GT7 W62 & 63: Red Bull X2014 Standard Car & Lamborghini Miura P400 Bertone Prototype '67

If you think about it, it's a pretty bloody amazing miracle that we human beings are capable of operating motor vehicles; after all, our fleshy prisons were never developed to be able to propel itself to dizzying speeds like 30km/h, and yet our brains can process audio, visual, and sensual information quickly enough to go way faster than that. Of course, without rigorous and routine training like the ones Formula drivers undergo, our spiteful mortal vessels will start to give out past certain g levels, but even the fastest of sanctioned racing machines can only pose a moderate challenge to our neural processing power through a screen. I can still notice things like grip limits, understeer, oversteer, differential locking, downforce imbalance, or, hell, even zonk out and daydream a little on the straights when driving an F1 car in a simulator.

Style edited from Nations Styled - Singapore by SomePlayaDude

#singapore #nations #gtws

Absent any building costs, fear of pain, and the rulebooks that result from the hinderances of reality, the Red Bull X series of racecars seem purpose–built to challenge that mental limit of processing speed in us sim racers, to seperate the truly gifted freaks of nature from the ones that simply work hard and dedicate. Even though the X2014 model is tamer on paper than the X2011 that preceded it, it's still capable of mind–bending speeds that is well past what my brain can handle. I am utterly incapable of even thinking to myself when attempting to drive it, let alone try to put any of it into words.

I cannot fathom where its grip limits are, let alone how to explore and find them in a safe manner. Don't ask me where it makes healthy torque; I don't even remember how many gears the thing has. Straights in most racetracks pass by faster than I can let go of thoughts of the previous corner; every bend feels like consecutive corners in the X2014, and it'd take a straight as obscenely long as Fuji's home straight for me to take a deep breath or two in before the madness begins anew. Yeah, the brakes work. The brakes work so well that it might not just be the car they stop. This thing has so much downforce that it can literally oversteer up Eau Rouge—no, I'm not talking about the back end of the car stepping out—I mean, the car can literally turn too much and hit the right hander apex of Eau Rouge at a 45° angle doing 320km/h if you thought common sense things like steering resistance and laws of physics would stop the X2014. Trying to drive this thing with common sense and experience with other cars will completely neuter the X2014—its magic is allergic to common sense. Just know it. Trust it. Keep the throttle pinned. Steer it into that corner flat out, but don't expect the steering weight to fight you, so be surgeon precise with it at 300km/h. Following another X2014? Cope, I guess. Death is just a restart, not an end.

Every microscopic twitch and imperfection of my input is magnified and displayed faster than I can even realise my mistakes. An imperfection that might have resulted in dipping half a wheel past asphalt in a typical Gr.3 racecar will see the X2014 taken clean off the circuit. At the end of each drive, I am drenched in sweat, I am breathing heavy, and I can hear my heart race, not at all unlike having just been through a life–threatening fight. This thing drives almost as though it were taken from some arcade racer, and yet it has more rooting in reality than your typical Vision Gran Turismo faff, easily vacuuming the track of marbles with utterly bonkers sci–fi make believe contraptions like the laser–propelled 2X. It's only at low speed corners where it starts to resemble a sane, normal formula racer, absent the downforce–generating fan of the X2011. At speed, though? Don't even bother with the default panning mode of Mode 2 when shooting photos of the car, lest you get an indistinguishable blur. Either bump up the shutter speed or use Mode 3.

Mode 2 panning at 1/60s shutter speed at Maggiore's Banky Boi corner. The X2014 was doing 140km/h.

The fact that there are people out there with the mental processing speeds to handle the X2014 and even the Tomahawks really made me realise just how hopelessly average I am, and it'd be a pretty depressing thought if that sadness wasn't mostly drowned out by respect for both the machine, its creators, and the people actually capable of doing it justice.

