Alright, I'm back guys! Good job not burning the place down while I was away!
I was reminded of something that happened a few months ago. I gave Rob the pick, and he picked a British car. Then he decided to change his mind, as he had chosen it on the anniversary of America telling the British where to stick it. Awkward....
Anyhoo, since I was away and unable to get a new car lined up, we can finally pull this one out for a play!
One of my favourite supercars from the GT5 days, and in GT6 replaced with the newer, more exclusive and more powerful One-77, this thing's got on-paper performance, heratige and looks all on its side, but the real question is will it translate to an enjoyable night's racing? See you guys Tuesday!!!
This week's Playing With TT's is set up at the High Speed Ring circuit, the perfect playground to let the V12 roar!!
... reminds me of my favorite quote from The Grand Tour - made by "the American" last season: "A turbo is God's way of telling you: 'you need more cylinders'."
As an owner of a V12 JAG I do love a V12 car, even if it's just the feeling you get when you say I own a V12 to someone .
I love driving this car, the look, the sound and the feel you get in your pants when you drive it. Only if they weren't so dam expensive, but I guess if they weren't expensive they would be like BUMS, everyone would one and that would ruin the appeal of it.
This car is definitely not a beater but it's not a sleeper as well, (sleepers are cars that look slow but are really fast) the VANTAGE looks fast and is so there fore I give it 👍👍👍👍 out of 5.
Okay, allow me to explain the idea regarding the COTW Discord server.
After each race, we spend an average of 5-12 minutes congratulating, apologizing and generally gasbagging before the next race. Partially, it's because it takes so long to type sentences with a d pad. Therefore if we were all on a private server where we could all voice chat, then we could really improve the turnaround time between races, meaning more action every night!
It means instead of spending all that time typing with d pads, we could be chatting while we setup cars, test drive, heck we could even chat while racing! (Not advisable, but hey at least if you bump someone you can acknowledge instantly.)
So yeah, that's the idea. Would be neat to try it out next week if people are keen and see how much more we squeeze in!
Okay, allow me to explain the idea regarding the COTW Discord server.
After each race, we spend an average of 5-12 minutes congratulating, apologizing and generally gasbagging before the next race. Partially, it's because it takes so long to type sentences with a d pad. Therefore if we were all on a private server where we could all voice chat, then we could really improve the turnaround time between races, meaning more action every night!
It means instead of spending all that time typing with d pads, we could be chatting while we setup cars, test drive, heck we could even chat while racing! (Not advisable, but hey at least if you bump someone you can acknowledge instantly.)
So yeah, that's the idea. Would be neat to try it out next week if people are keen and see how much more we squeeze in!
Because a lot of us don't have them, and it's a $60 headset (at least) vs a free app for your smartphone or laptop or whatever you have. Besides the GT6 voice chat has never been entirely all that great. And lastly I've got my vid recording setup which means I can't plug my headset into the PS3 on COTW race nights. So it's just convenience.
Because a lot of us don't have them, and it's a $60 headset (at least) vs a free app for your smartphone or laptop or whatever you have. Besides the GT6 voice chat has never been entirely all that great. And lastly I've got my vid recording setup which means I can't plug my headset into the PS3 on COTW race nights. So it's just convenience.
Like I said, just seeing if people are keen to give it a try. I just wondered how much time we'd save and how many more races we'd get per night if we didn't have to type out our messages on the d pad. Even the quickest of us take minutes to get those longer messages typed and sent.
Like I said, just seeing if people are keen to give it a try. I just wondered how much time we'd save and how many more races we'd get per night if we didn't have to type out our messages on the d pad. Even the quickest of us take minutes to get those longer messages typed and sent.
Another reason is it creates more lag unless everyone is on a really fast internet connection. GT6 servers are not that reliable anymore to begin with so it just avoids more headache. However I do have a nice headset & Mic for the PS3 and PS4.
When the day comes everyone can move over to the PS4 that's when it becomes a game changer. We can setup a COTW community and chat or text with one another no matter what you're doing on the PS4. There are just so many more options @Nismonath5could do with this club when that day comes.
Tuesday's race night with the V12 was awesome! And to end the night, open garage race! Thanks @Nismonath5 for letting us end the night with a bang in our favorite cars!
Tuesday's race night with the V12 was awesome! And to end the night, open garage race! Thanks @Nismonath5 for letting us end the night with a bang in our favorite cars!
This week we got to strap ourselves into a 6 figure cars that most of us will only get to experience in GT and not real life.
