Car of the Week 228: COTY GTS Finale

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Citroën usually isn't the first company to come to mind at the mention of motorsports—not on tarmac, anyway. And so when the need arose for an RMR racing car bearing the chevrons of Citroën, it should come as no surprise that the car that wound up with that weird honour is a fictional car: meet the GT By Citroën Gr.4 racing car.


With its roots so deeply intertwined with the Gran Turismo franchise, I thought it fitting to attempt a "Stealth" livery on the winged racing car variant of the Citroën, a style of livery that is signature of the Gran Turismo series. The original concept car may have debuted as far back as 2008, but when slapped with just the basic aero parts of Gr.4 and brought to life with custom liveries, the GT By Citroën really looks like it would be right at home in a modern grid consisting the wildest looking cars of today like the Ford GT and Lamborghini Sián. But, because it's a concept car with no need for road legality or ease of access, it HAZARDOUSLY doesn't come with any reverse lights (:sly:), and sits at a mere 1,211mm (47.7in) tall. If your brain can't process numbers like mine, here it is lined up next to a production based 981 Cayman GT4 Clubsport, the best sports car money can buy, don't @ me.

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My freaking helmet's in a higher position than the roofline of the GT!​

While the Road Car that was never sold was said to be powered by a 5.4L Ford V8 producing 501HP (373kW) in a package that weighs in at 1,450kg (3,197lbs), the Gr.4 variant has been brought down both in power and mass to be inline with Gr.4 specs at 394HP (293kW) and 1,300kg (2,866lbs) before the current BoP applies, letting it run on level playing field with its equally eccentric peers in Gr.4 from Atenzas to Veyrons. What hasn't appeared to change much is that the GT retains the use of a 7 speed gearbox, being one of the arbitrary select few in Gr.4 to be blessed with a seventh forward gear, giving it an almost literal leg up to its competition in fuel efficiency, acceleration, and even braking.


The good news doesn't end there; in fact, that's just the beginning of a very long list! The GT drives simply impeccably, with instant and proportionate responses from both its featherweight front end and its NA engine. Despite this, the car exhibits incredible stability in the bends like the AWD car that it well might have been, incredibly composed and unfettered by bumps and rumble strips, and generally needing some incredibly stupid driving to upset. The only time I've ever felt the rear end of this car perk up is if I downshift early into 3rd or 2nd with a +2 rear brake bias, and even then, it only helps to rotate the car into the corner if you can handle and exploit it.


Not only does the car turn well, it stops well and goes way better than any fuel sipping car has any right to, too! The GT feels incredibly light on its feet from braking to cornering. Its 7 speed gearbox means that the car can be kept in the meat of its powerband all the time, or letting the car retain much of its acceleration if you're short shifting to save fuel. Case in point, often I find it much more advantageous to downshift into 2nd when braking for a low speed corner for example, only to shift back up to third before accelerating out, and the car doesn't shrug it off nonchalantly as much as it acts as though it were the most natural thing in the world; it's so capable to the point that it doesn't care, because nothing you can throw at it on a racetrack seems to faze it at all.


Now, this is the point in my reviews where I turn around and give you the flipside of the coin, but this week, I genuinely am at a loss for any bad things to say about the GT. It looks good, drives great, is competitive, stable, safe, and consistent. It's everything you'd want in a racecar. And so, when BoP was enabled in our lobby around halfway through the day, I decided to see how well the fictional car made for a fictional class fares against a real car in a real class, and a real favourite of mine, the aforementioned 2016 Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport.


At the risk of this review completely derailing into yet another rave and drool session of the 981 Cayman GT4, the me that had been tired and groggy all afternoon from that inhumane heat of Singapore suddenly perked up and started smiling the moment I took a corner in the 981. It's nigh indescribable magic how much that car suits me and behaves EXACTLY as I would think and want it to, almost as though it knows what I want better than I do. One corner, and I knew everything about my decision and verdict in this review, and yet, I have no idea at all with regards to how to justify or even explain it. The Cayman plays with you while retaining the stability and predictability of the GT. It even sounds so much better than the GT (fight me)! It has an indescribable, magical quality, a fun factor that no words can describe that the GT completely lacks. If I had to illustrate with an analogy, the Cayman is a toy and the GT is a tool that both happen to... have the same goal.

