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Actually on count back I was wrong. COTY for 2021 is the Ferrari F40 based on most votes across all categories.
Car of the Week 228: COTY GTS Finale
- Thread starter Racer283
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Congrats to Maranello for the COTY award, by building the F40, a timeless classic that has won the COTW hearts.
Full write up tomorrow, so many new votes last couple days I have to rewrite a couple things.
Full write up tomorrow, so many new votes last couple days I have to rewrite a couple things.
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- New Brunswick
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- Victory_Reign93
- Linthium Reign
I will unfortunately have to miss tonight’s running, got an early start tomorrow on a theory test so i’m giving you guys the heads up. 👍
- 123
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I can open a room tonight if needed. Or are we putting this off for a week because I was so slow with writing the end of year report?
Either way, I will open a room for the F40 at the usual time unless somebody else wants to set one up. Would feel weird having the end of year celly without Vic, but that does give everybody a chance to win one... lol
- 686
- Golden
- racer2833
This week we are taking a look at the modern interpretations of a Mazda LMP. This week we are testing the Mazda LM55 VGT Gr.1. This weeks car is chosen by @RX8 Racer which his birthday was last week.
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cough
www.gran-turismo.com
www.gran-turismo.com
www.gran-turismo.com
/cough
's Gallery - Profile | Community | Gran Turismo Sport - gran-turismo.com
View 's Scapes Photos, Race Photos, Car Livery, and other creations in 'Gran Turismo Sport' for PlayStation®4!
's Gallery - Profile | Community | Gran Turismo Sport - gran-turismo.com
View 's Scapes Photos, Race Photos, Car Livery, and other creations in 'Gran Turismo Sport' for PlayStation®4!
's Gallery - Profile | Community | Gran Turismo Sport - gran-turismo.com
View 's Scapes Photos, Race Photos, Car Livery, and other creations in 'Gran Turismo Sport' for PlayStation®4!
/cough
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2020 may have marked the end of the world as we knew it, but for a Hikikomori like me, something much bigger to me ended—my nonexistent racing career. It just so happens that the Mazda LM55 Vision Gran Turismo Gr.1 was the last car I ever raced competitively in an FIA race back in January two years ago. A Group 1 race around Circuit de la Sarthe with inconsequential tyre and fuel use, the usual domineer of Gr.1, the TS050, is rendered completely useless in the race with its comparative lack of top end on the speed focused track, opening up the field to a never before seen variety of machinery in competitive FIA races, ranging from technical LMP1 machines more focused on outright speed, to some obscure VGT converts, and even the dinosaurs of the bygone Group C era were viable! I often criticise Group 1 for being one of the most whack categories in the game, but remove the hybrid cars and their fuel advantage and I think we end up with a class that is much more finely balanced than any sane person could've ever fathomed.
In that hypothetical dream scenario, the Mazda LM55 VGT Gr.1 was, as I recall, one of the fastest cars on the time attack leaderboard, being the weapon of choice for aliens such as Nik Makozi. Me? Well, I spent the whole night before and even a bit of the morning of the race panic–designing a Furai tribute livery for the race and got zero practice in, so I was sleep deprived come race day, and well, the completely random track limits pushed me over the edge into deciding to quit Sport Mode entirely. It simply has become too much dedication, too much work, too much stress, too much frustration, too little control over the chaos, and too little fun. It felt more like a stressful job than a hobby. And so I quit to spend probably more time and dedication writing car reviews on a weekly basis while neglecting my real job most of the time to do more research, testing, and writing. Hey, what's a man without his passion, right? At least this is fun. Testing the LM55 Gr.1 this week in Car of the Week then, feels to me like coming a full circle... especially because I was similarly sleep deprived during this week's meet.
dodges a thrown tomato "GET TO THE CAR ALREADY!", I hear you yelling from the back of the room in the dark.
Maybe the reason I'm padding the word count by telling you about myself is because I don't know much about the car. All we can know for certain is that this car is NA and AWD, because nowhere has its engine type been confirmed officially to my knowledge, nor has its placement within the car been made clear, though any sane person would have to assume it's rear mid engined given the flat nosed silhouette of the car. The "brap brap brap" at idle, the stratospheric 9,000rpm redline, and its peaky nature all suggest a Wankel Engine, though the number of rotors, its displacement, or the type of fuel the highly adaptable engine uses is still a complete mystery. The whole reveal trailer for the thing is literally some corny Christmas musical before Mazda goes through its usual resume of winning 1991's 24h of Le Mans while harping on its styling and nothing else. How much does it weigh? How much power does it make? Pssssshhhhhh, is that important? You know it's inspired by the 787B and shaped by KODO design philosophy! What else could possibly matter?
