Forza Horizon 5: General Discussion

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I asked one of the Turn 10 devs once if we could have the XJS back for motorsport - waited years for it to be in a game then it show up in Horizon like once or twice and not again. He said he'd pitch it - never did hear anything more.

It was my go to car for everything - broke my heart when it wasn't in 5 or Motorsport. Especially Motorsport, since it's a Group A legend.
 
I think I might prefer this XJ C restomod to be honest though. We've not had an XJ in Horizon either have we?


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The rims are silly, but those car lines are great.

The update is somewhat closer to the original XJC than you might think, with changes which certainly make a difference:
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Guys, don't forget to do the Porsche Carrera photo challenge to get the traffic cone outfit:
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I used the Ginetta G10 for the first time today, in the Hokihoshi Eventlab. What an awesome car that is. Driving it stock it clearly has ancient tyres and happily drifts round every corner with such easy throttle control, and such a lovely engine note.


Edit: Oops, that new costume may not be suitable for making me drive well:
Ford GT lands in the sand.jpg
 
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I've absolutely come around on this series over the last couple weeks. After the stream I was thinking 'okay, probably 8/10 cars, 3/10 update', but now that I've actually played with these cars and seen exactly what's at stake (pretty much all of the EventLabs this week could seriously use the new track pieces, which honestly makes me wonder why they don't just commission the big EventLab creators to betatest the new pieces in exchange for being featured in the Playlist), it's rocketed up to very much a 9/10 update.

Heck, everything in these playlists is incredibly well-thought-out, which is unusual; rewards logically enable other challenges, which give rewards that enable other challenges, and PR stunts, when they do actually require you to upgrade to beat the targets, like the Alfa Romeo and A-class Pickups and 4x4s ones last week, genuinely expect you to know how to manage a racing line and how to manage the balance between grip and horsepower when making an asphalt build. (I was probably the only one in my instance to be smart enough to realize 'hey, they literally gave us a high-PI pickup last week, why not use that instead of the Hummer EV?' Still had to upgrade it a little bit but it still took care of the target.)
 
The Trial was particularly brutal this week for me, took five attempts to get a team that weren't blowing the final race by missing checkpoints.
I feel your pain bud. I got placed with 3 or 4 drivers whose gene pool was clearly mixed with a combination of Stevie Wonder and Johnny Knoxville. Thankfully the A.I were poor or we wouldn't have stood a chance.
 
The Trial was particularly brutal this week for me, took five attempts to get a team that weren't blowing the final race by missing checkpoints.
I got a decent team myself on the first attempt, easy 2 wins.

However while I effortlessly won race 1 in my Cayman GT4, in the second race as I was overtaking a player he punted me off the (straight) road just before a checkpoint, so I became one of those missed checkpoint guys myself :(
 
I got a decent team myself on the first attempt, easy 2 wins.

However while I effortlessly won race 1 in my Cayman GT4, in the second race as I was overtaking a player he punted me off the (straight) road just before a checkpoint, so I became one of those missed checkpoint guys myself :(
The trial was particullary savage this time. The first race was kinda ok, we won by a fairly large margin. In the second race, everyones brains somehow switched back to their neanderthal basic setting and they were swerving all over the road. Punting players and AI of the road left and right. I quit after 2 laps after being pushed off the road once and into a barrier twice 🙄
I won on my next attempt with some slightly more civilized people who could hold their inner berserker in check.
 
I thought it would be fun to share this color chart of Mexico City's taxis over time.
View attachment 1352491
Notice that the Beetle cabs driving around are stuck in the gold/maroon scheme because they're were scrapped by the time of the white/pink era, dominated by the Tsuru.
I love the livery on the 1970-1990 Beetle. To my eyes it works very well in yellow but doesn't work in green for some reason.
 
My first race in the Trial was pretty uneventful. Everyone behaved themselves and we won pretty convincingly. The second race was a disaster. No one could keep it together and we lost pretty badly. The third race started okay until we got to the first right hand corner. I had a teammate on my left, and in trying to give them enough room, I just missed the gate on the inside. That put me way down the order. I struggled to catch up, but on the last lap, going into the final left leading to the straight, something strange happened. About four cars from the other team were wrecked in front of me. I have no idea what happened, but it allowed me to pass them and it made the difference. We went from losing to winning in that one corner.
 
