To quote myself when I spoke of the lack of judges for the oldest TCV2 Division,
Let's use a car I found fascinating, but never really got around to testing:
TRD Starlet Glanza V
Upon the initial drive of the tune, it felt... rubbish. That's the only word for it. It had huge forward tilt under braking, didn't get through corners with any trace of dignity or pace, and spun out easily on straightaways (somehow). But, as one drives it further and adapts to the car, it all begins to feel eerily similar to the Renault Clio Sport 2.0 of Greycap's creation: It
reacts the way it is
driven. That is to say, if you drive it like an idiot, it reacts just the same. But, if you drive it well, and subconsciously adapt to the car's tendencies just perfectly, you find yourself cleanly going at high speeds, indeed. The braking distances are insanely short, so the proper procedure is, as a
Car and Driver editor once put it, "Wait till you see God, then brake." Or, better yet, one of his friends modified that creed a little: "Wait till you see God, count to three, then brake." Sound about right, for this superlight car with strong brake settings. Once you moderate the steering to compensate for the trail-braking oversteer, you either (A) wait a bit, mash the throttle, and somehow make a fool of yourself, or (B) carefully and progressively thread the throttle downwards as you decrease steering angle, and retain all of your grip by never, ever exceeding it, and get rewarded with a dignified and rapid corner exit.
The quality seems to be that the camber is the highest it could conceivably be, which means that, until the car is cornering at the absolute limit, it's riding on the corners of its tires and has no grip at all. Any lack of smoothness in driving will wobble it onto and off of the entire contact patch of the camber, making for sloppy, irregular, and slow behaviour when it's driven wrong. It's an ideologically sound prospect: It's bad when driven badly, and good when driven well. But, it takes just a bit too much smoothness to reach the end of the camber roll for my slightly unrefined driving style, and I have issues with consistent corner exits due to, I expect, this exact feature.
It gets a solid 8.75/10 due to its epic braking power and its average everything else (The high handling capabilities and the difficulty of achieving them cancel out in my mind). I'd try out using a bit less camber, but it would feel disrespectful to modify someone else's product without their permission, ecspecially since I may indeed be breaking a delicate balance. I've thought about it, and there actually is a good bit of genius to this setup, but the skill-intensive nature of it means my love for it is well-limited.
Also: I'd want to promise to review Leo's M5 CSL, but it's beginning to seem that anything I
promise to review, I don't really review at all. So.
...
I don't know. But, I've built it and everything! What are those lovely wheels used in the photos? And cool, there's 7 gears! Even if the ratios do seem lopsided...