I had been expecting coming into this week.

To be honest, I'm rather shocked myself at how underwhelming I found the X-Bow to be. I even tried it in Assetto Corsa to see if the simplistic simcade physics of Gran Turismo Sport is doing the X-Bow a disservice like it did the 991 GT3 RS, but nope! The AC version is strikingly similar to the GTS version of the car, just with more more proportionately powered brakes with relation to the tyres it has. Maybe this thing will be a total blast to drive in real life. Absent the pants fizzing, face shredding, kidney dislodging sensations of real life and being judged solely on its capabilities and behaviour on track, the X-Bow just feels... completely unexciting. A "normal" production car may lack its outright pace and lap times, but there are several of them that offer a more balanced, cohesive drive, such as the NSX-R or Audi R8 for example. After all, do you buy a track toy for the lap times, or do you buy a track toy for the fun? The X-Bow R feels to me like a toy that somehow forgot to be fun to drive.

[ TANGENTIAL RANT] It does have to be said though, that I think KTM had the right idea when setting up the X-Bow, because it can often be a foregone conclusion that something track focused must be the fastest thing ever, when in actuality, I find that many of the requisites in making a car fast also ruin how they drive. Giving the car downforce means lowering and stiffening the car to hell, making sure you aren't racing anyone in it while also making it a chore to drive on anything other than the smoothest of roads. Making a car stiff and grippy makes it snappy, meaning you need to be a racing car driver of experience with perfect conditions to really enjoy the car. Giving a car monstrous power also means giving it monstrous fuel tanks, radiators, drive lines, nannies, and so on, all of which just make the car heavy, cumbersome, and unintuitive to drive at any speed. And all of this, for what, exactly? Shaving an extra second or two off a lap time that skill could've easily compensated for? Sure, a second is a huge deal if you're Alex Albon racing Lewis Hamilton, but I'd be happy if I can get within five seconds of their lap times. Cars that chase outright performance numbers is just stupid and pointless in my eyes, especially now when technology allows us to have such ridiculous power that they'd be difficult to fully exploit even on a racetrack. Also, lest we forget, the most enjoyable cars to drive in automotive history, from AE86s, to RX-7s, and even the fabled McLaren F1, don't subscribe to many, if any, of the descriptors on that list. The fact that a barebones, track only car in the X-Bow doesn't fall into that slippery slope of what a track car "must be like" is surprising to me, and makes me very happy to see. Sure, there's a certain speed requirement to a track toy; no one, and I mean, NO ONE, wants to go to a racetrack and do Fiat 500 or Sambabus levels of speed (*glare*), but I think the X-Bow has that part covered. [END TANGENTIAL RANT]

I Woke Up This Morning

I managed to win the battle in my head today and woke up at 5am to do the job I don't dread doing.

With it came a very weird, out of nowhere realisation, while sat on the end of my bed in between waking and dreaming. I don't much enjoy my life, nor do I expect much in my future. I still struggle with mental health issues, though now probably on a level that everyone else also deals with, instead of being completely debilitating and self harming. And just like everybody else, I don't much know how to deal with my own demons. They wouldn't be demons if we knew how to deal with them.

What am I doing with my life, exactly? Nothing, I think is a fair answer. I'm never going to be rich. I'm never going to be handsome. I'm never going to have the things my soul is asphyxiating for and rotting without. There is no point in trying. There is no point in existing beyond paying bills, taxes, and repaying my family.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is a due process. Maybe I'm healing so slowly I don't even realise it. Maybe one day I'll be lucky enough to find something or someone that can answer all these questions in my head and end the ritualistic pain and suffering. Maybe one day I'll thank myself for not having the balls to cut my losses and take responsibility for all my failures. Maybe one day I'll even find enough meaning and joy in life to want to pass this down. Maybe one day something will fall into place and click, to make this all make sense.

And then I realised that quite literally the only thing that decides whether my current state of life is right or not is whether I'm lucky enough to stumble upon a pot of gold in this darkness.

And that just makes everything feel so much more worthless. As if it could get any worse.

