I have bad news to report: Top Gear Test Track has a virus.
In Spec I, the HKS CT230R was, according to my review, a bloody good car, with one flaw: crippling understeer. However, by the time I had driven it for Spec II, it had seemingly lost this factor. But here I am driving it on this track, and without so much as a huge physics change, the understeer plague has returned.
With this in mind, there is only one conclusion we can deter from this: it wasn't the car's fault at all that it had understeer of any kind. It was the track's.
So why does the HKS not have the same problem on other tracks that are still tarmac? Simple. It's just the way the TGTT is set up as.
In real life, there are many different varying states of tarmac. PD have obviously gone and tried to implement this between different tracks, and evidently, from what we can see here, the tarmac on TGTT is not suited to HKS CT230Rs in the slightest.
So let's go somewhere where it's a little more in its climate zone.
Great onboard footage here!
Special Stage Route X is a place where the HKS is far more comfortable. Not least when you consider how well it does in a straight line. Sure there aren't many corners here, but that's not the point.
With 4WD, horsepower figures nearing 600 and a big Evo 7 body fitted with aerodynamics of crazy sorts, the CT230R is absolutely unassailable over a standing 1/4 mile. Very few can shake it. If you give it a proper full tune, you will do 0-100 in under 5 seconds, and cover a 1/4 mile in under 10.
The HKS then, is very much the tuner of choice for those who prefer to travel in straight lines. And there's other things as well that make this into the best tuner of them all.
The cornering in stock form, on the right track is certainly more than good enough. When tuned right, it can be improved even further. Even the flaw of low top speed it consistently suffers from doesn't even stop it from being an utter monster, as you will already be a couple of light years ahead of your opponent from the sheer acceleration of the thing. And there's the looks as well.
The gunmetal gray wheels look shockingly good. The chrome HKS logo shines brightly on the car's side panels and bonnet, and the big bumpers and wheel-arches emphasize the work gone into this Time Attack racer. But the bit I feel is the best on this car is the bonnet, or one feature of it anyway.
Who said you couldn't see engine parts on GT5?!!
I will now steal a quick quote from Top Gear's review of the Mitsubishi Evo X FQ400 (the ultimate Evo and most likely my personal dream car), which uses a similar technique in terms of its bonnet.
The bodywork (inspired by the now-legendary Makkinen-edition Evo VI) features a wildly scooped and vented bonnet that leaves bejewelled bits of engine hanging out like proud cleavage.
On that basis, if the FQ400 has
this much showing, we can safely say the CT230R has lots of cleavage on show. It's probably why I love it so much, knowing me.
But when all is said and done, the CT230R leaves every other tuner car standing. But I had a compelling reason to test some others: my extensive "All Tuners Tested" posts.
With this, I tested a full 38 tuner cars, evaluating their overall speed and feel. Not surprisingly, the CT230R came out on top as the best of the tuners. But what about the best of the rest. What tuners did I feel were similarly impressive that could challenge the CT230R as a top tuner? That's what this first section of the awards is about: the tuner cars I found that did me, and it, proud. Let's see them.
And we start off first and foremost with the fastest tuner of them all, the Mine's BNR34 Skyline GT-R V-spec N1 base '00.
Back in GT4, I used to hate this thing. It only ever showed up as an opponent on Arcade Mode, but my god, was it an awful thing to come up against. No matter what car seemed to face it, it just seemed to be a hopeless mission to beat it. Nothing could keep up with it, including myself. I suppose you could say it was the Amuse S2000 GT1 Turbo of the last game.
But I had good cause to test the Premium cousin of this thing, in GT5 Prologue. And it was certainly a lovely thing. This put me on good terms with Mine's again, and meant I had good spirits in testing this thing when it came around on All Tuners Tested.
Given the Premium Mine's speed, in every single league of speed from the 0-60 times all the way up to the track, I was expecting the Standard to largely follow suit. But while the Premium was excellent, this was nigh on insane.