...see, I was about to end that last sentence by saying that they happen to do the same thing, but that would be implying that the Cayman can actually hang with the GT on the track.


It can't. Far from it. I felt almost like I was in an entirely separate car class lower than that of the GT, because I was getting out braked into corners and dropped like a sack of hot potatoes on the straights in my 5 speed Cayman. I had nothing with which to fight back to the GTs, nowhere I had an advantage over the Citroëns, aside from them fighting amongst themselves. It was a complete slaughter, even before they dropped me out of their slipstream. Now, the host of our weekly lobbies, Vic, is not only tremendously fast, but also creepily patient, something he proves with giving obnoxiously incompetent morons in our lobbies second chances to prove their malice or innocence before kicking them, but even I suspect he has to be thinking something along the lines of, "That sodding wanker in his fancy Posh had better piss off right this instant!" while somehow being stuck behind me for more than two whole laps. You'll just have to wait for him to say that exact line in his review of this car to confirm it.

(Yes, I do seem to be going through a bit of a Bri'ish phase in my life for some reason.)


I know the Cayman is hobbled by BoP to be incredibly slow on the straights, and its gearing is much wider spaced out than all the cars built for Gr.4 from the ground up, but mind you, my Cayman can still outrun a 4C Gr.4 in the straights! Surely the "Balance" in "Balance of Performance" must mean that a 7 speed fuel sipper car might be slower than my Cayman when both are being ran full tilt? Nope! The acceleration and fuel advantage afforded by its seven forward gears is completely free and seemingly unaccounted for in BoP. I want to stress again that having seven speeds in Gr.4 is completely arbitrary; Yes, the actual GT By Citroën does have a 7 speed gearbox, as does the M4 and 458. But then how do you explain the NC1 NSX and C7 Corvette having only 6 speeds? Hell, why does the GT By Citroën Gr.3 still have a 7 speed?!


And so what did we learn this week? That it pays to be in bed with Kaz if you want a strong representation in his game? Regardless of the hows and whys, it remains an indisputable fact that the GT By Citroën is really, really good in Gr.4. Faultless, even. It's so good that I've had to pull bullcrap excuses out my butt just to say anything bad about it, like how it "never made me feel awake", and how it doesn't sound as good as my favourite car in the class, and perhaps even ever. Maybe what's missing is... a reputation. A legacy. If the GT By Citroën has had any success in real motorsports, then I'll probably be writing things like "the sound of the ICONIC Ford V8 is perfectly encapsulated in the Gr.4 racing car", or "it's not difficult to see how the GT By Citroën earned its countless victories in endurance racing all over the world with this rock solid stability". In other words, Citroën, please make this car a reality? Please? Because the GT By Citroën is so, so close to perfection, and the only semi–valid criticism I can direct towards it is that "it doesn't exist".


...yet.
 

A Japanese pickup truck sounds about as appealing and appropriate to me as an American made kimono. Here in urban, tiny, and densely populated Singapore, we use light, diesel lorries and vans like the Toyota Dyna and HiAce to haul industrial loads from one end of this 42km wide island to another, so you'll have to forgive me if I don't at all understand the point of a 5.8x2.0x1.9m (228.9x79.9x76.6in) truck riding some 270mm (10.63in) above the ground packing 379HP courtesy of a 5.7L V8 using the ever more expensive Putin–free petrol. Oh, and you can load a lorry from three of its four sides, and you won't have to worry if it rains mid drive in a van, none of which applies to a pickup truck.

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Not exactly the best shot and not exactly a HiAce but if you're such a hot shot why don't YOU come over and take a better photo then?!​

As Yard tells me, pickup trucks are an American cultural thing, and absent its real world capabilities like towing, hauling, and making you feel like you've a big dick driving through a shady town, the only thing I can tell you about the Tundra is how it drives on a racetrack. Irrelevant, you may think, but someone at TRD would be sure to disagree with you. After all, the 2019 Tundra TRD Pro we have under the microscope- er... I mean, magnifying glass this week does come with TRD coils and Bilstein dampers for what the game describes as improved stroke characteristics of the car, which makes me think either a doctor or a prostitute had been hired as a last minute replacement to write the in–game description. Where else have you heard those two words used together?