So far then, so very typical of a Vision Gran Turismo car: no one has any idea WTF is going on, who the car's for, what it's meant to do, what its specs even are, and what this means for the company or its customers alike. Very surprisingly for a car in Gran Turismo, an area where we know more about the LM55 than any fictional Gran Turismo car is under its sheet metal: there is an official render of a car with its external shell removed, exposing inner mechanicals such as suspension, exhaust routes, its sole gullwing door in its open position, and even a fully rendered interior that went totally unused in Gran Turismo 6! Were opening body parts or a much more detailed cosmetic damage model ever in the cards for the Gran Turismo series? Or did Mazda go the extra mile in designing their Vision Gran Turismo car because they're passionate, detail oriented folk? Only the team who worked on it can say for sure.
While Gran Turismo Sport does give the LM55 a new interior, it's clear that the interior in Sport is of a completely separate design from the initial render. With a two–tone interior based on the exterior paint of the car and an immensely helpful HUD on the windshield using Mazda's old font, it certainly looks more uplifting than the initial render, which looks much more soulle- I mean, race focused. A neat detail in the interior to me is how the car's ingress and egress point is very clearly the right side, just like a proper LMP car. Very oddly for a racing car however, the interior of the LM55 in Sport features... air con vents? And no reverse camera? Why do I get the feeling this is the work of PD and not Mazda?
With a fully fleshed out interior, it's such a shame that the car's windshield and windows still retain their high opacity and blackened look, as though still trying to hide a lack of an interior. I personally dislike tinted windows, as it just somehow makes a car look smug and haughty, like sunglasses on a person, and I automatically assume a person to be a jackass if they use either. Is that a fault of mine or the car? Probably mine. I still don't like them, though. I think clear polycarbonate windows would suit the airy theme of a car painted in Atmospheric White with SkyActiv Technology better than TAMIYA sticker windows.
So, we know the interior has been revamped for the LM55's return in Sport. The real question however, is whether its handling has been updated for Sport, because back in October of 2017, Car of the Week tested the LM55 in Gran Turismo 6, where the crew found... a distinct lack of the Jinba–Ittai feeling any good Mazda should have, to put it lightly. To summarise if you for some reason don't want to read it straight from the horses'... mouths?, the car suffered from horrendous understeer and braking distances longer than the legacy of the Rotary Engine, both of which may be attributed to the excessive camber angle PD gave all racecars in a later patch—1.5 and 3.5 degrees front and rear respectively, causing more than 6 degrees of separation between itself and the road. Now, Gran Turismo Sport is hardly the game that even gets close to replicating a car's real tendencies and behaviour if their horrendous MR GT3 cars are anything to go by, and so things just seem destined to go from bad to worse for the LM55... unless of course, if two wrongs make a right.
And I'm very pleased to say that that does indeed seem to be the case for the LM55! The detuned Gr. 1 version of it, at least!
While I've previously expressed slight doubt regarding the engine placement of the LM55, any scepticism in the name of being factual gets erased immediately when one pulls the steering wheel off centre in the car—the featherweight front end immediately slices in to hunt down the apex of a corner like only a rear mid engined racecar can if you as much partially lift on the throttle, the ferocity and precision of which I'd go as far as to argue exceeds that of many racing cars that are being trail braked. The LM55 truly blends together the best of a rear mid engine layout with All Wheel Drive, while cancelling out the weaknesses of each, and it almost feels like Driving Nirvana at times because of it. One would have to think that a car with such an eager front end would usually have very loose handling, like a fighter jet that's intentionally unstable, but the rear end of the car has never once threatened to break away from me no matter what my half awake self had unfairly thrown at the car, from corner entry to exit, through bumpy rumble strips or even slight off road excursions, no matter what brake bias I've tried with it. Whatever the situation, the LM55's front tyres will always be the limiting factor before the rears ever approach theirs, making for a very easy, stable drive that can be pushed almost to the point of abuse. I have no idea what the centre torque split of the car is, but I wouldn't want to mess with it even if I could! Thanks to this miraculous AWD system, it allows drivers to give it that much more gas that much earlier in a turn in comparison to other MR racecars I've sampled. Because it's driven purely by an ICE engine without turbos or hybrid systems mucking up the power delivery, there are never any nasty surprises with over or understeer like the LMP1-H cars are liable to spring; just a smooth, gradual raise in power and torque with the revs. With eight closely geared forward cogs, you'll always have revs for any corner as well!