The Premium did 0-60 in 2.9. This did it in 2.7 - and beat the HKS CT230R in the process. At that point, I realized straight away one thing - I was in command of a total demon.
It stayed very strong throughout the rest of the acceleration test, with only the Amuse S2000 GT1 Turbo really kicking it back afterwards. But everything really blew up once I got to the top speed test got into play.
The Premium had laid a marker down of 203.3mph - a certainly high speed to be sure. The Standard kicked that to the kerb with barely a slight bead of sweat - 208.3mph being the fastest top speed any tuner reached. The Art Morrison Corvette and Amuse S2000 GT1 Turbo which had previously been at the top were left standing. This was the fastest tuner in a straight line of them all, no question.
Unfortunately, things changed a little when the track showed up: as the Premium set a breakneck time of 1:57.4 around Grand Valley Speedway, this managed a less speedy 1:59.8. But the positions it had gathered on SSRX were enough to make it the top tuner on speed terms in the game.
There was good cause for it to be so, compared to the Premium - one not entirely in my control. In the state it was in under testing, it had a full 17bhp more than the Premium in testing. This was because the Premium was at 0 miles and had no more than an oil change, while the Standard was fully broken in and restored. Alas, at the time, the Standard was not obtainable with 0 miles, so I had to buy it from the UCD. It's not known how much it would have helped it, but there were certainly other factors that will have helped it regardless.
The aerodynamics on the Standard are lower than the Premium's, which made for big differences in a straight line in the Standard's favour - and on the track for the Premium's. But the extra top speed would not have been possible without the extra ratio changes the Standard has, which allowed it to get that extra 5mph that the Premium couldn't get on top of the lower aerodynamics. The combination of it all meant that the Mine's Skyline BNR34 Skyline V-spec N1 base '00 was crowned the fastest tuner of them all - ahead of even the Amuse S2000 GT1 Turbo which had supposedly replaced it as tuner troll of the game.
And to be honest, it is a pretty brilliant car, even given that it is one of the older tuner cars on the game. In spite of the lower speed compared to the Premium Mine's, it does provide a bloody good drive on the track. And when you take away the numerous disagreements I have had with it in GT4, it is the perfect tuner Skyline at heart. The body isn't changed a great deal, and you'd still recognize it as a Skyline every day of the week. And we know that the tuning limits of an R34 are...limitless, really. And of course, when you get to a straight line, you really are home and dry with it.
Well this is one way to tell the Standard and Premium apart. Ouch.
So that's the first of the tuners done. And here's another one - or three to be precise. Three Art Morrison Corvettes, coming the way of this post now.
In the All Tuners Tested special, three predominant classic American cars would be going head to head - the Buick Special, the 1970 Ford Mustang Trans-Cammer, and this, the Art Morrison Corvette.
It was always going to be close. Three SEMA winners, selected to be in the game by Kazunori Yamauchi himself. Three tuners with great power, and weight, and with the basics behind them, three of the slightly more oddball tuners around in the game. Which was going to win?
The Buick didn't do a particularly good job on any accounts, struggling in many different ways. The Mustang proved to be a far better proposition, but the Vette would kick the pair of them to the curb on all accounts in the speed test, with its overall balance beating its two rivals out on acceleration. Then there was its top speed.
Nothing matched this for a long while. 207.7mph tops was matched only by the top ranked Mine's Skyline, and with slipstream, the big 548bhp American would go further still. That said, it didn't make an awfully big splash on the track - the high weight making it slower than the Mustang, which despite even higher weight was more inherently balanced for corners. But not too much beats this thing in a straight line in terms of tuners.
The looks of the C1 Corvette this streamlined speed freak is based on is still there to see largely from the original. But it's been changed completely from the basis of a normal C1. Yet it's just the fact this thing has some stupendous All-American-ness that makes it soulful. I wouldn't mind having something like this in real life.
