GT4 car ranking database

If the fastest lap leaderboard and the A-spec roster are good measurements of the driver capabilities, what about cars?
I started ranking cars in 2001 with GT2, and I'm continuing to do it. I also started playing GT4 and, of course, I'm finding it even more exciting.
This is my attempt to rank cars with objective criteria.
For more info about criteria, read the third post below (the one after bigjoe's)

Current ranking

704) Ford Ka............................844.164
705) Daihatsu Sirion CX 2WD..844.264
706) Nissan Be-1.....................849.393
707) Toyota Sports 800...........854.393
708) Daihatsu Sirion CX 4WD..855.662
709) Daihatsu Move CX...........864.306
710) VW Karmann Ghia '68......865.788
711) Nissan Pao......................866.817
712) Honda S500 '63...............882.98
713) Fiat Panda 1000S '90......885.846
714) Daihatsu Midget II '98.....950.4
715) Honda Today G '85..........950.936
716) Honda Z Act '70...............951.33
717) VW Beetle '49 ................ 955.492
718) Honda N360 '67.............. 964.349
719) Honda Life Step Van '72. 1041.409
720) Mazda Carol '62.............. 1046.414
721) Fiat 500R '72 .................. 1056.429
722) Fiat 500L '69 .................. 1095.594
723) Fiat 500F '65 .................. 1103.312
724) Ford T '15 ....................... 1112.497
725) Citroen 2CV '54 .............. 1185.027
726) Subaru 360 '58 .............. 1210.965
727) Daihatsu Midget '63 ........1223.006
728) Daimler 1886 ...................4668* (see ranking details)
729?) Benz 1886 .....................still not ranked

Currently working on: Suzuki Alto Lapin turbo '02

To all users
I like playing with slow cars and drive at their best. So far, I'll update the roster with faster cars very slowly. If anyone is interested in ranking their favourite car, read as follows:
- submit me (with a private message) times according with my "Testing laps rules"
- I'll add the car with a temporary ranking
- don't submite multiple times for ranked cars

Testing laps rules:
- drive in GT mode (simulation mode), enter single circuits, free trial.
- OLR rules: 2 tires on track at every time, no railing, wall touching, cheating....
- N2 tires with the exceptions named in the criteria (for fast cars)
- report if using driving aids. Don't use them for old cars (these of the pre-TCS era)
- of course, no tuning!!!!!!

As the database grows, I'll convert it to an excel, txt or pdf sheet.
[EDIT] This post has been splitted in two after moderators approval

I thought I was the only statistics nut around. I too did performance charts in GT3 and now in GT4 but mostly with formulas not actual comparison runs. (Although I did run every car I owned in GT3 10 laps of Laguna Seca). But that got old after a while. I can't imagine running every car on all those tracks. Good luck on your project. 👍

The ranking criteria

First, I had to choose the circuit to test cars. I had not to choose my favourites, but the most representatives. So far, my circuit selection is as follows.

#1: Midfield raceway. I chose it just for GT2 lap time comparison. There are several circuits in both GT2 and GT4, and some are in the GT2 for-ranking selection: Apricot Hill is almost the same as GT2, but the chicane is tighter and sand more trapping; High Speed Ring is now longer (4km vs 3.1km).

#2: Kashiwa (Motor sport land 2). I needed a karting track, as I had for GT2. This is faster, but straights are of the optimal lenght.

#3: Tsukuba. A very simple track. Easy to make dozens of lap in a very short time here, and a challenge (if not, why is considered a good test track in Japan?). I needed a road slow circuit. That's it.

#4: Fuji. I love this track. High speed ring is a deformed flat version of it, but the '60-80s layout is a tricky circuit with fast cars. As Tsukuba, is simple lapping it with medium and slow cars. This is representative of fast tracks with long straights.

#5: Sears Point. Or Infineon, as they renamed it some years ago. The Point is a typical old style american circuit. It also is a medium-fast track with not very long straights. So it's in.

#6: Laguna Seca. I discarded it in GT2 because was to simple skip the corkscrew with a jump, staying in track. This is representative of medium tracks.

