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!