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Your diagnostics just came back, baby, and you're definitely suffering from severe acute head deficiency.​

In comparison to last week's '99 Impreza which I had described as handling like an offroad SUV, the Tundra drives much more like a normal car once you get used to being propped up on sky scraping stilts and having to steer farther away from walls on a track. To complement the bespoke suspension components that offer improved stroke characteristics, The TRD Pro has chunky, 285mm Pirelli all terrain tyres and even a better balanced body just to push the point further home, with a weight distribution not unlike that of a typical family sedan, at 56/44 F/R. With similarly sedan like 1.40Hz springs front and rear (1.55Hz rear in GT7), the Tundra really is a truck that you can treat like a car on a racetrack, and that's saying something when I got into trouble treating a car like a car just last week. It's a big shock to me, seeing as the aforementioned trucks and vans I've driven IRL feel rather precarious even at sane city speeds (the exact definition of which notwithstanding. Also, with how much I procrastinate, you'd think I'd have learned by now to stop using relative date terms. Ahh well, I'll change that habit later I guess).


On the default Comfort Medium tyres, the large truck of course struggles to attain the same cornering speeds as a car, with a much wider turning radius even before the tyres start to audibly complain. Drivers then will have to very quickly adjust for and get used to the lower cornering speeds and brake much, much earlier for a corner, despite the four wheel disc brakes mostly doing their part in upkeeping the illusion of driving a normal car. The 5,663cc 3UR-FE V8 engine came as a real surprise to me, with all its torque up top much like the V8 found in the RC F, with nothing in the low end for towing, or 2nd gear no gas, clutch in standing starts that I had come to expect is a necessity among utility vehicles. While it behaves largely the same as a normal family car on a racetrack, the way you need to rev the engine and wring it for every last rpm it can muster is almost like that of many of our favourite sports cars, like the 86 and 911... which is a problem, because this is a utility vehicle and not a sports car—one that is saddled with an automatic gearbox for some stupid reason my small Asian brain can't fathom, which means that the truck often bogs with this peaky engine and widely spaced ratios. For reference, you'll be just about touching 110km/h upshifting at redline in 2nd, and 3rd will noticeably bog even without the sensations of g forces if you drop as much as 10km/h below that. That's a variance of only about 6mph for my imperial friends. What am I driving, a big NA V8 or a Rotary Engine Pickup Truck?


Put on the Sports Hard tyres that GTS defaults every production car to, and that's when things get counterintuitively dicey. The extra grip does mask away most of the truck's problems with cornering speeds and even understeer, lulling drivers into a false sense of security into treating it just like a mildly exciting family car and driving it as such. The problems arise when you treat the Tundra to a downhill trail braking section, such as the ones you'll find on Bathurst or Nürburgring. There, the entire illusion of driving a mildly exciting family sedan completely falls apart, as may well your anatomy: the extra lateral g forces that the uprated Sport Hard tyres bring causes the ultra high profile tyre sidewalls to visibly and perceptibly flex, and what this translates to when driving is that the tyres will suddenly warp and give mid turn well after you've eased weight fully onto them, which in normal car driving theory is when they will have the most grip, leading to a precarious and totally unexpected situations that you have no way to prepare for or correct from, forcing drivers to constantly under drive the truck in anticipation, with at–the–limit driving a very risky gamble at best and a numb and ambiguous crapshoot at worst.


The Tundra also has a nasty habit of breaking out its rear end when you don't intend, and shyly tucking it away when you do. In corner entries where you have to lightly dab the brakes to shave off speed slightly and turn hard into a corner, the sudden movements will cause the unladen rear end of the truck will swing out. Something about the entire package of the Tundra makes it deathly allergic to certain turns, such as that fast, winding downhill section leading into the Foxhole of the Nordschleife, and the blind uphill left hander that it leads to, where many of us had mishaps on race day.


You might think that that would make for a car that's easily Scandi Flickable, but the very conservative 40:60 non–adjustable torque split means that any attempt to hold the slide with the gas just works to correct it instead. On the dirt, the Tundra can get just enough slip angle for an opportunistic photographer to feign some drama on corner entry, and it can even hold a slide if egged on by steering in the same direction as the turn, but by and large it's still a truck that very much wants to keep pointing straight, making it a rather idiot proof tool still, which may not necessarily be a bad thing. It's just... come on, who wouldn't want to see something this majestic going sideways in the mud?! Feels like a HUGE missed opportunity to me! I bought a TRD Pro, did I not? Why am I treated as though I bought a TRD noob instead?