#7: Motegi Speedway. The test track is too long and flat out. I wanted an oval in the selection, and it' here. It was also selected in GT2. Time comparison is possible, but in GT2 was very bumpy.

#8: Suzuka. The best F1 circuit in the world championship, imho. Spa is great, but since Eau rouge is a flat out... Middle-fast track, with longer straights than Sears Point.

#9: Nurburgring. Any comment is superfluous.

#10: Le Mans. Of course unchicaned. It had to be here.

#11: Hong Kong. I have to say it. I hate many of the GT4 city tracks: NY the worst, Seoul, Opera Paris and Tokyo R5 (Club and full). R246 is too similar with permanent fast circuit, even if it has its owm personality. Seattle is not bad, but a little too fast for my purpouse. Capri and Assisi (Aria) are treated below. Hong Kong is the classic short modern slow city track.

#12: Montecarlo. Don't call it Cote de Azure please! It had to be in the selection. Stop.

#13: Costa di Amalfi (Capri). I wanted also a city narrow track with steep uphills and downhills. Seattle is not that narrow, and I lapped it too much in GT2. I preferred it rather than Assisi because easier to lap.

So far, the selection had to be representative [F1 (not beast cars) average speeds in brackets]

- Very fast circuits with long straights: Le Mans [290kmh], Fuji [260] and Midfield [250].
- Quite fast circuits with not too long straights: Suzuka [230] and Sears Point [210].
- Ovals: Motegi [330]
- Technical fast to slow circuits: N'ring [240], Laguna Seca [200], Tsukuba [175].
- City tracks: Montecarlo [160], Hong Kong [160], Amalfi [150].
- Karting tracks: Kashiwa [no entries in the gtplanet roster].

Second step. Weight every circuit. This is needed because I want to compare and weight the times of the Superspeedway (20-100" laps) with the N'ring one (5-18'=1000" laps): this has been done with time comparison between tracks. After that I had some coefficients to make all circuits with the same importance. Then I started to count the number of races in the halls of GT mode. In % terms: 27.53% of the races are held on very fast tracks, and only 1.18% at Kashiwa.
After that, I splitted the coefficients within the 13 tracks of my selection and I had the final coefficients. These, multiplied with lap times, give the ranking of the car. The littlest the score, the fastest the car (because it is time based, not speed based!!!)

The third step was to normalize this ranking score. In GT2 the worst car is the Fiat 500 R '75: I normalized scores to make this car have 1000 points. The worst cars in GT4 are the 1886 chariots. Too slow for my needs. The GT2 fivehundred is a slightly faster car compared with the 500 R in GT4. Not good for me. Finally I decided to use the Daihatsu Midget II for my purpouse. In GT2 it was the second car in the ranking starting from the bottom. It was ranked with 950.4 points. So, I decided that in GT4, the ranking score base will be this car, the Daihatsu Midget II, with 950.4 points. The other as follows: this is a good choice to compare ranks within both games. There aren't other slow cars in both games. As I haven't ranked the Midget II yet I can't compare it with the ranked one. I'll do it next week. So far, the following ranking classification is definitive, but points will be calculated only after Midget testing.

Summarizing. I make lap times with the cars in the 13 tracks, multiply the times with coefficients and sum all. The result is a number near 1000, even for the beast tuned cars. The fourth step was to decide how to make the testing laps. This hasn't been easy. My purpouse was to rank STOCK cars, not tuned ones, and the tire choice in GT4 is very hard. In this forum there are threads where some people agree that N1 tires are similar to real tires, others say that N2 are the correct choice. This is very complicated. At last, I chose as follows:

-N1 tires for historical oldest cars. Some (special) cars can't mount N2 tires. That's all. N1 tires are not radial old style tires.
-N2 tires for all the standard cars, even the historical ones, for time comparisons. It's not rare to see historical cars with modern tires (Fiat 500, here in Italy.. I can't say never for japan old beauties).
-N3 tires for high-performance cars. I haven't decided yet to define a "H.P.C.". This will be a problem to be solved later. At the moment, as I start ranking with the slowest cars, it's not a problem.
-S/C tires for race cars. To be solved which to use. Maybe S2 and C2. No idea at the moment. I think I will use tires suitable to be raced with, not just hotlapped. C1 are too hard, for example, even for endurance races (imho, I can be in error).