Would love for AI traffic to get updated. It'd be nice to see Tsurus driving around, and instead of F150 Raptors, have the old 80s model F150 that got added a while back as traffic instead.
They can't easily do that. The best you can do is an unlicensed version with edited grilles or other details, or a horribly modeled one at worst.
 
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I just uninstalled FH5.

I did not hate this game. But it has worn me out.
For the 8 years looking back since FH3 (well, technically Forzathon started in the middle of FH3, but I don't even remember that exact time anymore), I have always kept up with the Forzathon/Playlist of this series. Not to brag, but I had every exclusive car from FH3 to FH5 except the ones inaccessible from my area. That's a testament to the seriousness with which I took the series.

But for the last 6 months or so I was already tired of the endless FOMO of this game.
Once a week I fire up the game and do the playlist with a sinking feeling. I wish it were easy to complete, but sometimes this "chore" can last several hours, mainly due to the rubber band AI going crazy.
And when I finish the playlist I am so exhausted and fed up with continuing this game any longer that I quit the game and turn off the Xbox without even checking my newly acquired car.
I have one emotion at this point. "Oh, now I don't have to play this game for a few more days."

These days constantly made me question whether there was any reason to continue playing this game any longer.
A game I don't want to play. A car that I never even drive, even though I've taken the trouble to acquire it. The uncomfortable and painful time that awaits me every week. I wondered why I was playing this game.

And I was playing the playlist just now.
Because as a Hyundai freak, the Elantra appeals to me. And the Prostock Camaro.
Those cars must have been an attractive carrot for the "horse" that is me. But for some reason, my mind reached a breaking point along the way.
It wasn't that the AI beat me down. It wasn't that the game crashed. I don't feel any anger or hatred toward the game. Something quietly went out, like extinguishing a candle.

I immediately retired from the race and uninstalled FH5 from my Xbox.
It might have been easier if I had thought, "Yippee-ki-yay! I finally uninstalled this s****y game!"
But for some reason, I don't have any positive feelings in my heart. In fact, I feel guilty as if I quit my job for selfish reasons. And also the emptiness of losing something important.

I get almost 200 GB of free space on my Xbox HDD now. In this space I could install my favorite games and enjoy them in a more positive way.

But I don't have the energy for that anymore. All I have left is confusion about my choices and the nearly 20 years I have spent with Forza.

I have been an avid fan of the Forza series since FM1. And when one by one my friends got tired of FOMO and left Forza, I continued to play alone.
But I finally retired too.

For me, Forza was the series to which I devoted my life more than any other game series. Was this the right end? I just don't know.

Sorry for complaining. However, I wanted someone to hear how I felt. thank you.
 
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I just uninstalled FH5.

I did not hate this game. But it has worn me out.
For the 8 years looking back since FH3 (well, technically Forzathon started in the middle of FH3, but I don't even remember that exact time anymore), I have always kept up with the Forzathon/Playlist of this series. Not to brag, but I had every exclusive car from FH3 to FH5 except the ones inaccessible from my area. That's a testament to the seriousness with which I took the series.

But for the last 6 months or so I was already tired of the endless FOMO of this game.
Once a week I fire up the game and do the playlist with a sinking feeling. I wish it were easy to complete, but sometimes this "chore" can last several hours, mainly due to the rubber band AI going crazy.
And when I finish the playlist I am so exhausted and fed up with continuing this game any longer that I quit the game and turn off the Xbox without even checking my newly acquired car.
I have one emotion at this point. "Oh, now I don't have to play this game for a few more days."

These days constantly made me question whether there was any reason to continue playing this game any longer.
A game I don't want to play. A car that I never even drive, even though I've taken the trouble to acquire it. The uncomfortable and painful time that awaits me every week. I wondered why I was playing this game.