So now that the cards have all been laid bare on the table, how does the Tundra compare to the only other truck in the game, the F-150 SVT Raptor? These two trucks drive largely the same, sharing many of the same defining faults of their class, such as ambiguity, tyre flex, automatic gearboxes, and inopportune tail happiness. Trust me, I spun the Raptor out braking for the second last corner of Fuji, when I never had an issue there even in air–cooled 911s. The main difference is that the Ford has 32HP more but is also 168kg (372lbs) heavier. The Ford is less optimally balanced with a weight distribution of 57/43 F/R, which leads to slightly more understeer when pushed in a deep corner, but its engine is less picky with gears in comparison. Overall, the Ford is a tiny bit quicker around even some of the tightest, most technical courses in this e–sports focused title, like Streets of Willow and Tsukuba, but the overall difference between the two is quite minimal as far as overall times and driving feel is concerned. Unless you're an ultra competitive alien chasing hundredths of a second around a track, you can just pick whichever truck you think looks or sounds best, or even whichever brand you're more loyal to, and you'll do just fine against the other.


Okay, so that comparison's a bit dull. Is there anything else that might offer a more contrasting comparison, then? Why yes of course! With how much I've compared the driving experience of these sporty trucks to a "normal car", how does it fare against... one of the best sports car money can buy today, the Tundra's stable mate, the GR86?

​


Stupendously closely, actually! The Tundra has the corner exit traction advantage and even the power to slightly extend said advantage out of a corner, though me in the 86 felt like I was going to smash face first into an aluminium wall in every braking zone. With the Tundras punching a wall so high above my car instead of in front of it, I swear following in the Tundra's slipstream results in more lift than drag reduction, to say nothing about the environmental issues and lack of visibility my less courteous colleagues cause with their unladen trucks! Yes, that is my perfectly reasonable, entirely logical, and wholly unassailable excuse for not winning a race in a sports car against a field of pickup trucks!


Going into this week's racing, I hadn't at all expected to find out the utilitarian side of the pickup trucks in a racing game. But, not only do these sport trucks offer a driving experience that closely resembles that of a normal, sensible car, I think the race against the GR86 has proved that trucks can produce lap times that are offensively close to one of the best sports cars money can buy today, which can certainly be argued to be "doing the work" of a sports car. Just don't expect it to be fun, engaging, or even cheap if you do decide that your truck should also do the work of a sports car. In the limiting confines and context of a racing game, these trucks are a fun novelty, like riding a Ferris Wheel. It might be mind blowing the first, second, or even the third time, but once that novelty wears off, you're just left with the empty realisation that you aren't doing much in one, and it's the same, safe thing over and over. Absent an absolute, real life need to haul ass and wade through shallow rivers, I'll just spend half the money the Tundra costs on an 86, which engages me and makes me smile every time I turn the wheel.


...damn, how a truck drives on a racetrack is entirely irrelevant. Who would've thought?
 
This week we are taking a look at the Dodge Tomahawk VGT Gr1. This weeks car is chosen by @RX8 Racer

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This week we are taking a look at a cult classic German car. The very first car was designed by Ferdinand Porsche who would later go on and create the iconic Porsche Brand. This car was still being made in South America up until a couple of years ago. Volkswagen Beetle would be featured in a couple of movies like Herbie and Transformers. This week we are taking a look at the Volkswagen Beetle 1200 '66. This weeks car is chosen by @Alex p.

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The V6 Clio was better, honestly. Driving the RS 220 today as well as throughout the GTS campaign, I'm reminded of how screwed the FWDs were in this game's physics. GT7 may have a lot bad things with it, but FF physics is not one of them.

The 220 is a neutral in my book, if only because it had its butt handed to it by a diesel Mazda and the V6 Clio. That said, it is pretty quick and in GT7 it can carry you quite hard.

Edit: Ask Vic for the replay/video of final race at Laguna Seca, we had a brutal back and forth spanning the entire race.
 
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SIGH. It looks like ya boy Kaz is at it again, including two variants of a car with microscopic, almost imperceptible differences between the two just to pad the car count. Meet the Renault Sport twins, the Clio R.S. 220 EDC Trophy '15 and '16. Are either of these cars good? Which is better?


