Beater or Sleeper? GT6 Car of the Week Thread

Yeah, @Lewis_Hamilton_ , you gotta show me how you did that. The PVR doesn't like my PS2, so I have to go down to SD capture and it sucks.

I fiddled with the rendering settings of Power Director 12 and got these, but the tradeoff was rendering time. Upgrading my CPU is all that I have left, and even then I'm not expecting it to slash a ton of time when rendering with max settings.

Any tips?

Niku Driver HC
Well, since when did this become the "Beater, Sleeper or Video Of The Week" thread? Now everyone is posting videos left and right... What about written reviews, eh guys? Texts also can be used here, you know...
Click to expand...

Think of it as CotWTV.
 
McClarenDesign
Yeah, @Lewis_Hamilton_ , you gotta show me how you did that. The PVR doesn't like my PS2, so I have to go down to SD capture and it sucks.

I fiddled with the rendering settings of Power Director 12 and got these, but the tradeoff was rendering time. Upgrading my CPU is all that I have left, and even then I'm not expecting it to slash a ton of time when rendering with max settings.

Any tips?
Click to expand...

I wasn't capturing from my PS2, I don't use it anymore because I emulate it through my PC now. You'll need an emulator called PCSX2 to do what I did. Just to note, downloading a PS2 BIOS and game ROMs that are not yours = illegal; connecting your PS2, extracting the BIOS from it, inserting your PS2 games into your PC's CD drive and telling the emulator to run it all = perfectly legal.

It takes many, many times more power than the original hardware you're emulating to run at the same settings, but if you have enough grunt in your PC set up, you can run those old PS2 games in ultra high resolutions, force in some MSAA, anisotropic filtering and a whole bunch of other stuff to massively clean up the image. Plus you can force everything to 60fps too.

My video hasn't uploaded at 4K though, still only showing up to 1440p and I don't know why.

As for your reductions in rendering time, all I could recommend is looking for a video editor that can process it on your graphics card by using GPU compute. I don't know if your software already has this feature, one of mine does but since it's quite old, it doesn't support my newer GTX 970 graphics card.
 
I am a fan of the Ford GT40s & GTs. I've liked the GT40s since GT2 & the GTs since Gran Turismo Concept & Gran Turismo 4. I mostly drive the Gulf GT40 & the second one I drive the most is the 2002 Ford GT Concept. I like the wheels & headlights on the concept model more than the 2005 & 2006 GTs which I have. Shame the newest GT might not make it into GT6. If it does that would be cool.
 
McClarenDesign
I'll be happy if we get it in GT7.
Click to expand...

To be fair, despite the sponsorship on the future GT Le Mans entry and the whole "Bill Ford in our conference" shtick, I don't think that the GT would be an exclusive Forza car. I still believe that there is a chance of us Gran Turismo players seeing the car in GT7. It all depends on PD's commitment to adding the car to future games...
 
Couldnt be more An American car: just in time for my naturalization... i going to buy this car in a patriotic color...

As much as i would like to see the next GT in the next GT, who and how can anyone prevent Turn10 from giving loads of money to Bill and make it exclusive...
... an American company helping another American company???

That would be a bummer!!!

Car companies should be open
Is Ford in the VGT list?
 
CTznOfTime
Couldnt be more An American car: i going to buy this car in a patriotic color...
Is Ford in the VGT list?
Click to expand...

Well thankfully, the GT looks good in a slew of colours... Might I suggest the Mark IV Red??? If you add the white stripes, you'll have the 2 most important colours flag wise in North America. ;)

As for Ford themselves, yes they are a part of the Vision project list, with an artist's rendering from Ford Design so far...

Cheers
 
CTznOfTime
Couldnt be more An American car: just in time for my naturalization... i going to buy this car in a patriotic color...

As much as i would like to see the next GT in the next GT, who and how can anyone prevent Turn10 from giving loads of money to Bill and make it exclusive...
... an American company helping another American company???

That would be a bummer!!!

Car companies should be open
Is Ford in the VGT list?
Click to expand...

Turn 10 isn't EA, so I'm sure that it'll be significantly more easier to request the use of the Ford license for future GT games at least, I reckon.

And yes, the "old" GT comes in a good slew of colors, so you can pick a good 'Murican color combo if you're inclined to do such. A nice feature indeed. I, personally, bought my car in the so-called "Bumblebee" combo; yellow with black stripes, simply to pay hommage to the Ford GT Concept car.