And then there's the 1967 Lamborghini Miura P400 Bertone Prototype. While the X2014 overwhelms with unreal capability and immediacy, the Miura almost literally swings the entirely opposite direction. Packing a "mere" 349HP (260kW) and weighing in at just 980kg (2,161lbs) in–game, it's certainly not fast in the grand scheme of things, but I would still argue that it, much like the X2014, is a magnifying glass for driver skill that greatly exaggerates even microscopic skill gaps between players. I say this because this is one of, if not the most difficult cars in the game to drive, giving drivers microscopic margins for error and demanding an unreasonable amount of knowledge and precision in its driver. In the hands of someone like me, it's downright hazardous to drive even at middling speeds with every precaution taken.

Being the prototype of the first road legal rear mid engined road car, it's understandable that a lot of rear mid engined quirks and tendencies feel completely unaddressed and unmitigated in the P400. Even mild trail braking with default ABS will pull the rear end out screaming and thrashing, and there is absolutely zero safety measures in place to keep the Miura from swinging its tail out as though trying to whip itself if a driver turns too much on the brakes. Long, sweeping corners with deep apexes, such as... oh I dunno, the entire last sector of Fuji, are an utter nightmare to find and meet while babying the Miura's rear end. It forces drivers to have a smidge of throttle applied almost immediately after peeling the steering wheel off–centre for a corner—well before the apex—to keep some weight pressing over the rear tyre, more than a smidge if the revs are low. But be ready to ease off that throttle pedal when the car straightens out and the revs climb, because once this prehistoric NA V12 engine wakes past 7,000rpm, you'll get... you guessed it: explosive, barely containable oversteer.

According to the game, the Miura has 0 downforce front and rear. That's a lie: it has less than zero downforce—it has lift. The production Miura is notorious for being extremely floaty at speed in real life, and in the game, it's one of the very select few cars that is both old and fast enough where lift becomes a real problem. The steering wheel goes noticably numb and muted in just third gear at around 150km/h, and the car will aquaplane on thin air in 4th and 5th, with the steering wheel light enough to turn 90° on the final left kink of Deep Forest Raceway after the pit entry while the car understeers into the outside barrier. The Miura needs to be tipped into a turn earlier and earlier with alarming increments once it hits its stride in 3rd gear, and lifting just a hint, even for a barely noticable moment, gets the car pointy again thanks to its soft suspension (and hopefully full tank of fuel). But of course, be wary of doing this as well, because the rear end of the car doesn't get any friendlier at speed. In GT Auto, the only aero parts available to a Miura are custom rear wings that completely desecrate the look of the car, which means that even if you wanted to, there's no fixing the airy front end of the car; it can only be made worse.

The Miura is a completely impractical car, even in the context of a racing game, not just because it's a pricey LCD exclusive, but also because it requires a skill level so high that none but the most skilled drivers can find any consistency and speed with it. For plebs like me, a modern day car with less power and more mass, like an NSX-R, would be much faster over a few laps. There's an old saying that goes, "work with the car, not against it", but to do what the Miura wants to do would be to tap dance on a minefield with the devil himself after you cucked his wife in secret. For everyone else, the Miura has to be fought vehemently as though their virtual lives depended on it. If you can manage it, or even exploit its tail happiness, I can't help but to suspect it's unreasonably, unethically fast. It presents itself as an unreasonably tough test for drivers that might be bored of more mainstream offerings, almost akin to the demonic Kaizo Mario levels in the gaming world. I have a torrid time driving it, but at the same time, I find it difficult to dislike the Miura: it's a car that asks of its driver to be so hyper aware of everything that is going on with the car, from weight shifts, revs, yaw angles, speed, and traits like that are often associated with the best drivers' cars.

That is to say, instead of me critiquing the cars, the past few weeks have flipped the table, and the cars have criticised me instead. And, you know what? Both those cars, for polar opposite reasons, made every other car feel slower to drive; the X2014 with raw, sheer speed, and the Miura with how quickly it lapses the window of forgiveness to its driver. I might even be brazen enough to say that these two cars have made me a better driver.

