My friend, did I say they were Miatas? No. They are however, Mazda's. Do you think that when Mazda was designing the Miata they hired a bunch of guys off the street and gave them the basics on how things worked and told them to make a car out of it? No. They looked at what worked in all of the cars of their companies past, as well as all the technology gained from their motorsports experience. THAT is racing heritage.
Actually... the blueprint of the Miata took almost
nothing from what Mazda had at the time, sans the engine (which came from the 323, and had to be modified to run longitudinally instead of transversely). They studied road-going British sports cars to come up with the theme for the MX-5. It shared nothing with Mazda's other sportscar of the time, the RX7. Not engines, not suspension, nothing.
They built the MX-5 entirely from the ground-up as its own car. As a road car, specifically to sell to customers to drive on the streets.
The same can be said about the Corvette, Porsche 911 Turbo, Subaru WRX etc. (Lamborghini admittedly has no real racing heritage. However, they were designed to beat Ferrari's on the road so they have heritage through rivalry.)
Heritage through rivalry doesn't work. Saying a car is a competitor to (insert Porsche/BMW/Ferrari/benchmark name here) doesn't give it heritage.
Back on topic, the Miata competes in the Continental Tires Sport Tourer class, as well as various mixed Club Racing events in the SCCA and NASA, and that's in the U.S. alone.
That's an invitational event for private car owners and low-level privateers, not a professional league. You can race just about anything in the SCCA if there's someone to race against.
If we go by your logic of racing heritage (I think you're confusing it with the word 'History') then there are a handful, if any, cars outside of the Lexus LF-A with racing heritage prior to being released for sale.
I'd say Porsche as a company has a racing heritage... but the problem with words like "heritage" is that it is so easy to abuse...
Of course the Porsche Cayenne inherits Porsche's racing heritage. Same with the BMW. I'm gonna have to say 'nay' on the Tahoe though. The problem is that BMW and Porsche made sure that their history was channeled into their SUV's. Both companies have been in just about every form of motorsports since the companies inception. They're also niche car makers, their nich being the luxo-performance segment. Thus when they designed their SUV's, they had to make sure they fit in the niche. The Tahoe isn't made by a niche Car maker. Chevy sells cars to every day average joes. The Tahoe is built to compete against other trucks of it's type, not conform to the brand image of Chevy (it does have to represent Chevy though).
Have you
driven a V6 Cayenne? That's about as sporty as my left armpit. A V8 Cayenne is exciting, yes... but it's still a Touareg in drag. BMW really oversells this whole "Ultimate Driving Machine" thing. Yes, most BMWs are scads better than the competition when it comes to the way they drive (and X5/X6 > Cayenne... any time), but a 7-series is still a barge. It's the best handling barge in the world, but it's still a barge.
Heritage is whatever the buyer and manufacturer agree upon. A manufacturer may claim heritage, but it's up to the buying public whether they buy into it or not. Just because a car has the same badge as a race car, doesn't give it a racing heritage. Years of running the WTCC won't give the Chevrolet Optra a racing heritage. Years of running at the top level of sports car racing doesn't give a 911 Turbo (especially not the cabrio) a racing heritage... though the GT3 and GT3RS
can claim it.
You've said "built to race" a few times now. I mentioned this in my last post: Only race cars are built to race. The Corvette is built to be a high-performance machine and it's gotten that formula down from all of the other Corvette's that came before it. I got the feeling you didn't know much about Corvette's... so I would advise not to argue about them.
Corvette - sports car / grand tourer. What else is there to know? Except that the original was terrible in terms of handling compared to its European competitors, that it was only by the time they released the C3 that they started getting the handling formula right (though this was at the advent of US emissions regulations... which hurt performance a lot), and by the C5, they had finally built a car that could handle supercars in a straight line
and in the corners (though the set of the rear suspension left a lot to be desired in chicanes) and with the last of the C5s and the new C6, they've got a car that is, by all rights, a supercar, though its plebian roots, transverse leaf-spring and pushrod engine cause some to scoff at it (and they're wrong).