Sure, the two cars have different wheels, lights, and interiors, but substantial and important differences that affect how you play the game can also be found among the cars even before their engines are started: the 2016 car allows for decals to be put on the "Formula 1-style blade" on the front bumper (no, seriously, that's what Renault calls it), whereas the 2015 allows you only to paint it. Quite a big deal, I think, as the 2015 car comes with a "TROPHY" decal on the blade originally, which gets wiped the moment the car's appearance gets changed because of the way the livery editor works. And yes, you read that right: the car that comes stock with the TROPHY decal can't have decals put there and the car that doesn't come with that decal allows decals put on the blade.

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There are also "TROPHY" decals on the rear doors, which are highlighted by side panel pieces running from as far forward as the front doors. Those get wiped too, and the game doesn't allow decals where it used to be on either car, resulting in an empty, black void that the car's bodywork works to bring attention to. So if you want to do anything to change the appearance of your car, from something as innocuous as a singular ant poop to something as must–have as a licence plate on a family hatch, say goodbye to all the car's original decals you can't put back where they were. It's just stupid design choices like this that define Gran Turismo, and makes me think no one at Polyphony Digital has ever played a game in their lives, let alone one they made themselves.


Honestly? I think the ability to put decals on the front bumper blade on the 2016 car is enough for me to declare it the car the better of the two. It certainly would be the only choice if you were someone that is completely smitten by the 1966 Renault R8 Gordini, such as myself, and wanted to create a fantasy Clio Gordini Edition for this generation of Clios, which necessitates a white front bumper bar. I mean, you could paint the entire "Other" section of the 2015 car white too, but that also whitens the side strips and rear diffuser along with it, which... drumroll, you can't put decals on either. And who the F wants a white rear diffuser?

You can celebrate this difference between the two cars by terming it as diversity, but I think one car that doesn't come saddled with stupid livery editor restrictions would have been just peachy.


I say that the difference in the livery editor alone is enough to put one car over the other, and that's because, on the racetrack, these two almost identical cars drive almost identically to each other on a racetrack. Big shock, I know. I'll write a legal disclaimer for potential cardiac arrests next time before I drop such a bombshell, I promise. "B-B-B-BUT...! 25kg! 55lbs!", I hear you sputter between painful breaths while clutching your chest, the mass difference between the two cars. With both cars being powered by the same engine, producing the exact same power, going through the exact same EDC 6 speed dual–clutch gearbox with identical gear ratios, how oh how can the 2016 car keep up with or even perform similarly to the 2015?


I... don't know. Not for sure, anyway. I can't find any instance of Renault spelling out the updates, but I can tell you how the two cars feel different on the racetrack, minute as the differences may be, if it helps? The 2015 car immediately feels lighter the moment its steering wheel is peeled off centre, with it being a tad bit more immediate biting into a corner. But, from there, the lighter 2015 car for some odd reason feels like it moves around a lot more, with larger weight shifts and more tyre chirps mid corner, asking of its driver to baby it a little more and be more cognizant of what its doing than its younger sibling. In comparison, the 2016 car is absolutely planted from corner entry to exit, with any hint of tyre squealing being quashed by the electronic differential the moment it reaches your ears. While both cars come with the same electronic differential, the main difference between the two cars to me is down to the revised programming in the 2016. In the later car, the diff entirely robs away the unpleasantries of driving a powerful FF car and letting them focus solely on pointing the car where they want to go. One could certainly make the argument that the 2016 car is a much more brain dead drive, whereas the 2015 is a much more technical and demanding drive, and will teach drivers more as a result by punishing off neutral braking in a more pronounced manner, locking a lot of its pace behind careful brake pedal control. But, it cannot be argued that, despite the mass handicap, the younger, heavier, and smarter car is simply faster around a racetrack. If the fact that I closed a gap to Vic of all people in his 2015 with me in a 2016 at Alsace isn't proof enough for you, Alex's own testing confirms the pace advantage of the 2016 as well.