As for Ford's involvement in the VGT project, Baron already answered that question before I could. 👍
 
Payback Is A V8 Rocketship

The Ford GT, forever ingrained into Motorsport and car culture as the car built for revenge.

Against who? The Prancing Horses from Italy of course. :sly:

After Enzo Ferrari backed out of a deal which would've seen Ford buying Ferrari, Ford wrote a blank check to its engineers and pretty much said, "Go and build a car to blitz Ferrari at the track."

Despite a few DNF's due to mechanical failure, The GT40 put up an impressive history of wins including a 1-2-3 at Daytona.

And of course, the accolade that is well known to the GT name, The 4 wins in a row at Le Mans and cementing its legacy as the car built by revenge, for revenge. :cool:

The Ford GT that stepped up to the COTW plate this week was the mid 2000's model built to celebrate Fords 100 year Anniversary.

Interestingly, I found out that 4 of the 5 tracks we raced the GT at had a connection to the GT name.

Le Mans and Daytona I've already mentioned, Laguna Seca in GT4 is where you race the GT-LM in the 3 Lap Battle segment of the Mission Hall. ;)

Willow Springs? Best Motoring International's Motorharu 'Gan San' Kurosawa tested and time attacked the Ford GT there. :D

I could go on and on about the history of the GT, but let's get down to brass tacks.

The Ford GT was as mentioned by a few of the guys, surprisingly approachable in its performance and the way it drove, even when me and a few others got slapped with Comfort Hard tyres, it wasn't intimidating as expected.

The Comfort tyres did make for a fun battle between me and PartTimeRacer at Daytona, he'd pass me in the infield in his GT40 and I'd pass him on the banking and down the straights. :cheers:

The GT hardly put a foot wrong throughout the night, but considering it was Fords Halo Car of the time I expected that.

I'd say on the whole it's a Sleeper, it hit my expectations and a little bit more due to its driveabilty on Comfort tyres.

Surprise of the night? The Lotus Carlton, a car that was once used in a previous off road review and subsequently got floored, was the fastest car off road. :crazy::lol:

Verdict for the GT? Sleeper. 👍
 
Vic Reign93
Payback Is A V8 Rocketship

The Ford GT, forever ingrained into Motorsport and car culture as the car built for revenge.

Against who? The Prancing Horses from Italy of course. :sly:

After Enzo Ferrari backed out of a deal which would've seen Ford buying Ferrari, Ford wrote a blank check to its engineers and pretty much said, "Go and build a car to blitz Ferrari at the track."

Despite a few DNF's due to mechanical failure, The GT40 put up an impressive history of wins including a 1-2-3 at Daytona.

And of course, the accolade that is well known to the GT name, The 4 wins in a row at Le Mans and cementing its legacy as the car built by revenge, for revenge. :cool:

The Ford GT that stepped up to the COTW plate this week was the mid 2000's model built to celebrate Fords 100 year Anniversary.

Interestingly, I found out that 4 of the 5 tracks we raced the GT at had a connection to the GT name.

Le Mans and Daytona I've already mentioned, Laguna Seca in GT4 is where you race the GT-LM in the 3 Lap Battle segment of the Mission Hall. ;)

Willow Springs? Best Motoring International's Motorharu 'Gan San' Kurosawa tested and time attacked the Ford GT there. :D

I could go on and on about the history of the GT, but let's get down to brass tacks.

The Ford GT was as mentioned by a few of the guys, surprisingly approachable in its performance and the way it drove, even when me and a few others got slapped with Comfort Hard tyres, it wasn't intimidating as expected.

The Comfort tyres did make for a fun battle between me and PartTimeRacer at Daytona, he'd pass me in the infield in his GT40 and I'd pass him on the banking and down the straights. :cheers:

The GT hardly put a foot wrong throughout the night, but considering it was Fords Halo Car of the time I expected that.

I'd say on the whole it's a Sleeper, it hit my expectations and a little bit more due to its driveabilty on Comfort tyres.

Surprise of the night? The Lotus Carlton, a car that was once used in a previous off road review and subsequently got floored, was the fastest car off road. :crazy::lol:

Verdict for the GT? Sleeper. 👍
Click to expand...
Racing history, the best kind of history. I love how much culture, and competition is involved. The gt40 isn't a sleeper though, it's always been pretty amazing, even to this day. No other car has matched it's unique styling and sound.
 