W188 Renault Sport Clio R.S. 220 EDC Trophy '15 & '16

*sigh* It looks like ya boy Kaz is at it again, including two variants of a car with microscopic, almost imperceptible differences between the two just to pad the car count. Meet the Renault Sport twins, the Clio R.S. 220 EDC Trophy '15 and '16. Are either of these cars good? Which is better?

Sure, the two cars have different wheels, lights, and interiors, but substantial and important differences that affect how you play the game can also be found among the cars even before their engines are started: the 2016 car allows for decals to be put on the "Formula 1-style blade" on the front bumper (no, seriously, that's what Renault calls it), whereas the 2015 allows you only to paint it. Quite a big deal, I think, as the 2015 car comes with a "TROPHY" decal on the blade originally, which gets wiped the moment the car's appearance gets changed because of the way the livery editor works. And yes, you read that right: the car that comes stock with the TROPHY decal can't have decals put there and the car that doesn't come with that decal allows decals put on the blade.

https://media.giphy.com/media/YM7SnWWXM1PIHPSth4/giphy.gif

There are also "TROPHY" decals on the rear doors, which are highlighted by side panel pieces running from as far forward as the front doors. Those get wiped too, and the game doesn't allow decals where it used to be on either car, resulting in an empty, black void that the car's bodywork works to bring attention to. So if you want to do anything to change the appearance of your car, from something as innocuous as a singular ant poop to something as must–have as a licence plate on a family hatch, say goodbye to all the car's original decals you can't put back where they were. It's just stupid design choices like this that define Gran Turismo, and makes me think no one at Polyphony Digital has ever played a game in their lives, let alone one they made themselves.

Honestly? I think the ability to put decals on the front bumper blade on the 2016 car is enough for me to declare it the car the better of the two. It certainly would be the only choice if you were someone that is completely smitten by the 1966 Renault R8 Gordini, such as myself, and wanted to create a fantasy Clio Gordini Edition for this generation of Clios, which necessitates a white front bumper bar. I mean, you could paint the entire "Other" section of the 2015 car white too, but that also whitens the side strips and rear diffuser along with it, which... drumroll, you can't put decals on either. And who the F wants a white rear diffuser?

You can celebrate this difference between the two cars by terming it as diversity, but I think one car that doesn't come saddled with stupid livery editor restrictions would have been just peachy.

I say that the difference in the livery editor alone is enough to put one car over the other, and that's because, on the racetrack, these two almost identical cars drive almost identically to each other on a racetrack. Big shock, I know. I'll write a legal disclaimer for potential cardiac arrests next time before I drop such a bombshell, I promise. "B-B-B-BUT...! 25kg! 55lbs!", I hear you sputter between painful breaths while clutching your chest, the mass difference between the two cars. With both cars being powered by the same engine, producing the exact same power, going through the exact same EDC 6 speed dual–clutch gearbox with identical gear ratios, how oh how can the 2016 car keep up with or even perform similarly to the 2015?

I... don't know. Not for sure, anyway. I can't find any instance of Renault spelling out the updates, but I can tell you how the two cars feel different on the racetrack, minute as the differences may be, if it helps? The 2015 car immediately feels lighter the moment its steering wheel is peeled off centre, with it being a tad bit more immediate biting into a corner. But, from there, the lighter 2015 car for some odd reason feels like it moves around a lot more, with larger weight shifts and more tyre chirps mid corner, asking of its driver to baby it a little more and be more cognizant of what its doing than its younger sibling. In comparison, the 2016 car is absolutely planted from corner entry to exit, with any hint of tyre squealing being quashed by the electronic differential the moment it reaches your ears. While both cars come with the same electronic differential, the main difference between the two cars to me is down to the revised programming in the 2016. In the later car, the diff entirely robs away the unpleasantries of driving a powerful FF car and letting them focus solely on pointing the car where they want to go. One could certainly make the argument that the 2016 car is a much more brain dead drive, whereas the 2015 is a much more technical and demanding drive, and will teach drivers more as a result by punishing off neutral braking in a more pronounced manner, locking a lot of its pace behind careful brake pedal control. But, it cannot be argued that, despite the mass handicap, the younger, heavier, and smarter car is simply faster around a racetrack. If the fact that I closed a gap to Vic of all people in his 2015 with me in a 2016 at Alsace isn't proof enough for you, Alex's own testing confirms the pace advantage of the 2016 as well.