But that is not to say that the 2015 is a sloppy car; not by any stretch of the imagination. Both are amazing point and shoot pocket rockets that offer spectacularly balanced drives. Body roll and pitch is definitely felt, but just as is with some of the best drivers' cars to roll off a production line such as an E46 M3 and Camaro SS, said body movement is just enough to put additional weight over a relevant tyre in a corner, and nothing more beyond that. The car feels incredible right out of the box with 205/40/R18 86Y Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyres as standard, which are classified as Comfort Softs in GT7. In conjunction with its magic differential and ABS, there is simply no getting the front tyres to let go and start smoking even with the most ham–fisted of driving. Despite being set up from the factory for Comfort Soft tyres, the car felt right at home wearing uprated Sport Medium tyres, which we were running on race day, though the grip on offer is so immense that the Clio would break all known laws of physics and the universe and phase through the ground before it'd start smoking its tyres! Check out that suspension breaking, physics altering pitch and roll!


Throughout all of that physics nonsense, the steering wheel gains and loses weight linearly and delightfully from corner entry to exit, never leaving drivers to guess what the front tyres are doing. Imagine having steering wheel feedback in a modern car (and in a self proclaimed real driving simulator)! What a novel concept! The Clios are also among a very exclusive club of cars that offer column mounted shift paddles, which I personally prefer over wheel mounted paddles in the absence of a stick shift. The engine is rev happy with peak power up top and peak torque down low, all traits that serve the car well on public roads and racetracks alike. All of this make both Clios delightfully engaging drives, and proof that a hot hatch and a modern car laden with electronics can still offer a sensational drive that doesn't simply insulate drivers from the experience and spoonfeed them speed.


If I had any complaints, they'd be minor ones. I recognise that modern cars are all downsizing their engines and resorting to turbos to keep up in power output due to stricter emission laws, and that they make all the sense in the world on paper, but these tiny turbo econobox engines have simply never felt natural to me. With its M5Mt 401 engine making peak power at 6k and its limiter set to 7k, the engine cuts out right as it runs out of breath, which, again, makes sense on paper. In practice however, I have found myself in many instances where I wish I could ride out a lower gear when exiting out of a corner, or approaching the braking zone of one. Second, third, and fourth gears have quite a sizeable gap between them, which might make sense on a drag strip to minimise shifting, especially with all that low down turbo torque, but I often find myself panicking in a subconscious level when the revs drop low on corners such as Sheene Curve on Brands Hatch, which will see the car in middling 5.5k in 4th, but downshifting to 3rd just leaves it sniffing the limiter. Will the car still pull? Yeah, it will. It just doesn't sound like it will, and it's at a stark clash with how I've learned to drive, as I've equated speed to sound. As a result, I found myself making many unnecessary and short lived downshifts in the car, and it's not often that I found myself wanting to just slap the gearbox of a car into auto and just leave it to do its own thing. The engine and gearbox combo simply doesn't have a lot of flexibility to it with a narrow powerband in practice. Sure, it has great torque down low, but there's no arguing against the mechanical advantage of a lower gear and higher revs, which the gear ratios don't much allow for with wide spacing. What this results in is that there's only one correct gear to be in at any given situation on a racetrack, and the (lack of) sounds it makes make discerning said correct gear an unintuitive task.

Again, I get it. Cars are just like this nowadays, and no, I don't think an NA unit would be faster even if it could output 216HP from a 1.6L size. I'm just saying it feels unnatural to me. Could you get used to it? For sure. I just fear getting too used to it and start lugging my Rotary sports cars and Flat Sixes, you know?


To find out exactly how good the Clio is, I thought a few comparisons were in order (but mainly because I haven't reviewed the past two weeks' cars and I have a itch to bitch). Now, any professional reviewer or sane person would take a contemporary hatch like the Golf VII and Focus ST to pit against the Cars of the Week, but I'm working towards one of them and taking medication for the other, with me being neither here nor there. So I rose the bar higher by pitting a bona fide, 2 door, 2 seat FR sports coupé against the Clio, in the form of the 86 GT "Limited".


...which got promptly destrolished around Laguna Seca to the tune of about a whole second a lap. To give you an idea of how bad it was, the 2 door sports coupé was not only less powerful, but heavier than the 5 door hatch! And it demanded for me to be careful on the throttle? Eww!

(Just kidding, I adore the 86, but I got spanked HARD in that race and I don't think a defamation suit right now is a good idea.)

So then, what closer competition to a Clio than... a Clio? That's right, I brought a third, oldest Clio into this family feud, and if you think I'm setting up the 2000 car to fail, just know that it has a 3 litre V6 putting out 229HP from the comfort of the back seats :sly: I'm here to kick ass and take medication, and I'm all outta pills. Or something.