A few years back the company I have worked for the past 20 years owned Aston Martin, Range Rover and Jaguar. During that time they took a lot of styling cues from those manufacturers. So I now own a Ford Fusion that took alot of styling from the Aston Martin. Sadly it has no V12 or V8 and not even a V6. It is a 2.0L but hey at least it's Turbocharged. It's my poor man's Aston Martin.
I have very little complaints about the Vantage and its just about everything you would expect from hundred thousand dollar car here in the U.S.
It's sexy, it's fast, its got a V12, its got a great sound, its got style. But on the downside its got alot of weight.
Our Tuesday night racing showed that the Vantage was very happy on the race track and offered another great racing night with some very fast guys giving the Vantage all she could ever want. Unlike last week if you made a mistake in this car you could actually recover and get back into the race.
It's biggest downfall was its weight and if you pushed it to hard into the corners there was no recovery from all that weight transfer as it slides and skids right off the track. So corner entry speed was very important to get just right. Slow in and a rocket ship out.
Everything else was impressive with the Vantage. That V12 offers plenty of power everytime you step on the throttle and even with the TC turned off it was surprisingly easy to handle the rear of the Vantage when she got tail happy.
With all that power under the hood and all the weight of this car you would think the brakes would have been sub par but that's not the case. The Vantage offers plenty of stopping power and its a big reason why it was so enjoyable on the track. But late braking is not recommended because with its weight on SH tires you can easily find yourself at the point of no return.
If you are a automatic transmission person like me then you will be happy to know that the Vantage was very enjoyable on a auto trans and has all kinds of torque in every gear. Absolutely no problems with it being in the right gear and more often than not would kick out the rear just a tad if given to much throttle.
It other downfall was the stock SH tires. With all this cars power and weight it was very easy to keep the tires lit up in red more offen than not and would really be more at home on SM to SS tires.
So I doubt anyone looks at the Aston Martin Vantage V12 and even thinks for a minute its a Beater or Sleeper. When you get to cars of this caliber you kinda get exactly what you pay for. This holds true for most of the time and in this case its true.
I will however call this car a Sleeper because of it's surprising performance on the race track. To me it performed better than expected do to it being quite stable at high speeds.
Hello everyone! I really don't have any complaints with car other than the weight., but Im sure with some good drifting skills, that can work to your advantage. The power this car delivers awesome, handles great with propper throttle management. The stock breaks seemed like racing breaks. When it comes to adding paint and wheels, the car looked great with pretty much any combination. I let my wife pick out the paint and wheels on mine.
This car is definitely a Sleeper in my opinion 👍
Luckily for me I own all the high price cars and I'm maxed at 50 million credits so all is good here.
Hopefully it's the Jag because I really like racing that car and the Ferrari kick ass also
Luxurious, elegant and fast! The upper-class exotic that lets you win races in style!
Vic doing what Vic does..
I bought and played GT5 long after the online servers were shutdown. So one of my favourite pastimes back then was to run a variety of supercars around Deep Forest Raceway. Just plain unmodified supercars, with sticky tyres and no TCS. I racked up a leaderboard of quick times in cars such as the Ferrari 458, Lamborghini Murcielago, Maserati Granturismo and BMW M5. Then one day, despite the servers being shutdown long ago, the DLC packs appeared again in the PS Store. Just like that. For no apparent reason. I ended up with SSRX, Spa Francorchamps, and a variety of awesome racecars and, of course, some additional supercars to run round Deep Forest. The Nissan GT-R Black Edition, Chevy Corvette C7 Prototype, and of course, the Aston Martin V12 Vantage. Overshadowing the DB9 Coupe, the V12 Vantage offered a more ferocious, exhilerating experience.
Ironically, in GT6 the Vantage itself is overshadowed by the way more exclusive, way more bonkers One-77 (which even then is overshadowed in GTS by the Vulcan... honestly how long will this go on! ), but don't go thinking the Vantage V12 has lost any of it's viciousness. From the first glance, you know it means business! It's got no shortage of vents on the hood and around the front end to keep the 6.0L V12 nice and cool, and little things like the side skirts subtly contribute to the smooth, clean look of the body. In hammerhead silver, I reckon this is one of the best looking arses in GT6! It's a shame most of you mad buggers went for yellow instead!
In the world of Pixar's Cars, this would basically be an up-skirt pic...