Niku Driver HC
Turn 10 isn't EA, so I'm sure that it'll be significantly more easier to request the use of the Ford license for future GT games at least, I reckon.

And yes, the "old" GT comes in a good slew of colors, so you can pick a good 'Murican color combo if you're inclined to do such. A nice feature indeed. I, personally, bought my car in the so-called "Bumblebee" combo; yellow with black stripes, simply to pay hommage to the Ford GT Concept car.

As for Ford's involvement in the VGT project, Baron already answered that question before I could. 👍
Click to expand...
I bought it in that colour as well :cheers:.
 
This was a very nice choice of COTW given I had finally accumulated the mythical 20,000,000 credit mark, and you'll never guess what I ended up buying after all those miles of grinding.


​
But to the car we're reviewing proper, and I have to point out a few oversights from previous posters. First, while the GT40 may have never competed at Indianapolis, many of the men who piloted that car (including some guys named "Foyt", "Gurney", and "Andretti" you may have heard of) were no strangers to the Brickyard.


​
Second, while the GT40s may have competed under a variety of colors during their reign at Le Mans, if you're looking for the American equivalent of Italian Red or British Green, then you're looking for White with Blue Stripes as the United States' traditional national racing colors. ;)


​
With that said, to review the car, it's one of those cars that simply don't fit in a Beater or Sleeper label. Instead, I can simply describe it as a brilliant modern interpretation of the GT concept, gorgeously styled, capable of ragged edge performance yet accommodating to those of average driving skill level, and does it all with a price tag well below many of its competitors. I have to declare it, "Best car we've gotten for a COTW evaluation thus far."

​
 
Haha, was that Le Mans race supposed to be a race or a beach excursion? The cars spent more time on the gravel than the Ligier LMP2 cars in the actual Le Mans race. :sly: :lol:

Note: I actually understand that driving a Ford GT on Confort Tires isn't the easiest of tasks, don't worry. Even while being a more smooth MR car than the ususal crop, it can still bite...
 
Now is probably a bad time to mention that I forgot to pick a winner from last week. Hey, it's been a long week full of overtime, anniversaries, departures and birthdays. Sue me. To make up for it, I'll post it a little bit early.

Congratulations McClarenDesign!!!

To celebrate Red Bull's reliability, I humbly introduce...

renault-avantime-10_1.jpg

...the #BooBus 2002 Renault Avantime!!!

Honey, get the camera and grab the kids! This is gonna be great!
 
McClarenDesign
More time on the beach than a boxed set of Baywatch.
Click to expand...

And more time spent grounded than David Hasselhoff's career. Zing!

Also, yay, it's the failed Coupe-MPV Renault thingamajig! Well, it has a V6, and it was built in the former Matra factories, so it has that towards it. Sadly, it might not quite be on the level of the old Matra coupes... On the plus side, we could always attempt to beat a Lancer Evolution around a track. If one's brave enough, that is...

Edit: Also, obligatory Hamster video of this week's COTW:

 
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Don't know if I'll make tomorrow, I hope to as I've had a lot of fun in this van before.

I remember on old CoTW, the Mazda Atenza, getting served at Matterhorn by the Avantime. Unlike other cars of it's type, the Renault has a nice, close ratio gearbox which really helps on any challenging hills.
Also remember on old challenge I did with this car in some A.I debate thread back in 2013.

Pretty sure the event was the Bathurst race in the GT All stars championship. You face super cars on sports soft tyres with a +150pp advantage on a high power circuit. I took a stock Avantime on CS tyres, no aids, no ABS and still pulled out a win, replay buried in my save data somewhere. There's that if anyone wants a tough challenge, unless the AI's pace or car line up has changed since then.
 
Crisis averted :lol:

So, the Avantime. Was the styling truly "ahead of its time" like its name implies? In France, there existed a 2-liter turbo engine for buyers who desired such a powerplant. That motor put out 163 hp and 184 ft-lbs. The only choice we get in GT6 is a 3.0L (well, 2,946 cc should technically round down to 2.9L but that's just me...) and its specs in the garage after purchase are as follows:

204 hp / 6,000 rpm
210 ft-lb / 4,000 rpm
1,741 kg (3,838 lbs)
375 PP

It's heavy all right, but at least it has decent grunt. As expected, cornering is not its strong suit. The good news is it's very stable on corner entry and there is no understeer. It's flat from entry to exit. Power delivery is very smooth. Top speed on the straight was 114 mph. 6th gear is extremely tall.