As if Gran Turismo Sport doing justice to a car isn't big enough a surprise, the fact that this package comes courtesy of Mazda of all companies is just mind boggling! Mazda is probably one of the very last companies to come to mind for anyone when the topics of stellar rear mid engined cars or AWD systems come up. After all, the only AWD systems the company makes are just FWD converts, and quite literally the only rear mid engined road car I can think of that can be associated with Mazda is the AZ-1, which didn't even start life as a Mazda, nor ever bore its badge. I really think they should try thinking out of their comfortable, front engined box more! MR layouts are rare for Mazda even in concept car land, but when they do somehow decide to make one, it stuns the entire world and leaves an unforgettable silhouette in its wake, such as the Furai, and now the LM55.
I swear to god, if the engineers at Mazda somehow manage to get a two door, two seat, rear mid mounted NA Rotary sports car with AWD greenlit, I would happily clean their restrooms for the rest of my life if it means that I could be part of the team that helps make it possible! I really do think rear mid engine, AWD makes all the mechanical sense in the world, and the LM55 is proof of that!
...right?
Well... the LM55 is a non TS050 car in Gr. 1, which renders it immediately outclassed and therefore useless in this highly competitive game. The LMP1-H cars can hang with the LM55 in the corners, and will blow the latter's gullwing door off SkyActiv high on the straights with their hybrid power. The LM55, or indeed any non hybrid car, will need a high speed stretch of road, such as the back straight of Maggiore for example, to reel in the hybrid cars and stand a sporting chance against them, and the LM55 is no different. Despite having excellent fuel economy, it is, again, say it with me now: not a hybrid, which means it loses out on longevity as well. The braking prowess of the car, a noted sore point in GT6, has also been addressed, but still leaves something to be desired—the car stops well enough for its power and mass, but it's still not amazing, spectacular, or anything of the sort. In comparison to its Gr. 1 brethren, I find that it still requires markedly earlier braking points, especially for high speed braking zones. With eight forward gears to shift through, your left fingers would be incessantly busy in braking zones, as though furiously scratching an itch that just won't go away. I mean, I get it, it's a peaky Rotary Engine car set up for Le Mans, but isn't eight gears a bit too much? You could probably achieve more with the game's sole aftermarket gearbox option—a fully customisable seven speed.
However, it's not even the car's competitive shortcomings that I dislike the most about it. Rather, it's the sound of the car that grates on me. It sounds like it was copied and pasted as–is from the public registry of ear rapists that is Gran Turismo 6. It sounds phony, plasticky... synthesised. Monophonic. I'm no audiophile, so please forgive me if I misuse terms or don't know what I'm talking about. While other engine notes raise and lower in frequency with revs, the engine note across the rev range of the LM55 sounds to me almost like it's made up of several sound samples of increasing frequency from each other. When the car's revs climb, it sounds like the game simply switches between the sound samples on the fly, and it's as jarring as sliding down a flight of stairs when you were expecting a waterslide. It also sounds just like a sound sample, instead of a sound in a 3D space with reverb... I can't describe it well. It just sounds incredibly flat to me.
I consider myself a Mazda fanboy, and I love their Wankel Engines with an obsessive passion, but the engine in the LM55, whatever it's supposed to be, is just... eww. It's so bad that it makes me never want to ever touch this car unless I have to. I even prefer the similarly phony sound of the 787B in this game than the LM55's engine note, and that's saying something.
In conclusion, I... still don't really know how I feel towards the LM55. It's a VGT, and despite having two versions of itself, both are equally useless. It sounds stupid and awful, and its mechanicals and specifications are just a murky mystery at best. But, it drives like a dream, looks stellar, has shown improvements in its interior, and even has unseen mechanicals rendered! For what it's worth, it's by far the single best driving VGT I've ever driven, and proof that Mazda goes several extra miles even in their off time, break room creations, which is just one of the very many reasons why they're the single best car company ever, bar none. Yes, I'll even fight anyone who disagrees.
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Figured I'd come back in and chip in even though GTS is still a distant memory for me.
(mainly because setting up my wheel rig to play GTS would disturb my rabbit and I don't think I'd survive 5 minutes of pure rabbit rage
)
The LM55 was my go-to GR.1 car for a number of reasons, and I also used it frequently in GT6 back when it debuted. Sadly, the LM-55 would be the last car I used in any sort of serious capacity as a dirty driver in an FIA race* killed all of my motivation.