And I was playing the playlist just now.
Because as a Hyundai freak, the Elantra appeals to me. And the Prostock Camaro.
Those cars must have been an attractive carrot for the "horse" that is me. But for some reason, my mind reached a breaking point along the way.
It wasn't that the AI beat me down. It wasn't that the game crashed. I don't feel any anger or hatred toward the game. Something quietly went out, like extinguishing a candle.

I immediately retired from the race and uninstalled FH5 from my Xbox.
It might have been easier if I had thought, "Yippee-ki-yay! I finally uninstalled this s****y game!"
But for some reason, I don't have any positive feelings in my heart. In fact, I feel guilty as if I quit my job for selfish reasons. And also the emptiness of losing something important.

I get almost 200 GB of free space on my Xbox HDD now. In this space I could install my favorite games and enjoy them in a more positive way.

But I don't have the energy for that anymore. All I have left is confusion about my choices and the nearly 20 years I have spent with Forza.

I have been an avid fan of the Forza series since FM1. And when one by one my friends got tired of FOMO and left Forza, I continued to play alone.
But I finally retired too.

For me, Forza was the series to which I devoted my life more than any other game series. Was this the right end? I just don't know.

Sorry for complaining. However, I wanted someone to hear how I felt. thank you.
You've lost the love for something you once loved, and that's a horrible feeling. Every feeling you described is there after love dies.

You haven't been complaining bud, just talking. It's always good to talk.

As @Seb75 has said, I hope you find the same feelings and emotions you once had for Forza in another game.
 
Back to the restomods - Chris Harris doing them justice as a car nerd:
  • Alfaholics GTA-R 300 (all carbon bodied latest version)
  • Tuthill 911 SCRS (looks less impressive outwardly than the Singer, more untouched)

 
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812 hours played says the game will never wear off for me... And maybe I'm a bit biased because it's a beautifully realized playground version of my home country, but I also remember this game helped to ease those damned 2020-2021 Covid years... Instead of worrying about the FOMO mechanics I choose to enjoy the little things, like win X race with Y car with which I hadn't played before and discovering a new favorite ride or sight, or marvel at some of the incredible EventLab creations out there and so on. And although I have more than 700 cars, it has never been about car collection, as my true favorite cars number about 60.
Oh well, enough ramblings for Saturday, enjoy the weekend y'all!
 
I just uninstalled FH5.

I did not hate this game. But it has worn me out.
For the 8 years looking back since FH3 (well, technically Forzathon started in the middle of FH3, but I don't even remember that exact time anymore), I have always kept up with the Forzathon/Playlist of this series. Not to brag, but I had every exclusive car from FH3 to FH5 except the ones inaccessible from my area. That's a testament to the seriousness with which I took the series.

But for the last 6 months or so I was already tired of the endless FOMO of this game.
Once a week I fire up the game and do the playlist with a sinking feeling. I wish it were easy to complete, but sometimes this "chore" can last several hours, mainly due to the rubber band AI going crazy.
And when I finish the playlist I am so exhausted and fed up with continuing this game any longer that I quit the game and turn off the Xbox without even checking my newly acquired car.
I have one emotion at this point. "Oh, now I don't have to play this game for a few more days."

These days constantly made me question whether there was any reason to continue playing this game any longer.
A game I don't want to play. A car that I never even drive, even though I've taken the trouble to acquire it. The uncomfortable and painful time that awaits me every week. I wondered why I was playing this game.

And I was playing the playlist just now.
Because as a Hyundai freak, the Elantra appeals to me. And the Prostock Camaro.
Those cars must have been an attractive carrot for the "horse" that is me. But for some reason, my mind reached a breaking point along the way.
It wasn't that the AI beat me down. It wasn't that the game crashed. I don't feel any anger or hatred toward the game. Something quietly went out, like extinguishing a candle.

I immediately retired from the race and uninstalled FH5 from my Xbox.
It might have been easier if I had thought, "Yippee-ki-yay! I finally uninstalled this s****y game!"
But for some reason, I don't have any positive feelings in my heart. In fact, I feel guilty as if I quit my job for selfish reasons. And also the emptiness of losing something important.

I get almost 200 GB of free space on my Xbox HDD now. In this space I could install my favorite games and enjoy them in a more positive way.