Cars within +/- half a second:

1:33.849 - 378 - Mitsubishi Lancer EX 1800GSR IC Turbo '83
1:33.881 - 365 - Renault Mégane 2.0 IDE Coupé '00
1:33.900 - 368 - Toyota Starlet Glanza V '97
1:33.983 - 356 - Mazda Cosmo Sport (L10B) '68
1:34.241 - 364 - Nissan Fairlady Z 280Z-L 2seater (S130) '78
1:34.243 - 383 - Citroën Xantia 3.0i V6 Exclusive '00
1:34.329 - 375 - Renault Avantime '02
1:34.334 - 361 - Peugeot 206 CC '01
1:34.422 - 357 - Peugeot 106 S16 '03
1:34.477 - 353 - Toyota MR2 1600 G '86
1:34.488 - 357 - Toyota Prius G '09
1:34.661 - 359 - Nissan Silvia Q's (S13) '88
1:34.673 - 362 - BMW 507 '57
1:34.708 - 362 - Volkswagen Golf IV GTI '01
1:34.732 - 353 - Mazda MX-5 (NA) '89
1:34.741 - 359 - Toyota Sprinter Trueno GT-Apex (AE86) '83

It's not the slowest 375 PP car. That award goes to the Lotus Europa S.2 '68 which is 1.5 seconds slower than the Renault.

So is its lap time indicative of a car that's ahead of its time? Not really. Renault's own Mégane '00 is nearly half a second quicker. I guess the manufacturer was referring to its styling. 13 years later, the car hasn't aged particularly well in my opinion. It doesn't look much better to me than the Honda Odyssey.

I'll just go ahead and label the car a massive beater. It was a good try, Renault, but not good enough. :indiff:
 
Well, Renault never really intended to make the Avantime a uber-sports car, remember that the basis for the car comes from the 1st-gen Espace, which is hardly an example of handling prowless. That being said, when you consider that, the Avantime has this odd feeling about it. It may be a MPV-coupe-cum car, but driving isn't the disaster that one would think would happen, once you threw it at a track. Despite the clumsy sixth gear, the gearbox does a decent job of keeping the car within the right powerband, and the naturally-aspirated V6 delivers enough grunt to make the Avantime a useful car in National B races, believe it or not.

The reason why the Avantime is so confusing to rate is because all things considered, it isn't a car that drives terribly and/or is dull. It's like the Citroen C5, when I drove it for the Vectra review. The C5 wasn't the fastest sedan I had ever driven, but the handling was so shockingly smooth I was pleasantly surprised. This is what makes French cars so interesting; this odd whiff of quirkiness...
 
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It's an interesting choice as it's not the sort of car you would see in a mainstream game, which is why I still love GT6, you get choice.

Not all perfectly detailed mind you, but choice regardless. :sly:

Anyways, the Avantime, based on a Espace chassis, powered by a V6 to the front tyres and a lot of glass adding weight to the car.

But If what Suzuka has said holds up, it won't be a complete nightmare to drive. :P

The only real bummer is that I have to take the red rear wing off my TG Special so I can race at COTW this week. :D
 
Well the Avantime took me by surprise. Even with all the server problems we had, when it came down to racing it felt lighter than the 2007 GTR R35ish weight it carries around in its stock form. Another shocker was the fact it drove surprisingly well, considering it has an abysmal 61:39 weight distribution... so well, it even gave me a win against the ever improving COTW competition!

But the real shocker came in the bonus round... dropping all sorts of goodies into her, and giving it a quick self tune on a fully done up mini van that raced on the Sierra course. Our illustrious leader @McClarenDesign jumped into a de-tuned Ferrari GTO, which I thought even with a loss of power would smoke all of us. Well, not so much.

All in all, I must say I was rather impressed with this particular offering from Renault, as it was another vehicle that was on my subconscious ignore list. While it would never make me grin like the F1 Espace did from yesteryear, it did raise an eyebrow, to say the least. Another FF shocker in my books, giving it a Sleeper status from me.

Cheers
 
Nice synopsis Baron. I think, for me at least, running CS tires masks the potential of the Avantime. And I was surprised that I could keep up with @McClarenDesign in the Ferrari, although it took him going off course for me to get past. After our races I took it to the Matterhorn seasonal to see how it would do there all tuned up and got an easy win. A lot more fun than it should be. So, agreed, this one's a sleeper.
 

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