So, can a decade and a half of evolution and computation wizardry outperform balls to the wall lunacy?

Close, but not quite. The V6 is a few tenths quicker per lap than the I4s, and its all gained on the straights. "Well duh, it's the heavier but more powerful car", you might think, but what that implies is that this RMR car gets out maneuvered in the corners by the FF Clios! The V6 gets horrendously out braked into every one of Tsukuba's corners, so much so that I4s that weren't even on the radar when you get on the brakes would still be able to look for a fair move by the apex of said turn. On a low speed track like Tsukuba with low powered cars, that difference in braking is nothing short of heinous! But, where the FF cars have great initial bite into a corner and only show hints of understeer into longer turns, the RMR car is much more consistent in its turning radius, letting drivers trace a much more natural flowing line into and out of corners, letting them get on the gas that much more that much sooner, no wizardry required with the differential.


Still too obvious an observation? What really came as a surprise to me is how similar the V6 felt to the modern Clios, despite being separated by fifteen years and having completely different drivetrain layouts, almost like the same engineers and drivers had set all three cars up. All three corner incredibly flat with very little drama, which is all the more amazing when you consider the fact that the V6 is nothing more than a maladjusted, Frankenstein beast of a thing, having a RMR drivetrain shoved inside the silhouette of a sensible looking family hatch and the aerodynamics to match. All three cars have their rev limiters cut in right as the engine runs out of breath, and I felt many of the same frustrations in the older Clio that I did in the modern ones, despite having nearly twice the displacement and ditching the crutches of turbos. I don't know if it's just me, but I can very clearly see and feel a shared bloodline running through these three cars, and it's little things like these that almost humanise a brand that manufactures cold metallic death machines and give them a personality. One that I'm very, very glad to have experienced a small part of this week.


Duplicate cars? Certainly, I still think that it's difficult, if not impossible to justify having both the 2015 and 2016 cars in a modern Gran Turismo game, when each car reportedly takes half a month of labour to reproduce in a game. That is especially so because I opine that the 2016 car completely outclasses the 2015, both on a racetrack and in the livery editor. But, call me a lunatic if you must, I think having a few very similar cars is in the DNA of the Gran Turismo series. Growing up with the series, I've always loved spending hours in the showrooms just reading about cars, going through their colour lists, test driving them, and trying to spot what's different. It helps me appreciate the top of the line models that much more. In the case of the 2015 and 2016 Clios, they together show that a car is more than just a spec sheet, and that very real and tangible surprises can spring from a car which is down on paper. That's an appreciation that would be impossible to glean from just having one car.


The Renault Sport Clio R.S. 220 EDC Trophies are both truly Sleepers in every sense of the word. If I had to pick between the two, the 2016 wins no question in my mind. But if I had to pick between three Clios instead? I'd probably still go with the 2016, and that's saying something, isn't it?
 
Hope everyone recovered from the 90th running of Le Mans over the weekend. Why not celebrate it with a return of a manufacturer to Le Mans next year with Peugeot. Even though we can't test their newest Le Mans Prototype 9X8 maybe we will see it in GT7 but let jump back to 2010 with their 908 HDI FAP. This week we are taking a look at the Peugeot 908 HDI FAP. This weeks car is chosen by @RobboGTAddict

Pruett_LM242010_RACE2_-2349.jpg
 
Long story short, the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP 2010 is a car that hasn't translated well into GT Sport at all.

At high speeds, the downforce imbalance causes it to understeer massively. At low speeds, the abundant torque from its diesel V12 causes it to power oversteer vehemently. It's also horrifically allergic to dirty air. What this all results in is a car that is so inconsistent to drive that you can be oversteering out of the apex of a turn and be understeering by the time you hit the outside of the exit. The front and rear ends of the car feel like they've been taken from completely different cars and glued together, and they never agree on any corner. First gear is an instant spin button on downshifts and second will still kill you without TCS. While others were racing each other on the track, I was still trying to learn the ins and outs of the FAP. If the real car handled like this, all four cars would've crashed long before the cars broke down on their own.