*The driver rammed me in T1 at Dragon's Trail because he couldn't pass me and then hate-mailed me for being "slow" when I was using different lines in the race that proved too challenging for him.
The LM55 has a great sound and drives very well, but lacks the hybrid power that makes the "real" Gr1 cars so potent. I have to say it's neutral because it's good, but not good enough.
(mainly because setting up my wheel rig to play GTS would disturb my rabbit and I don't think I'd survive 5 minutes of pure rabbit rage
)The LM55 was my go-to GR.1 car for a number of reasons, and I also used it frequently in GT6 back when it debuted. Sadly, the LM-55 would be the last car I used in any sort of serious capacity as a dirty driver in an FIA race* killed all of my motivation.
*The driver rammed me in T1 at Dragon's Trail because he couldn't pass me and then hate-mailed me for being "slow" when I was using different lines in the race that proved too challenging for him.
The LM55 has a great sound and drives very well, but lacks the hybrid power that makes the "real" Gr1 cars so potent. I have to say it's neutral because it's good, but not good enough.
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- The failed experiment entitled “California”.
- 6,657
- Hanover/Germany
- alexpkas
Mazda LM55 VGT Gr.1 Nordschleife lap time on racing hard tyres: 05.33.914.
With that time, it is one of the fastest Gr. 1 cars. Its handling characteristics are terrific. Its direct rival, the Hyundai VT Gr. 1, managed a 05.36.370.The normal LM55 VGT (05.50.038) is a complete pos though, and don't get me started on the normal Hyundai VGT...(06.00.555)
P.s. I improved the P1 GTR time from 06.49.xxx (sports hard tyres), to 06.11.580 on racing hards.
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- XSquareStickIt
With GT7 a little over a month away, I'm wondering what the future holds for Car of the Week.
Are we starting a GT7 COTW on launch day? Wait for everyone to get used to the game a little first? Who's going to host it?
Gives me a chance to get nosy and ask who here intends to buy GT7 on launch, and which version! Me personally, I'm going to wait and see. No money for a PS5, and I don't want to buy the racing equivalent of Cyberpunk PS4. Not sure if I'll be suited to host COTW given I don't know if I'm even buying the game yet.
Are we starting a GT7 COTW on launch day? Wait for everyone to get used to the game a little first? Who's going to host it?
Gives me a chance to get nosy and ask who here intends to buy GT7 on launch, and which version! Me personally, I'm going to wait and see. No money for a PS5, and I don't want to buy the racing equivalent of Cyberpunk PS4. Not sure if I'll be suited to host COTW given I don't know if I'm even buying the game yet.
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Well, wether you want it or not… you got my vote!!
As for GT7 and me, I haven’t ordered it yet. But I’m going to get the digital deluxe version. One for my PS5. One fir my longterm goal of having a separate setup at work on my PS4
I too am curious to see how the game will play on PS4. I have a bone stock PS4, and a PS4 Pro I’m about to acquire. My gut is telling me that a PS4 pro will be fine. It’s the base PS4 that’ll suffer
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- alexpkas
Getting the standard PS5 version. Am also of the oponion, that you should stage the new COTW thread. I guess we could start in the first April week? GT Sport COTW should continue, until all cars have been featured I think. That could be done even without the weekly races, so just the write ups.
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- racer2833
This week we are taking a look at the modern version of the classic Miata. It's a great car for beginners in racing as it's low powered and doesn't have enough to cause understeer or oversteer of the car. Grab yourself a Mazda Roadster S and lets have some close racing like IMSA Mazda Cup. This weeks car is chosen by @XSquareStickIt
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- alexpkas
GTS Nordschleife hot lap STOCK Mazda Roadster S '15 N100: 08.49.617
~ 7 seconds quicker, than a first gen. Not bad, not great. Driven stock on hard sport tyres without any driving aids, except ABS.Comparison with Tsukuba rivals:
Verdict: Neutral I guess.
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Loved the ND MX-5 back when the game was new Even with the NA and other MX5s coming back in, this is still a solid car. I'm gonna have to get back on at some point soon!
MX5's neutral, since I know the GTS power tuning isn't detailed enough to do the car any favors.
MX5's neutral, since I know the GTS power tuning isn't detailed enough to do the car any favors.