But that is not to say that the 2015 is a sloppy car; not by any stretch of the imagination. Both are amazing point and shoot pocket rockets that offer spectacularly balanced drives. Body roll and pitch is definitely felt, but just as is with some of the best drivers' cars to roll off a production line such as an E46 M3 and Camaro SS, said body movement is just enough to put additional weight over a relevant tyre in a corner, and nothing more beyond that. The car feels incredible right out of the box with 205/40/R18 86Y Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyres as standard, which are classified as Comfort Softs in GT7. In conjunction with its magic differential and ABS, there is simply no getting the front tyres to let go and start smoking even with the most ham–fisted of driving. Despite being set up from the factory for Comfort Soft tyres, the car felt right at home wearing uprated Sport Medium tyres, which we were running on race day, though the grip on offer is so immense that the Clio would break all known laws of physics and the universe and phase through the ground before it'd start smoking its tyres! Check out that suspension breaking, physics altering pitch and roll!

Throughout all of that physics nonsense, the steering wheel gains and loses weight linearly and delightfully from corner entry to exit, never leaving drivers to guess what the front tyres are doing. Imagine having steering wheel feedback in a modern car (and in a self proclaimed real driving simulator)! What a novel concept! The Clios are also among a very exclusive club of cars that offer column mounted shift paddles, which I personally prefer over wheel mounted paddles in the absence of a stick shift. The engine is rev happy with peak power up top and peak torque down low, all traits that serve the car well on public roads and racetracks alike. All of this make both Clios delightfully engaging drives, and proof that a hot hatch and a modern car laden with electronics can still offer a sensational drive that doesn't simply insulate drivers from the experience and spoonfeed them speed.

If I had any complaints, they'd be minor ones. I recognise that modern cars are all downsizing their engines and resorting to turbos to keep up in power output due to stricter emission laws, and that they make all the sense in the world on paper, but these tiny turbo econobox engines have simply never felt natural to me. With its M5Mt 401 engine making peak power at 6k and its limiter set to 7k, the engine cuts out right as it runs out of breath, which, again, makes sense on paper. In practice however, I have found myself in many instances where I wish I could ride out a lower gear when exiting out of a corner, or approaching the braking zone of one. Second, third, and fourth gears have quite a sizeable gap between them, which might make sense on a drag strip to minimise shifting, especially with all that low down turbo torque, but I often find myself panicking in a subconscious level when the revs drop low on corners such as Sheene Curve on Brands Hatch, which will see the car in middling 5.5k in 4th, but downshifting to 3rd just leaves it sniffing the limiter. Will the car still pull? Yeah, it will. It just doesn't sound like it will, and it's at a stark clash with how I've learned to drive, as I've equated speed to sound. As a result, I found myself making many unnecessary and short lived downshifts in the car, and it's not often that I found myself wanting to just slap the gearbox of a car into auto and just leave it to do its own thing. The engine and gearbox combo simply doesn't have a lot of flexibility to it with a narrow powerband in practice. Sure, it has great torque down low, but there's no arguing against the mechanical advantage of a lower gear and higher revs, which the gear ratios don't much allow for with wide spacing. What this results in is that there's only one correct gear to be in at any given situation on a racetrack, and the (lack of) sounds it makes make discerning said correct gear an unintuitive task.

Again, I get it. Cars are just like this nowadays, and no, I don't think an NA unit would be faster even if it could output 216HP from a 1.6L size. I'm just saying it feels unnatural to me. Could you get used to it? For sure. I just fear getting too used to it and start lugging my Rotary sports cars and Flat Sixes, you know?