But I don't have the energy for that anymore. All I have left is confusion about my choices and the nearly 20 years I have spent with Forza.

I have been an avid fan of the Forza series since FM1. And when one by one my friends got tired of FOMO and left Forza, I continued to play alone.
But I finally retired too.

For me, Forza was the series to which I devoted my life more than any other game series. Was this the right end? I just don't know.

Sorry for complaining. However, I wanted someone to hear how I felt. thank you.
It's live service. Why else do you think this game, alongside over 500 different examples as mentioned on the FM23 discussion, suggest otherwise? We've now accepted the era where live service games have dominated the market and there's very few games that are done in the finished state.

Sad to see you leave, but I became one of those statistics a long time ago when I quit in February due to console instability. I would've came back if it weren't for the Cyberster or the Santana but I don't have the desire to do so if the system's going to crash.

In the case of ATS/ETS2 (which are technically live-service but has offline and a convoy mode), it's different. There's always something to do, even when exploring the world. Nebraska is coming soon, so hopefully an update should be coming alongside it, which will be massive. To that end, both games will get new UI designs, ATS gets CA Rework phase 3 and ETS2 gets Swiss rework and the NRW portion of Germany. This is more meaningful content to drive on.

But in regards to Forza, this is quite sad. I don't see the live-service model changing anytime soon, and this is largely the main reason why I hate modern gaming. We've seen major games flop in spectacular ways, which is far worse than what it used to be in 2005-06 when we had good games during the sixth-gen console era.

What changed the overall love of beloved series? The whole "live service" concept. This was a new norm back in circa 2018 and it has not changed since. This singlehandedly brought on the downfall of modern gaming and we're now at the point where AAA games are now truly awful, not simply because they had to fix it later, but also the advent of predatory microtransactions. There's very few good games in 2023 save for RoboCop: Rogue City and a few other examples.
 
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I just uninstalled FH5.

I did not hate this game. But it has worn me out.
For the 8 years looking back since FH3 (well, technically Forzathon started in the middle of FH3, but I don't even remember that exact time anymore), I have always kept up with the Forzathon/Playlist of this series. Not to brag, but I had every exclusive car from FH3 to FH5 except the ones inaccessible from my area. That's a testament to the seriousness with which I took the series.

But for the last 6 months or so I was already tired of the endless FOMO of this game.
Once a week I fire up the game and do the playlist with a sinking feeling. I wish it were easy to complete, but sometimes this "chore" can last several hours, mainly due to the rubber band AI going crazy.
And when I finish the playlist I am so exhausted and fed up with continuing this game any longer that I quit the game and turn off the Xbox without even checking my newly acquired car.
I have one emotion at this point. "Oh, now I don't have to play this game for a few more days."

These days constantly made me question whether there was any reason to continue playing this game any longer.
A game I don't want to play. A car that I never even drive, even though I've taken the trouble to acquire it. The uncomfortable and painful time that awaits me every week. I wondered why I was playing this game.

And I was playing the playlist just now.
Because as a Hyundai freak, the Elantra appeals to me. And the Prostock Camaro.
Those cars must have been an attractive carrot for the "horse" that is me. But for some reason, my mind reached a breaking point along the way.
It wasn't that the AI beat me down. It wasn't that the game crashed. I don't feel any anger or hatred toward the game. Something quietly went out, like extinguishing a candle.

I immediately retired from the race and uninstalled FH5 from my Xbox.
It might have been easier if I had thought, "Yippee-ki-yay! I finally uninstalled this s****y game!"
But for some reason, I don't have any positive feelings in my heart. In fact, I feel guilty as if I quit my job for selfish reasons. And also the emptiness of losing something important.

I get almost 200 GB of free space on my Xbox HDD now. In this space I could install my favorite games and enjoy them in a more positive way.

But I don't have the energy for that anymore. All I have left is confusion about my choices and the nearly 20 years I have spent with Forza.

I have been an avid fan of the Forza series since FM1. And when one by one my friends got tired of FOMO and left Forza, I continued to play alone.
But I finally retired too.

For me, Forza was the series to which I devoted my life more than any other game series. Was this the right end? I just don't know.