With that, let's move on.
It's the RE Amemiya FD3S RX-7.
The All Tuners Tested special was the first instance of me really touching upon this car in any real form at all. I didn't really know what it sounded like, what performance it would really give, anything. But I came out of my first real drive with it a far better man.
Compared to most tuners, it's not exactly fast. The higher up the speed chain you get, the more the bad torque of its 1.3 litre 2-rotor engine comes into play. This is largely negated on a track, where it does provide some great speed. What you really need to drive this car for is the fun and soul it provides.
The RE Amemiya RX-7 drives like every RX-7 you know, but sped up greatly. And that can only be good. Sure enough, this is what every quintessential tuned FD should really be like. It's tuned to the right level, and the level of slide is more than enough. But the sound is a big part of it as well.
It really does sound like a properly fired-up rotary. It's one of the sounds that PD really did seem to get right and it's all the better for it. It's part of what makes it so bloody soulful - the main part.
I've never given too much of a damn for the FD, but this RX-7 does deserve plenty of mention. I can certainly recommend it.
Moving swiftly on...
We have an Opera S2000.
When I drove this car for the first time, it was a real bloody surprise. The ability it had to just slide when you damn well wanted it to meant I really liked it a lot. And it continued to deliver strongly in the All Tuners Tested by putting in some decent times on the speed test, and by doing a superb job on the meters by ranking in the top 2 on two of them. Which really emphasizes what a car this is.
It is just a really damn fun car to give a good chuck about. If you want to get sliding action, just hit the throttle pedal hard enough and Bob's your uncle. But the great thing is that the Opera is also able to not do this. If you don't want to slide, if you merely want to get the best lap time, the 930kg lightweight does this superbly too. You can keep it within driveable limits easily as well as keeping it sliding easily.
And for an S2000, it also manages to be bloody soulful. It might go over the typical S2000 tuner level, but it still has all the things we like in the S2k within. All that's really different are the stats, the roof, the spoiler, and the speed.
And to cap this off, you might as well have another S2k.
The Amuse S2000 Street Version.
This was another first timer for me in the All Tuners Tested special, but my relationships with the other Amuse S2000s weren't so great. The R1 was all too disappointing, with not enough life for an S2k. Certainly, Spoon's effort kicked it right to the floor in terms of providing any level of fun. The GT1 was nice, but not anything too special. And I really,
really don't like the S2k Turbo.
On first impressions, I thought this was just gonna be an S2k that wasn't fast enough, and not different enough from the norm of the Honda roadster. I would then go on to find out that it was way, way, way more than that.
Obviously, given its implications as an S2k, it was never going to be the fastest. It has a healthy 263bhp, but other S2k's pump out more and have more speed as a result, the rather comically slow Mugen S2k not withstanding. But in terms of fun, you can hardly get closer.
This thing does one thing: slide, slide, slide. It is a simply spectacular thing to drive when you aren't concerning lap time at all. You can just fling it into a corner at a million mph, and you will come out of it at a 90 degree angle with smoke pouring out like it's on 25 cigarettes a day. And then you simply put it back in its place, and build up for the next corner. It is, quite frankly, a brilliant feeling.
Obviously, in stock form, it is useless for going for an actual lap time. But a quick tune can fix that with no trouble. Sure enough, I took up the task myself and stuck some extras on to make the
Stardust Reverie, which in addition to giving it extra speed, made it able to both get it sideways and keep it stable - it's basically at Opera level with the tune. Give it a try and you won't be disappointed.
And of course, the entire base of the S2k is still there at large. Indeed, with the Moon Rock Metallic paint shown here, the S2000 Street Version really does look like something from the stars. It is a frankly brilliant colour. And I wouldn't be surprised if other colours looked just as good on it as well.
So with that, that's the pick of the tuners for this year. I'm not sure which ones I'm going to be reviewing next year...
Pictures and writing by C-ZETA