Testing laps rules & history:
- drive in GT mode (simulation mode)
- OLR rules: 2 tires on track at every time, no railing, wall touching, cheating....
- N2 tires with the above mentioned exceptions
- 2-10 laps for every circuit (depends of car and circuit, of course)
- no evident errors: the times are surely not monster times, just my PB. I can improve them doing other 10-100 laps. They are within 3 tenths of my potential PB, imho. Who cares of it? The rules are applied for all cars.

To all users. I like playing with slow cars and drive at their best. So far, I'll update the roster with faster cars very slowly. If anyone is interested in ranking their favourite car, read as follows:

- submit me (with a private message) times according with my "Testing laps rules"
- I'll add the car with a temporary ranking
- don't submite multiple times for ranked cars
- report if using driving aids. Don't use them for old cars (these of the pre-TCS era)
- of course, no tuning!!!!!!

A note with A-spec. PD have their own ranking method. It's rowly based on the P/W (power/weight) ratio. In math terms, the manage it with a non-linear function I approximated for GT2. Time will say if it is correct and valuable even for GT4.

Sorry for my not-too-good not-too-bad english, and for the lenght of the message

Be patient, the project will take years... but GT4 isn't coming yet, no?

* 1886 Benz and Daimler. As known, these cars can't lap a circuit with standard driving techniques (they need a "pendulum" technique to climb steep uphills).
The relative ranking score is an approximation based on times over only 4 circuits: Motegi speedway, Hong kong, Tsukuba and MSLand2

PS Other project wip: the special conditions car ranking and A-spec car ranking. Just wait a few days.

very Interesting project , i am doing a similar thing but only in Le Mans and on the Ring

I worked a lot on coefficients and are almost done; I now only need to rank the Midget II to normalize them in /1000 (ie rank scores must be divided to a number around 5.
The classification is now definitive (between ranked cars I mean - the old one was barely Nurburgring based).

Sounds like a great project. I've always found the scope to embark on quests like this to be the biggest draw in GT for me. In GT3 I started doing road and track and performance tests (Trial Mountain became my test "road"). of all sorts of cars to compare them, and then writing the findings in a road test article, to satisfy my desire to be a motoring journalist.... It was a lot of fun taking comparable cars, say a Lotus Esprit V8 and a Honda NSX in GT3, and comparing them in lap times around midfield, handling characteristics around Complex String, performance on the test ground, and general enjoyment of driving on trial mountain. Now, with GT4, there are far more cars to compare, and some lovely locations, and the option to take photos and compose a really genuine looking article! Luvverly. It is also going to be fantastic to compare a family of cars - for instance, all the mid engined Lotuses are present, so comparing the Europa to the Turbo Esprit HC, to the Esprit V8, is going to be fun. Or finding the most desirable US muscle car.

It will be interesting to see the results of this project you are doing, it could probably also be useful as a guide to which cars work best on which circuits.

I've set up a excel sheet for me to do best times of stock road cars in time trial on Autumn Ring. First of all tried similar cars to those in the Top Gear 'Power laps', most were similar but some were wildy different. Especially the NSX Type R, which currently ranks above the T350C on my spreadsheet behind the Viper SRT-10 which is currently 1st. But this is with only doing 2 laps (unless I mess up) and there is probably more opportunity to improve the TVRs times, although the NSX drives very nicely!

The Renault Clio V6 is suprisingly fun and easy to drive.

Reply to T5-R and Alfaholic.
It's clear that it's a long-time project. I'm starting with the slowest cars, and will proceed with this rule. I decided to accept other's contribute (even if temporary) to satisfy the curiosity of people like you. The more the contribute, the fast the possibility of comparisons.
No problem for slow car maniacs

Just my opinion...

The second you put everything on sports tires and N tires the entire study was compramised.