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Who would have imagined a company making some of the fastest cars in the world would take a Veyron and stuff it into the Gr.4 category. I think that partly comes down to PD and creating some fantasy type cars to fill out a category. Well this week we are taking a look at the Bugatti Veyron Gr.4. This weeks car is chosen by @Baron Blitz Red
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Mazda has always been the oddball kid in the field of automobile manufacturers, so imagine how balls to the wall insane and dysfunctional you'd have to be to out–weird them. And yet somehow, Bugatti seems to have understeered face first into succeeding at just that, in what I can only hope is an unintentional, but undeniably embarrassing nonetheless display.
What, you thought I was going to review the ND Roadster? Joke's on you! You know what we call that in the industry? JEBAITED! HA!
So what's bonkers Bugatti gone and done? Well, someone at VAG wanted to make a Bugatti racecar. Now, that all sounds fine, dandy, and perhaps even a little ho–hum. Eyebrows start to raise however, when one realises that they wanted to enter said racecar in Gr.4. Now, Gr.4 is this game's rough equivalent of real life's GT4 category, populated by cars driven by nice guys that ask before hugging on dates, can only drink beer when diluted with water, reach home before eight, and signal before changing lanes even when nobody is around, such as the such as the Renault Mégane and the Mazda Atenza. To attempt to circumcise, neuter, castrate, and then slap a carbon fibre chasity belt onto the quad–turbocharged, 8L W16 engine of the 1,888kg (4,162lbs) Veyron then, is an asinine an ask as trying to fit Gran Turismo 7 onto a home console that debuted nearly ten years ago, meek spec wise even by the standards of the time of its debut. In other words, it's utterly imp-
Oh, um... yeah. I guess... yeah, the- there you have it, I uh... guess? (How in the actual bloody HELL did... oh nevermind...)
So uh... hastily flips through a clipboard's worth of papers the Gr.4 Veyron... makes... 433HP! That's... discreetly fumbles an abacus behind my back 323kW, which is still stupendously powerful for Gr.4, but you'd certainly hope for at least that when helming the single heaviest car in its class, and by quite some margin too. The second most powerful and heaviest car in Gr.4, the GT-R, weighs in at a whopping 157 kilos (347lbs) lighter than the Veyron, and that's even when the former is saddled with BoP! Needless to say, the Veyron makes the brick missile that is the GT-R feel like an 86 in comparison, and an 86 a 172.
It's almost like VAG knew their car will be a straight line beast and specifically set it up to be just that and nothing else, because there appears to be little to no effort made to get the car to turn corners at all—All that visually differentiates the road car from the racecar are a pair of tow hooks, a set of kill and extinguisher switches, racing slick tyres, dropped ride height, a gutted interior, and unpainted carbon fibre for its body. Here's the really cool part: because the Veyron Gr.4 borrows colour schemes from the Bugatti VGT, the blue Veyron Gr.4 actually comes with the VGT's dark blue carbon fibre! The other colour variants of the Veyron all get regular black carbon, making the blue car the undisputed best one to get, and I am so ridiculously thankful for the Daily Workout Gods for gifting me my only Veyron Gr.4 in blue. It's just such a shame that the carbon weaves are lost when painting the car, and the two–tone body isn't separated into different categories in the livery editor, making selectively recolouring the light blue parts of the car a very difficult task.
As you are probably already shocked by from looking at the photo above, the built to spec Veyron Gr.4 doesn't even come with its own FIA spec fuel inlet, instead retaining the road car's fuel cap! Good luck refueling it every other lap in a race! So lacking and ostensibly low effort is the Gr.4 Veyron that it doesn't even sport any off the shelf splitters, skirts, or a rear wing that is seemingly mandated for all Gr.4 cars, and even the spoiled, pampered child of the fiercely protective Karen, the 458 Gr.4, doesn't escape that trend. The Veyron Gr.4 instead uses the stock car's rear wing in a fixed position, either because Gr.4 has an unspoken rule about active aero, or the chap that was responsible for gutting the interior of the Veyron forgot to leave an opening for the second key that allows the Veyron to activate its "Top Speed" mode... which is just as well, seeing that the 7 speed gearbox of the racecar has similarly lost its record setting mojo, topping out at a drag limited top speed of 277km/h (172mph).