GT7 W52 & 53: A Fortnight of Lamborghinis

I didn't want to review the "car" we had for Week 52.

I hate the all–consuming trend of S and CUVs. I think the vast majority of the people who buy those things have near zero use for any of the "Sport" and "Utility" of these Vehicles—if there's any to be found in those FF hatchbacks on stilts. I think most people buy these things just for show, and what car company is more showy than Lamborghini? When someone thought to put two and two together, the seemingly unlikely pairing of the words "Lamborghini" and "SUV" came together like air to a bird, the sea to a fish, and contempt to the contemptible, resulting in not the fastest running Lamborghini ever made, but the fastest selling one of the company's entire 60–year history. Yada yada, some context and history about Ferruccio Lamborghini never wanted to make sports cars, how the company made the "Rambo Lambo" LM002... Look, I get it. Doesn't make the Week 52 make any more sense or less of a poop stain to look at.

No, I'm not going to sully my fingers typing its name out. I do all my research on it in an incognito tab on another browser. I don't even feel this filthy browsing for porn. When I had to take a photo of the car to announce it at the start of Week 52, I didn't even shoot my own car. I don't want this brain rot and hollow showboating invading my life, my personal space, more than it already has. Seeing one in real life makes me sick. The only solace I can take in the Week 52 being added into Gran Turismo 7 is that I can adamantly refuse to own one, not even for a fleeting moment to fill my otherwise complete CarDex. In fact, that one omission in the 497–strong list as of Version 1.45 is something I take pride in. Yeah, it might seem trivial to be so worked up about not owning an inconsequential car in a video game, but I take the same pride in not owning a Week 52 as I do not relapsing into old habits or being rude to a retail worker. Sometimes not doing something is in itself, every bit an achievement as actually doing something. Not owning a Week 52, especially when I had everything else, was an achievement to me.

Was.

Vic then comes along and chose the Week 52 for Week 52 of Car of the Week. He held my family at gunpoint, my balls in a vice, and threatened to LS— no, EV swap an RX-7 before my taped open eyes if I didn't honour his "request". And so, the folks at Lamborghini became 300,000 Credits richer as their hired guns shook down a fallen and tearful pretend reviewer. They stripped me of all my clothes and took away all my means of payment and transport, and as a final "F–you", the only way could make it back home in the sweltering, inhumane heat was a Week 52 with my name, ID number, and blood type printed into its upholstery... in my own blood.

A more able man might have tried to make Bloody Marys with spilled blood in my situation by reviewing the Week 52, but willing myself into a Week 52 felt like dipping my soul into a pool of radioactive acid. All I can tell you is that first and second are uselessly short—2nd gear tops out at exactly 100km/h, which should be all I need to mention to illustrate the one purpose they're there to fulfil. The thing wants to be short shifted at about 6,2, and is completely soulless both to drive and to listen to. It stops really well for something that weighs the collective guilt of mankind's worst tendencies*. Drag completely nukes this thing past 230km/h (143mph). The front heaviness of this thing is somewhat mitigated by what feels like brake vectoring on corner entry, which means to say that it pushes harder than delivering mother cattle after the initial turn–in. Vic opines it's faster through a corner sideways than straight. Ask him for the details. I'm just a broken shell of a man stripped of all dignity, purpose, happiness, and hope in life.

*The Week 52 weighs 2,197kg (4,844lbs) according to the game. Those figures could be dry humour, as is the case with most Italian performance cars in this game. I'm not going to sully my search history with trying to dig up its kerb mass.

In terms of raw pace, it'd struggle immensely just to keep up with a first gen Audi R8 V8. Can you imagine actually paying 911 GT3 money to get spanked by a Cayman GT4? I'd say I couldn't if I hadn't been forced into actually experiencing it. I SUPPOSE it's the third fastest four seater in this game behind the Porsche Taycan and Charger Hellcat, and it would outlast the EV Taycan and be much easier to drive than a Hellcat. To drive, though? There's nothing exciting or even remotely pleasant about the driving experience. It's completely devoid of any sense of occasion, quirk, or personality. And that just doesn't scream "Lamborghini" to me.