It's not even competitive. I mean, it's a non–TS050 car in Gr.1, did that really need saying? Even if you aren't the ultra serious sim racer type, there are so many other options in Gr.1 that offer a much more consistent and enjoyable drive. When we enabled BoP in our lobby, about half the field swapped out their FAP mobiles and went into something else, and by the end of the night, only one FAPper remained on the grid. I drove the Peugeot L750 HYbrid VGT, Tomahawk, and Audi R18, both of which were drama free drives, and as a bonus, all my appendages were still accounted for at the end of each race.

The Peugeot 908 HDi FAP is a pointless waste of time in GT Sport.
 
I actually liked the Pigeot, but I like high downforce cars. I found the oversteer downshifting into first was really helpful for the hairpin at Suzuka in particular as the car doesn't like to turn in very well otherwise.
In the high speed corners the understeer allows you to stab at the throttle after a lift to get the car to turn. In the low to medium speed corners the car is quite good if you roll it into the corner off throttle and wait for the apex and feed the throttle in.
Having said that, I took the Porsche for Fuji because I hate that track(the slow speed section gives me migrains) and it was way better ballance wise. Also, before the redbull tank wore off it was a beast under acceleration.
Took the 92 Nissan after that and it showed how far the cars have come driveablity wise over the years. But the rush of the turbo lag and the rumble of the engine coupled with do or die handling made the old car the most fun to drive.
My verdict on this one, does what it says on the tin.
 
XSquareStickIt
Long story short, the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP 2010 is a car that hasn't translated well into GT Sport at all.

At high speeds, the downforce imbalance causes it to understeer massively. At low speeds, the abundant torque from its diesel V12 causes it to power oversteer vehemently. It's also horrifically allergic to dirty air. What this all results in is a car that is so inconsistent to drive that you can be oversteering out of the apex of a turn and be understeering by the time you hit the outside of the exit. The front and rear ends of the car feel like they've been taken from completely different cars and glued together, and they never agree on any corner. First gear is an instant spin button on downshifts and second will still kill you without TCS. While others were racing each other on the track, I was still trying to learn the ins and outs of the FAP. If the real car handled like this, all four cars would've crashed long before the cars broke down on their own.

It's not even competitive. I mean, it's a non–TS050 car in Gr.1, did that really need saying? Even if you aren't the ultra serious sim racer type, there are so many other options in Gr.1 that offer a much more consistent and enjoyable drive. When we enabled BoP in our lobby, about half the field swapped out their FAP mobiles and went into something else, and by the end of the night, only one FAPper remained on the grid. I drove the Peugeot L750 HYbrid VGT, Tomahawk, and Audi R18, both of which were drama free drives, and as a bonus, all my appendages were still accounted for at the end of each race.

The Peugeot 908 HDi FAP is a pointless waste of time in GT Sport.
Click to expand...
Long story short, this is a huge disagree from me. In fact, I think it is THE best Gr.1 car in the game. It was the fastest Gr. 1 car around the Nords (05.31.657), and actually the fastest racing car of the entire game (non-fictional/non-open wheeler). I found it to be rather well behaved, sometimes slightly snappy sure, but still very good to drive. It means it was faster than ALL older and ALL newer real life Gr.1 entries and that says something...It was also my go to car to grind for credits in GT Sport on Monza, where it ALSO was very competitive all around! The only track, where it might actually be worse, than only the older Gr.1 monsters, is, of course LeMans.

In GT7 I loved shooting it around LeMans in the track experience challenge and managed to even beat the gold time by ~6 seconds. I love that thing!

 
Alex p.
Long story short, this is a huge disagree from me. In fact, I think it is THE best Gr.1 car in the game. It was the fastest Gr. 1 car around the Nords (05.31.657), and actually the fastest racing car of the entire game (non-fictional/non-open wheeler). I found it to be rather well behaved, sometimes slightly snappy sure, but still very good to drive. It means it was faster than ALL older and ALL newer real life Gr.1 entries and that says something...It was also my go to car to grind for credits in GT Sport on Monza, where it ALSO was very competitive all around! The only track, where it might actually be worse, than only the older Gr.1 monsters, is, of course LeMans.

In GT7 I loved shooting it around LeMans in the track experience challenge and managed to even beat the gold time by ~6 seconds. I love that thing!

Click to expand...


Omg, omg, OMG!!!

I love the controversy! I propose a death match between you and Square. Loser buys each COTW member 2,000,000 GT7 credits!!!







….. a thumb wrestling match could suffice in place of a death match if the participants feel that is more appropriate 🤷🏼‍♂️
 

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