Predictably, all that makes for a car that requires more effort to turn than some celestial bodies. Despite having its 8L W16 engine prominently on display aft the cockpit, the Veyron feels so incredibly front heavy and lethargic when negotiating bends that even Vipers with their own 8L engines up front are more effortless to turn. Its... stability, is such that rotating the car into the apex of a corner feels as laborious and time consuming a task as trying handbrake turn a cargo ship into a parallel lot under its own power. The undisclosed centre torque split is so unnecessarily front biased that the Veyron power understeers like an FF hatch on corner exits. Under any circumstance or situation, it is simply impossible to get the rear tyres of the Veyron to even squeal without the aid of parking brakes, grass, or someone T–Boning you in another Veyron. Don't ask me how I found that out.
Also, while I'm complaining, the car's flywheel of all things feels incredibly suspect. Revs bounce and stutter like crazy even on mirror smooth surfaces, let alone when you shift the car or when you go over rumble strips. I know it probably isn't a big deal for most, but I find it irritating as the low engine note isn't very distinct through its rev range, and so I'm more reliant on the HUD more in the Veyron than I am in most cars, especially because I've little to no experience with it prior this week.
Still, the torque curve in the car does trivialise shift points somewhat, being more akin to a torque table than a curve. One might think that this artificially limited torque curve is a direct result of more than halving the power output of the Veyron to shoehorn it into Gr.4, but very surprisingly, it's a direct copy and paste from that of the road car's, making me wonder if the record setting road car was itself held back by other hardware issues.
Speaking of hardware, the Gr.4 Veyron has the single coolest rear camera in all of Gr.4, and perhaps of the entire car list of Gran Turismo Sport! It looks to have been lifted as–is from the Bugatti VGT, and it is the closest thing cockpit view users will have to ever seeing their opponents when they're in front in this game. Why don't all fictional cars made for Gran Turismo come with a rear view camera as easy to use as the Bugattis? Won't anyone think of the poor wheel users in the game that haven't analog sticks to look around their cars? It looks ultra fancy and badass with a distance gauge on the left, and even a time difference gauge on the right, until you actually drive the car and realise that the two gauges are just for show and don't adjust with speed, making them completely useless aside from looking cool.
The brakes on the Veyron Gr.4 on the other hand, are excellent! The Veyron Gr.4 race car may weigh well over many road cars saddled with air con and airbags, but it never feels it in a straight line, be it when you're accelerating or, shockingly, braking. I personally find that the car stops the best at full front bias, -5, but I've had to pare it back to -3 to strike a balance between stopping and attempting to turn.
Okay, so it understeers. So it's fast in a straight line. So it has a super cool rear camera, really stunning blue carbon shell, and no racing spec fuel inlet. But do any of those really make a Veyron Gr.4 so weird? No, what makes a Veyron Gr.4 the weirdest car in Gr.4 isn't even on the car itself—it's the fact that someone at VAG wanted to make A Bugatti racecar, and therein lies the problem: the Veyron Gr.4 doesn't have a Gr.3 compatriot that together would have made Bugatti an eligible manufacturer to be represented in the game's FIA Manufacturers' races. After all, aren't these fictional Gr.3 and Gr.4 cars built for those FIA races? I mean, they went through all that (little) effort to make a Gr.4 car, why not a Gr.3? That's like going through the effort of buying a cup of ice cream, adding the chocolate sprinkles on top, and then not bothering with a scoop of ice cream. Or like making a carbon fibre Veyron that still weighs more than many passenger cars and then not giving it any aero parts. Whatever the reasons may have been, the Veyron Gr.4 stands out as the single weirdest Gr.4 car simply because it's the only Gr.4 car that can't represent its manufacturer in an FIA race. I can only imagine some VAG executive had a stroke when they learned that Gr.3 doesn't allow for AWD, and canned the Bugatti VGT Gr.3 after they recovered.
The Veyron Gr.4 may be a curious oddball of a car that might be fun to take a look at for its sheer oddity, but there isn't any enjoyment to be gained from the car after you're done gawking at the blue carbon fibre of its body, which... might take a while, b-but...
......
sweet baby blue Buddha...
...but if you want a car that has strong acceleration in Gr.4, the GT-R has most of the speed of the Veyron and much better cornering feel, and it's not even that good. They Veyron Gr.4 is, at the end of the day, just like the distance and time delta gauges on its rear camera: it's supremely cool, but completely useless. It's so awful that it might as well not exist like its Gr.3 cousin.
(I'm sorry Baron I know you really love this car.)
What, you thought I was going to review the ND Roadster? Joke's on you! You know what we call that in the industry? JEBAITED! HA!