Too bad, you look like the have the dedication to get the job done.
It also seems like you have the mind to do it well.

N2 and sports tires for everything.
I'm sure the top 300 cars are going be really accurate of what their true in-game potential is.

Just a shame if you ask me... A plain old shame.

Btw, no triple posting!
Use the edit button!

I really like the idea of using N2s, however, with "H.P.C" on other tires, this can be rather unfair.

Very cool, I may be able to contribute to this later when I get more time.

a small update (see top of thread)

Yeah I have something like this also. I didn't know what to do with the variations of tires so I simply used N3s on all the cars I tested. This was done because I really couldn't figure out a good way to evaluate the actual performance of the cars without the tires becoming a huge factor. So in other words, these are not exactly stock cars since they're all fitted with N3s. I also included various concept and "tuner" cars such as Nismo tuned cars. Perhaps the super cars are supposed to come stock with them but I hope Polyphony Digital pays more attention to specific tires on specific cars in GT5. All Assist Aids were turned off for this test and the 2 tires at most touching the grass came to effect. Hitting the wall was also a definition of an illegal lap. All of this was done in Deep Forest Raceway since that's my best track and it has multiple corners and elevation changes to make things interesting. I drove the cars to the best of my abilities which means I averaged about 10 laps trying to beat my ghosts. I also found out that I am not that good with 4WD cars. I originally wanted to use El Capitan but my times there were very inconsistant.

So far..

Top 10 Lap Times

1. VW W12 Nardo Concept '01 1'21.074
2. Pagani Zonda C12S 7.3 '02 1'21.315
3. Jaguar XJ220 '92 1'23.192
4. Ford GT '05 1'23.208
5. Mercedes SLR McLaren '03 1'23.248
6. Saleen S7 '02 1'23.329
7. Cizeta V16T '94 1'25.796
8. Dodge Viper SRT10 '03 1'25.799
9. Nismo Skyline GT-R R-Tune (R34) '99 1'26.570
10. BMW M3 CSL '03 1'26.804

Bottom 10

1. VW Golf IV GTI '01 1'42.791
2. Toyota Sprinter Trueno GT-Apex (AE86) '83 1'42.053
3. Honda Accord Euro-R '02 1'39.076
4. Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution GSR '92 1'38.724
5. Toyota Celica GT-Four RC (ST185) '91 1'38.545
6. Alfa Romeo 147 GTA '02 1'37.553
7. VW Golf V GTI '05 1'37.451*
8. Honda Civic Type R (EP) '01 1'36.928
9. Nissan Silvia K's Aero (S14) '93 1'36.288
10. Ford Focus RS '02 1'36.096

* The VW Golf V GTI '05 had that glitch in the game where 4th and 5th gear were the same. I looked at a guide from somewhere in this forum to use the Fully Customizable Transmission in order to tune the car into its "real" settings.

I haven't tested any of the later Lancer Evos that were supposed to come with the AYC starting with the Evo IV. I don't know whether to leave it stock or install the AYC into these Evos.

I´m kind of doing this myself, testing all cars in GT4. I picked out six tracks to test on (Nürburgring, Le Mans, Fuji 2005, Suzuka, Monaco and Midfield), and drive all cars stock. Cars that have setuppossibilities get some tweaks to suit me better. Racecars are driven on R1, Rallycars on S1, Supercars on S1, high end sportscars on N3 and the rest on N2. Everything is done in GT mode, either in freerun or familycup (to atleast make a few Cr.).
I drive the cars in the order they appear in the manufacturer part of my garage. Currently on Honda.
I haven´t calculated any values for the cars, I simply do this for fun, but I do have an unfinished .xls sheet with laptimes. If anyone is interested I can post it up. Contains well over a hundred cars.

Im doing a similar thing though just with Midfield. I generally use cars stock other than an oil change, but with the old cars I'll run them through a chassis refresh.
My slowest so far is the BMW 120i with a lap od 1'35.54 and my fastest road car is the M5 with a 1'17.179. I also got a 0'53.241 with the FGT