Not like the 2000 Diablo GT.

2000 JGTC NOMAD Diablo GT1 by konezumiway

#2000 #jgtc #gt500

From the moment I had to launch it from a standing start, this thing BELLOWED out character, and I'm not just talking about the sound of the showpiece 6L V12 slung aft the cockpit, either. As one might expect from a naturally aspirated unit that's capable of revving to a dizzying 8,000rpm, the NA V12 engine of the Diablo is completely lifeless below 3k rpm, waking up in a dazed stupor only past that. The complete lack of life in those low revs, along with its very tall gear ratios, mean that it's much more advantageous to turn off the makeshift launch control that is TCS and just modulate the wheelspin off a standing start—not to mention much more fun and engaging. Push it past 6,000rpm though, and this thing instantly snaps from "mildly grumpy to be up early on a Saturday morning" to "fissed the puck off just because it can", almost as though an invisible turbo passed laughing gas into the engine's cylinders and the driver's lungs, and it's a violent transition in first and second gear. In the 5 or so seconds it takes the Diablo to get from 0–100km/h, it's already shown more character than the Week 52 could ever scrape together in its lifetime. Right from the moment the lights go out, the Diablo has already established its personality and preferences in a way that almost looks as if written by a manga artist trying to introduce and establish a new character: Make a strong, cinematic impression, convey the character's intention, establish the character's absurd power level in the dynamic, maybe pepper in hints of its quirks for flavour, and then slowly hint at its weaknesses in a pace the audience can digest while keeping their interest.

As previously mentioned, the gear ratios of the Diablo are not just tall, but also wide apart—a necessity when trying to reach 200mph with just five forward gears. This, combined with its peaky engine, means that every gear has to be wrung for every last rev it can muster before upshifting, lest the upshift drops the L532 engine below its awakening point of 6,000rpm. Wring each cog for all it's worth, and the Diablo will just barely stay above said 6k threshold with each upshift. In other words, bringing each gear to its symphonic limit is not just its own reward, it's also to avoid painful punishment, and it lights up my stupid lizard brain on both motivational ends like a Christmas tree set on fire. Despite not having a stick shifter for my T300RS and thus only shifting with the paddles, there's a nigh indescribable quality to the Diablo's shifts that just make them so stupidly satisfying to grab. They just feel smoother and a little quicker than most stick shifts in the game. I wonder if the dog–leg pattern of the gated shifter has anything to do with it?

Continuing where the 25th Anniversary Countach left off, the Diablo GT comically staggers its tyres front to rear as though a Top Fuel Dragster to keep itself stable: 245–335 in this case. Of course, front tyres so skinny would have better luck stopping Y2K than it would a 1,490kg (3,285lbs), 200mph–capable cruise missile, to say nothing of trying to stop and steer a rampaging Diablo at the same time. Braking isn't the Diablo's strong suit, and ironically for a rear mid engine car, braking and turning has to be largely separate affairs, all in spite of the fact that late model Diablos like the one we have coming with ABS. And if you thought trail braking it was bad, wait till you need to adjust the Diablo's turning radius deep into a corner: the differential is so tight that it's damn near impossible to get the front end to turn when not hard on the brakes deep into a corner!