So what's bonkers Bugatti gone and done? Well, someone at VAG wanted to make a Bugatti racecar. Now, that all sounds fine, dandy, and perhaps even a little ho–hum. Eyebrows start to raise however, when one realises that they wanted to enter said racecar in Gr.4. Now, Gr.4 is this game's rough equivalent of real life's GT4 category, populated by cars driven by nice guys that ask before hugging on dates, can only drink beer when diluted with water, reach home before eight, and signal before changing lanes even when nobody is around, such as the such as the Renault Mégane and the Mazda Atenza. To attempt to circumcise, neuter, castrate, and then slap a carbon fibre chasity belt onto the quad–turbocharged, 8L W16 engine of the 1,888kg (4,162lbs) Veyron then, is an asinine an ask as trying to fit Gran Turismo 7 onto a home console that debuted nearly ten years ago, meek spec wise even by the standards of the time of its debut. In other words, it's utterly imp-
Oh, um... yeah. I guess... yeah, the- there you have it, I uh... guess? (How in the actual bloody HELL did... oh nevermind...)
So uh... hastily flips through a clipboard's worth of papers the Gr.4 Veyron... makes... 433HP! That's... discreetly fumbles an abacus behind my back 323kW, which is still stupendously powerful for Gr.4, but you'd certainly hope for at least that when helming the single heaviest car in its class, and by quite some margin too. The second most powerful and heaviest car in Gr.4, the GT-R, weighs in at a whopping 157 kilos (347lbs) lighter than the Veyron, and that's even when the former is saddled with BoP! Needless to say, the Veyron makes the brick missile that is the GT-R feel like an 86 in comparison, and an 86 a 172.
It's almost like VAG knew their car will be a straight line beast and specifically set it up to be just that and nothing else, because there appears to be little to no effort made to get the car to turn corners at all—All that visually differentiates the road car from the racecar are a pair of tow hooks, a set of kill and extinguisher switches, racing slick tyres, dropped ride height, a gutted interior, and unpainted carbon fibre for its body. Here's the really cool part: because the Veyron Gr.4 borrows colour schemes from the Bugatti VGT, the blue Veyron Gr.4 actually comes with the VGT's dark blue carbon fibre! The other colour variants of the Veyron all get regular black carbon, making the blue car the undisputed best one to get, and I am so ridiculously thankful for the Daily Workout Gods for gifting me my only Veyron Gr.4 in blue. It's just such a shame that the carbon weaves are lost when painting the car, and the two–tone body isn't separated into different categories in the livery editor, making selectively recolouring the light blue parts of the car a very difficult task.
As you are probably already shocked by from looking at the photo above, the built to spec Veyron Gr.4 doesn't even come with its own FIA spec fuel inlet, instead retaining the road car's fuel cap! Good luck refueling it every other lap in a race! So lacking and ostensibly low effort is the Gr.4 Veyron that it doesn't even sport any off the shelf splitters, skirts, or a rear wing that is seemingly mandated for all Gr.4 cars, and even the spoiled, pampered child of the fiercely protective Karen, the 458 Gr.4, doesn't escape that trend. The Veyron Gr.4 instead uses the stock car's rear wing in a fixed position, either because Gr.4 has an unspoken rule about active aero, or the chap that was responsible for gutting the interior of the Veyron forgot to leave an opening for the second key that allows the Veyron to activate its "Top Speed" mode... which is just as well, seeing that the 7 speed gearbox of the racecar has similarly lost its record setting mojo, topping out at a drag limited top speed of 277km/h (172mph).
Predictably, all that makes for a car that requires more effort to turn than some celestial bodies. Despite having its 8L W16 engine prominently on display aft the cockpit, the Veyron feels so incredibly front heavy and lethargic when negotiating bends that even Vipers with their own 8L engines up front are more effortless to turn. Its... stability, is such that rotating the car into the apex of a corner feels as laborious and time consuming a task as trying handbrake turn a cargo ship into a parallel lot under its own power. The undisclosed centre torque split is so unnecessarily front biased that the Veyron power understeers like an FF hatch on corner exits. Under any circumstance or situation, it is simply impossible to get the rear tyres of the Veyron to even squeal without the aid of parking brakes, grass, or someone T–Boning you in another Veyron. Don't ask me how I found that out.
Also, while I'm complaining, the car's flywheel of all things feels incredibly suspect. Revs bounce and stutter like crazy even on mirror smooth surfaces, let alone when you shift the car or when you go over rumble strips. I know it probably isn't a big deal for most, but I find it irritating as the low engine note isn't very distinct through its rev range, and so I'm more reliant on the HUD more in the Veyron than I am in most cars, especially because I've little to no experience with it prior this week.