The numbers come in at 535bhp, 1680kgs and 528pp. Which is certainly not bad, but it's not excessively good. Being an Aston Martin, it's packed with comfort and convenience accessories, which on the road is great, but on the track is just extra luggage for you to have to drag around. Still, handling is definately not a downside to this weapon. She's certainly not for the less experienced but once you've got a grip on it you can pull off some pretty impressive heroics. With SH tyres and 1 TCS it does get a bit slippery around longer, sweeping corners, but it will handle most corners without too much of a worry.
Power wise, it's naturally aspirated, meaning no turbo lag or sluggishness off the line. Throttle response is good and it's got solid torque across most of the rev range, although strangely enough it felt like if you left your shifts right to the limiter, it would run out of puff just before the limiter. Was that just me? Weird if it was. Anyways, it gets up to speed nice and fast, and growls a real treat. What more could you want?
They might not be blazing orange, but these discs are still toasty!
Racing on Tuesday was a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it navigated the streets of Madrid with relative ease. But on the other hand it proved a bit of a handful at High Speed Ring. It was still an awesome lot of fun, with plenty of movers and shakers, some awesome battles and even a few crashes... sorry @Draggon!
If you watch the High Speed Ring vid at about 3:46, Ash hit the wall at the final turn and spun. Being directly behind him, I expected him to spin into the inside of the corner, so I went high to avoid him. However from the footage I've seen, he didn't brake nor gas while sliding, and as a result he sort of just rolled back onto the high line, where I straight up T-boned him.
We don't get many particularly signifigant crashes like that in COTW, so watching the replay time and time again is actually kinda fun..
Another thing that surprised me is noone tried any other cars against the V12. I myself was thinking of trying it against the GT-R Black Edition, but never actually got round to it. Overall I feel like the V12 Vantage would fare pretty well against most supercars. Some upper Ferraris and Lamborghinis might be a bit harder to tackle, but when in doubt, hand the keys to Vic and watch him beat them by such a margin they try to track him down so they can steal his brain and implement it into a top secret government project, the "ultimate racing A.I"... I think I just cooked up the inspiration for a film!
..ah, got a bit carried away there. My point is supercars like the SLS, F430 Scud and BMW M5 would make suitable opponents, but I don't think it would take on much more. Not in stock form at least, though really I enjoyed it enough as is. It's got enough power to be a lot of fun, enough weight to be a bit naughty around corners if you choose, and that gorgeous Aston Martin styling that makes it one sexy sportscar! (I even love the backwards facing tach - contrary to someone on Tuesday who complained about it, I think it was Lit?)
Twelve cylinders all operating at full noise
In summary - The V12 Vantage is a great car, one of my favourite supercars! It may prove tricky to master initially, but is worth the mileage required to learn it! I clocked over 400km on my V12 in GT5, solely around Deep Forest, and it never once got dull or needed anything done to it! It's a true sleeper from yours truly! 👍
Now for the next car, hope you brought your chequebooks!
Now, a sad bit of news. As some of you may know, @Baron Blitz Red was looking at coming to New Zealand to race in the 24hrs of Lemons alongside myself and @McClarenDesign. Well, unfortunately, that won't be possible for him anymore. Which stinks, but at the same time I'm super excited because McD will still be coming over to fly the COTW banner with me in NZ's first true 24 hour endurance race! I'll be sure to keep you all posted with updates on our prep, progress and the race itself!
And I actually don't need to say any more. Here's the equation we have at the moment...
Baron + $20m car = ?
And anyone who knows Baron must have deduced by now that its
The 1967 Ferrari 330 P4 Race Car!!!!
"Known as the most beautiful machine of the V12 powered P series". That's it's tagline in the dealership, and I'm sure Baron agrees. Those of you who know our quick Canuck have no doubt heard at least one of his explanations about why Ferrari is the best manufacturer on the face of this earth. Enzo was certainly no hoser! It's the only dealership in the game with all premium cars (Except for of course those with only one or two offerings), each car pushes the limits of automotive performance in its respective era, and they're just blasts to drive! Canadianisms courtesy of the internet.
FERRARI. To say "must have" is an understatement. In real life, these cars are to kill for. That's how expensively rare they are. And of course, to send the message across with my final point... FERRARI. Like c'mon!!!
It's an older model, sure, so handling might be a bit sketchy, but at the end of the day it's still a racecar so shouldn't be too bad. When you think about it, this is technically the LMP1 of 50 years ago.. This week's Playing With TT's will be at the Green Valley Raceway, which marks Playing With TT's return to User Created Tracks. Enjoy the long straights and awesome layout of this unique track! And of course, see you Tuesday!
Before I forget, here's some race footage from last week!