"So, what's the difference between the Week 52 and the Diablo, if both Lamborghinis push with understeer heavily?", you might be asking at this point. The difference, dear astute, sexy reader, is that, in addition to its spine–chilling, bum–burning soundtrack, the rear mid engined Diablo has a playful side to it unlike the Week 52, and the magical part about having that playful split personality is that sometimes, that playful side wins. The problem with using a tight differential in generating understeer is that the more understeer you try to dial into it, the harder and faster the car goes sideways once the rear tyres lose grip for any reason—a situation not unfamiliar to drivers of the Diablo owing to its racecar emulating rear suspension setup making tar mountains out of molehills. Beware of cutting corners too much as well, because the Diablo's preferred portal to the underworld lies just beyond paved asphalt, and once there's a grip difference between the two rear tyres, all hell breaks loose. And, as stupid a notion as it is to powerslide and drift around a 1 in 83 classic supercar, the Diablo GT is... really controllable in a slide. Don't get me wrong: you still have to catch it the nanosecond it goes, but if you're prepared for it and are quick enough, and if the NA V12 is awake and angry enough to give you the torque, the Diablo GT is a shockingly predictable and controllable lunk to slide around. In other words, the Diablo has so much character that it feels like two personalities constantly fighting each other, whereas the Week 52 can't find a shred of emotion in it, even if it were piloted by asylum inmates.

After having experienced the Diablo and running its similarly brilliant Murciélago against it, I just can't fathom how anyone could accept the Week 52 wearing a Lamborghini badge, let alone want it. It's a licence to print money for VAG, not a car meant to be driven by drivers. And sadly, it's not a trend that started with the Week 52; rather, the Week 52 seems to be the culmination of a long lasting syndrome.

GT7 W60: Volvo 240 SE Estate '93

The early Gran Turismo games have revolutionised the racing game genre by including everyday, seemingly boring family cars in its roster, allowing players to not only experience driving these not–at–all–sporty cars at their limits, but also to transform these unassuming econoboxes into unlikely Swiss Army Knives, capable of sharing racetracks with sports, super, and even full fledged racecars. However, as the fidelity of game consoles began to increase, so too did the time and resources required to add a car into the games, and thus slowly but surely, those unassuming commuters one could realistically encounter in real life or even own themselves were trimmed out of the shrinking car lists in favour of established, fan–favourite, or historic cars, such as the 911s, Corvettes, and GT-Rs. Even the few relatively attainable cars in the game, like the Civics, Golfs, and pickup trucks, are all top of the line stuff with loads of sporty options bundled in. That is to say, the car list in Gran Turismo 7 reads almost like a hall of fame of the automotive industry, and most everything in it has some sporting credentials and intent.

Volvo 240 SE Estate by T1TANUIM-X

#volvo #240 #se

And that is precisely what makes the 1993 Volvo 240 SE Estate such a standout addition to Gran Turismo 7; It has zero sporting intentions and capabilities, making it one of the very few "normal" cars from the 70s to 90s in the game. Its soft enough to not break your grannies' backs on their way to church, and it's fast enough to get your perishables from the market home before they spoil, no more. Not only is it woefully, agonisingly slow, but it feels properly clumsy when pushed in the corners. It's a long overdue, much needed taste of what a "normal" car feels like to drive, and it's only with this context that sports cars like Silvias and Supras can shine; otherwise, they'd just feel slow and clumsy themselves.

So, what's an everyman car of the mid seventies to early nineties like to drive at ten tenths? Surprisingly scary, actually! It pitches, it rolls, and yes, it yaws, both on braking and accelerating, making it not only scarier to drive fast than a 930 Turbo by my estimates, but it might also be the single lowest powered car that would benefit from Traction Control. Its soft suspension also makes it incredibly snappy when it does skid sideways, making it deceptively difficult to recover despite everything happening so slowly. That said, its soft suspension means that even the notorious sausage kerbs have a hard time discouraging a rampaging 240 to avert its course, and it's a very light car by modern standards—1,324kg (2,919lbs)—which means it also has a very contrasting sense of approachability to its danger, making it an excellent car to learn car control in.

I might not like driving the Volvo 240 SE Estate, but I opine nonetheless that it's one of the most important and standout additions to the game's roster, adding some much needed variety, context, and a bit of the soul of the Gran Turismo of old back into the car roster of GT7. What it really needs right now isn't racing suspension, slick tyres, and sick aero parts; it just needs more cars of its ilk to compare against, and a proper career mode that would justify their purchase, upgrades, and use.