Still, the torque curve in the car does trivialise shift points somewhat, being more akin to a torque table than a curve. One might think that this artificially limited torque curve is a direct result of more than halving the power output of the Veyron to shoehorn it into Gr.4, but very surprisingly, it's a direct copy and paste from that of the road car's, making me wonder if the record setting road car was itself held back by other hardware issues.
Speaking of hardware, the Gr.4 Veyron has the single coolest rear camera in all of Gr.4, and perhaps of the entire car list of Gran Turismo Sport! It looks to have been lifted as–is from the Bugatti VGT, and it is the closest thing cockpit view users will have to ever seeing their opponents when they're in front in this game. Why don't all fictional cars made for Gran Turismo come with a rear view camera as easy to use as the Bugattis? Won't anyone think of the poor wheel users in the game that haven't analog sticks to look around their cars? It looks ultra fancy and badass with a distance gauge on the left, and even a time difference gauge on the right, until you actually drive the car and realise that the two gauges are just for show and don't adjust with speed, making them completely useless aside from looking cool.
The brakes on the Veyron Gr.4 on the other hand, are excellent! The Veyron Gr.4 race car may weigh well over many road cars saddled with air con and airbags, but it never feels it in a straight line, be it when you're accelerating or, shockingly, braking. I personally find that the car stops the best at full front bias, -5, but I've had to pare it back to -3 to strike a balance between stopping and attempting to turn.
Okay, so it understeers. So it's fast in a straight line. So it has a super cool rear camera, really stunning blue carbon shell, and no racing spec fuel inlet. But do any of those really make a Veyron Gr.4 so weird? No, what makes a Veyron Gr.4 the weirdest car in Gr.4 isn't even on the car itself—it's the fact that someone at VAG wanted to make A Bugatti racecar, and therein lies the problem: the Veyron Gr.4 doesn't have a Gr.3 compatriot that together would have made Bugatti an eligible manufacturer to be represented in the game's FIA Manufacturers' races. After all, aren't these fictional Gr.3 and Gr.4 cars built for those FIA races? I mean, they went through all that (little) effort to make a Gr.4 car, why not a Gr.3? That's like going through the effort of buying a cup of ice cream, adding the chocolate sprinkles on top, and then not bothering with a scoop of ice cream. Or like making a carbon fibre Veyron that still weighs more than many passenger cars and then not giving it any aero parts. Whatever the reasons may have been, the Veyron Gr.4 stands out as the single weirdest Gr.4 car simply because it's the only Gr.4 car that can't represent its manufacturer in an FIA race. I can only imagine some VAG executive had a stroke when they learned that Gr.3 doesn't allow for AWD, and canned the Bugatti VGT Gr.3 after they recovered.
The Veyron Gr.4 may be a curious oddball of a car that might be fun to take a look at for its sheer oddity, but there isn't any enjoyment to be gained from the car after you're done gawking at the blue carbon fibre of its body, which... might take a while, b-but...
......
sweet baby blue Buddha...
...but if you want a car that has strong acceleration in Gr.4, the GT-R has most of the speed of the Veyron and much better cornering feel, and it's not even that good. They Veyron Gr.4 is, at the end of the day, just like the distance and time delta gauges on its rear camera: it's supremely cool, but completely useless. It's so awful that it might as well not exist like its Gr.3 cousin.
(I'm sorry Baron I know you really love this car.)
- 1,744
- Singapore
- XSquareStickIt
- 6,657
- Hanover/Germany
- alexpkas
Yes. In fact, I tested every single car of the game on the Nords by now. Starting with the 01.01.2023 I'll release one hot lap/car every 2 days. There's some genuine surprises, and I'm actually pretty pleased with at least some laps, so yeah, also at least some "beautiful" driving in one or two cars to be seen.Are you starting a new video series where you take racing cars onto the Nordschleife?
Question: do you enable BoP on these runs?
I hot lap all cars stock. I only change the tyres. Each car, that comes stock with some form of street tyre, I test on SH tyres, and each one coming with some sort of racing tyre, I test with RH tyres. I think this way, one is able to see a more realistic picture of how the cars actually compare to each other.
Fun side fact: The stock street Veyron is actually faster around the Nords, than the stock Gr.4 Veyron.
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- 702
- United States
- AgentBlackDog
I'm honestly surprised that there's a Gr.4 version of the Veyron. Basically half the power of a regular Veyron, making it a radically different beast. Since driving it, I think it may be one of my top 5 favorite Gr.4 cars.