Sorry for complaining. However, I wanted someone to hear how I felt. thank you.
This is why come-and-go mechanics, particularly with FH5 and FM8 seriously need to stop. None of this should even be present in a potential FH6 as well.

Some people will definitely say that work, kids, or anything being far away from home will be factors why they don't have all the time in the world to play through these content in the game, and another factor would be that people will eventually get tired of it, as with your case here.

What this encourages is panic-playing, the more that Playground or Turn Ten don't add these so-called "hard-to-find" cars in the Autoshow, car dealer, and in FM8's case, Free Play as well.

Ironically I missed out on a year's worth of content on FH5 for a year due to being on hiatus as my Windows laptop broke down and only returned to playing once I got my Xbox Series X. Right now, I've caught up pretty well and only have magic number cars to collect.

How Playground can address this in the context of Horizon would work this way:

You can get early access to the free Festival Playlist cars (either new or recycled) once you actually win them as prizes, but they will be immediately available in the Autoshow once the week/season ends. Even then, you'll still need the credits (or Mexican peso, given the location of the game) to buy the cars in question, but they are sold for their retail price instead.

Don't even bother with the auction house, as the prices of these can get hyper-inflated to insanely handsome prices, and they could all be gone if you're too slow about it.

The Backstage pass from FH4 still isn't a better idea as that still involves come-and-go mechanics in order to collect the passes themselves.

Live service doesn't have to mean come-and-go mechanics, predatory microtransactions, or a regression in gameplay and features.
 
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I can relate to what WanganDream has discussed.
While I'm certainly not at the stage of uninstalling FH5, I have sympathy in regards to the whole "live service" aspect of the game. I find myself in a kind of love/hate relationship with the monthly Playlists. I'm excited to know what new cars are coming but at the same time, if they have cars that I'm not that fond of but still need to fire up my Series X every week to obtain, I do go ballistic sometimes.
It doesn't help when you play the Trial and are surrounded by ***** who ram you off the road. I find myself wanting to eat the controller and/or throw it out the window. Not a fan of teamwork at the best of times.

So, I do strongly sympathise with WanganDream's sentiments. It just strikes me as very stressful and repetitive when they add Playlists month after month. I find myself sometimes asking "When are these monthly updates going to stop so that I can devote time to playing the rest of the game?"
 
AS AN ONLINE, MULTIPLAYER GAME I do like new content being added every week instead of what you get the game comes out being all you ever get. I love a lot of the concepts behind Forza Horizon at this point. If you get tired of racing the same old tracks, you can always play user-made tracks. Dissatisfied with user made tracks? Make your own! Tired of racing altogether? Go driving off across the desert! Trailblazers! Stunt ramps! Drift! Tune some cars! Paint some cars! Collect cars! Play the auction house! This, I think, is Forza Horizon's strength. So long as you're interested in cars in some form, you can usually find something to do so long as your focus isn't too narrow. Having easy access to the stadium stunt park would be nice as well.

And now we come to what I don't like.

Exclusivity, and 'forgotten' cars. Want that arbitrarily rare car that was, in reality, mass produced for fifty years? Nope, out of luck. You can only ever get one copy of it because...reasons! Want to keep a stock one, a racing one, and a rally one? Nope. How about that muscle car that they only had on the playlist once eight months ago? Nope. Anyone willing to auction one already did long ago. I, myself, am missing the Sierra 700whatever, a car I will admittedly never, ever, ever use, and wasted a lot of time checking the auction house after I missed it before I gave up on it. Locking away cars essentially forever. In a car game. Why is this even a thing?

The weekly chore list.

It's dull, it's repetitive. It's freaking boring. Yeah, I get it, you want to keep people coming back to play your game. This is an annoying way to do it. I have a confession to make. A couple months ago, at the beginning of the European Car series, I just...stopped doing the playlist. I stopped. It was like a weight was lifted from my back. I'm free! I no longer dread thursday. I no longer have to waste an hour and a half doing a bunch of chores every week to get a car I have zero interest in that will sit untouched in my garage forever, unless some arbitrary part of a future chorelist requires it. Not to mention the occasional difficulty spike because of bad decision making on the part of whoever comes up with this crap.
 