To find out exactly how good the Clio is, I thought a few comparisons were in order (but mainly because I haven't reviewed the past two weeks' cars and I have a itch to bitch). Now, any professional reviewer or sane person would take a contemporary hatch like the Golf VII and Focus ST to pit against the Cars of the Week, but I'm working towards one of them and taking medication for the other, with me being neither here nor there. So I rose the bar higher by pitting a bona fide, 2 door, 2 seat FR sports coupé against the Clio, in the form of the 86 GT "Limited".

...which got promptly destrolished around Laguna Seca to the tune of about a whole second a lap. To give you an idea of how bad it was, the 2 door sports coupé was not only less powerful, but heavier than the 5 door hatch! And it demanded for me to be careful on the throttle? Eww!

(Just kidding, I adore the 86, but I got spanked HARD in that race and I don't think a defamation suit right now is a good idea.)

So then, what closer competition to a Clio than... a Clio? That's right, I brought a third, oldest Clio into this family feud, and if you think I'm setting up the 2000 car to fail, just know that it has a 3 litre V6 putting out 229HP from the comfort of the back seats :) I'm here to kick ass and take medication, and I'm all outta pills. Or something.

So, can a decade and a half of evolution and computation wizardry outperform balls to the wall lunacy?

Close, but not quite. The V6 is a few tenths quicker per lap than the I4s, and its all gained on the straights. "Well duh, it's the heavier but more powerful car", you might think, but what that implies is that this RMR car gets out maneuvered in the corners by the FF Clios! The V6 gets horrendously out braked into every one of Tsukuba's corners, so much so that I4s that weren't even on the radar when you get on the brakes would still be able to look for a fair move by the apex of said turn. On a low speed track like Tsukuba with low powered cars, that difference in braking is nothing short of heinous! But, where the FF cars have great initial bite into a corner and only show hints of understeer into longer turns, the RMR car is much more consistent in its turning radius, letting drivers trace a much more natural flowing line into and out of corners, letting them get on the gas that much more that much sooner, no wizardry required with the differential.

Still too obvious an observation? What really came as a surprise to me is how similar the V6 felt to the modern Clios, despite being separated by fifteen years and having completely different drivetrain layouts, almost like the same engineers and drivers had set all three cars up. All three corner incredibly flat with very little drama, which is all the more amazing when you consider the fact that the V6 is nothing more than a maladjusted, Frankenstein beast of a thing, having a RMR drivetrain shoved inside the silhouette of a sensible looking family hatch and the aerodynamics to match. All three cars have their rev limiters cut in right as the engine runs out of breath, and I felt many of the same frustrations in the older Clio that I did in the modern ones, despite having nearly twice the displacement and ditching the crutches of turbos. I don't know if it's just me, but I can very clearly see and feel a shared bloodline running through these three cars, and it's little things like these that almost humanise a brand that manufactures cold metallic death machines and give them a personality. One that I'm very, very glad to have experienced a small part of this week.

Duplicate cars? Certainly, I still think that it's difficult, if not impossible to justify having both the 2015 and 2016 cars in a modern Gran Turismo game, when each car reportedly takes half a month of labour to reproduce in a game. That is especially so because I opine that the 2016 car completely outclasses the 2015, both on a racetrack and in the livery editor. But, call me a lunatic if you must, I think having a few very similar cars is in the DNA of the Gran Turismo series. Growing up with the series, I've always loved spending hours in the showrooms just reading about cars, going through their colour lists, test driving them, and trying to spot what's different. It helps me appreciate the top of the line models that much more. In the case of the 2015 and 2016 Clios, they together show that a car is more than just a spec sheet, and that very real and tangible surprises can spring from a car which is down on paper. That's an appreciation that would be impossible to glean from just having one car.

The Renault Sport Clio R.S. 220 EDC Trophies are both truly Sleepers in every sense of the word. If I had to pick between the two, the 2016 wins no question in my mind. But if I had to pick between three Clios instead? I'd probably still go with the 2016, and that's saying something, isn't it?