Back to the restomods - Chris Harris doing them justice as a car nerd:
  • Alfaholics GTA-R 300 (all carbon bodied latest version)
  • Tuthill 911 SCRS (looks less impressive outwardly than the Singer, more untouched)


That Alfaholics GTA-R looks gorgeous and sounds incredible 🤩
 
AS AN ONLINE, MULTIPLAYER GAME I do like new content being added every week instead of what you get the game comes out being all you ever get. I love a lot of the concepts behind Forza Horizon at this point. If you get tired of racing the same old tracks, you can always play user-made tracks. Dissatisfied with user made tracks? Make your own! Tired of racing altogether? Go driving off across the desert! Trailblazers! Stunt ramps! Drift! Tune some cars! Paint some cars! Collect cars! Play the auction house! This, I think, is Forza Horizon's strength. So long as you're interested in cars in some form, you can usually find something to do so long as your focus isn't too narrow. Having easy access to the stadium stunt park would be nice as well.

And now we come to what I don't like.

Exclusivity, and 'forgotten' cars. Want that arbitrarily rare car that was, in reality, mass produced for fifty years? Nope, out of luck. You can only ever get one copy of it because...reasons! Want to keep a stock one, a racing one, and a rally one? Nope. How about that muscle car that they only had on the playlist once eight months ago? Nope. Anyone willing to auction one already did long ago. I, myself, am missing the Sierra 700whatever, a car I will admittedly never, ever, ever use, and wasted a lot of time checking the auction house after I missed it before I gave up on it. Locking away cars essentially forever. In a car game. Why is this even a thing?

The weekly chore list.

It's dull, it's repetitive. It's freaking boring. Yeah, I get it, you want to keep people coming back to play your game. This is an annoying way to do it. I have a confession to make. A couple months ago, at the beginning of the European Car series, I just...stopped doing the playlist. I stopped. It was like a weight was lifted from my back. I'm free! I no longer dread thursday. I no longer have to waste an hour and a half doing a bunch of chores every week to get a car I have zero interest in that will sit untouched in my garage forever, unless some arbitrary part of a future chorelist requires it. Not to mention the occasional difficulty spike because of bad decision making on the part of whoever comes up with this crap.
We all know why the weekly playlist exists: It's to ensure user retention and achieve good Gamepass statistics, so Microsoft will keep supporting the PG team and the current and future Horizon games. The question then becomes: What other ways of guaranteeing large scale user retention week after week are suitable alternatives?


When I compare FH5's approach to getting us back to the game faithfully each week, I can only compare it to things like Season Passes from other publishers. There you are basically given the right to earn cosmetics by playing the game a lot in the 3 months after the Season Pass was released. But once the Season Pass is over you can never get that content again. In some cases Season Pass content is free, but in others you have to pay for it.

FH5 is basically offering something similar: You pay for DLC car packs, but the seasonal content is free for all. The main difference is that you are required to login every single week in FH5, as compared to being able to play sporadically with a Season Pass. But the other difference is that FH5 brings back all of the seasonal stuff in future playlists eventually, rather than locking us out for good for having missed a particular Season Pass. Differing types of FOMO.


Personally I've been doing the weekly playlists in both FH4 and FH5 without fail since early 2021 (ok, it was just FH4 until FH5 launched). I've not missed a single week of FH5, including taking a gaming laptop on holiday with me. But I've only ever found the weekly playlist a chore a few times when we needed to hit 40 points and some of the races were rough. Usually I can earn that week's car by doing the monthly rivals, the trial, the eventlabs and one or two small other things, which barely takes 30 minutes. Then after that for the rest of the week I'm free to just enjoy racing and driving around in game. I am still motivated to play each week without fail, and I'm not considering stopping any time soon.
 
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Interessting video of the Lotus Evija X doing a record lap for EV production cars, although it has been heavily modified.
Still impressive for being the third fastest car around the green hell.
Laptimes.jpg


The onboard video is nuts, but not as crazy as the onboard from the Porsche 919 Tribute


What is also interessting: that a Porsche Taycan Turbo GT is only 2 seconds slower than a Rimac Nevera
 
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