To be fair, some of the lessons learned for the Corvette program have come from the racing program, but it's still a street car, first and foremost. And not all of them have been incredibly fast. Especially not with a 190 hp V8 and a
four(whoops... according to wiki, I was one gear off... I'm rusty) three-speed automatic.
Well a vehicle that's been Built to race is a car that has a roll cage, performance tires, various equipment inside it's stripped out interior usually conforming to a sanctioning bodies regulations.
Which includes less than a tenth of the available cars in any iteration of Gran Turismo. Which is what I'm driving at.
Oooooo on that note, lets keep the "Turgid" SUV's out of the game and only put the high-performance SUV's in eh? Pretty much my point right there.
Like I said, I can't debate personal preference. And I'm not here to.
I'll give you this one, but allow me to note that you're conforming your argument again. Those aren't two-and-a-half ton trucks. Lemme refresh you:
Wish I had quoted that before since you make the Truck and Muscle car seem pretty equal then argue for the truck when I make my choice the muscle car.
I'm not really sure what you mean by two ton truck either.
A modern truck has quicker steering than fifty year old muscle car. And the last example
is a two ton truck... well... more like 1.8 tons, but it's close enough.
I agree, I'd love to have the 911 and all Porsches (Cayenne included) in the game. You are right, too, about most cars being built to haul passengers. However, SUV's are purchased with the intent of being the family vehicle. Not the vehicle that dad takes to the Autocross even though people do take them to autocross events.
People buy vehicles for whatever reason suits them. If the reason is primarily to serve as a family vehicle, any minivan will do.
People
do buy cars for heritage, no matter how tenuous the connection. They buy them for "sportiness", whether real or imagined. An SUV is bought with the
purpose of ferrying several people plus luggage, but the real reasons people choose one
over another... or over a minivan or a sedan... are beyond that.
On that note: Just because I can race an SUV, doesn't change the fact that it was meant to haul the family around.
Same with a car.
Also, notice how those Honda's and Mitsubishi Evo's were made into Race cars? Got any pics of SUV's being made into race cars? Try this out: Google Racing Tahoe, then Google Racing Civic.
Still does not change the fact that a racing Civic bears little relation to the road-going variety besides having the same suspension mounting points and engine block.
Well that is reason enough to only expect the Sport SUV's. Since GT is only putting in the sporty variants of most cars, why would they stop the trend with SUV's?
Many is not
all.
So, lets say 25% of the GT fan base wants SUV's like you do. They believe they should be put in since there's no reason not to put them in right? Now you said it yourself, you don't like all SUV's. Well what if that 25% (and I'm being generous) was divided up on which SUV's they like to drive? All of a sudden there's a very small number of people who like and want to drive the SUV's on a regular basis. You ever wonder what happens to the occasional odd cars in GT? Sure the licenses could've expired, but that'd mean GT never pursued renewing them. Most likely a good reason for that.
What if the other 75% was divided up into what cars they like to drive, also?
Good reasons, including the need to feature something else different, something else new.
I'm gonna take a guess that when someone buys one of those three types of cars, they're usually going to only want to drive other cars of that type. One of the first cars I plan on getting in GT5 is the ST185 Celica GT-Four, it's the big brother to my AT180. Which... my AT180 was never put in a GT game.
Which is a good reason to have more than just a handful of trucks in the game. Having one super-SUV is kind of useless if there's nothing to race it against...
Anyways, other cars I'd be more interested in driving is other Celica's, Honda's, VW's etc. I drive my dad's F150 every once in awhile and I hate it. The thing has body-roll, no steering feeling or any attachment to the road whatsoever etc. Which reminds me.
Most SUV's don't even have Manual transmissions! If a company makes an SUV/Off-roader IRL then it should deserve a spot in GT as it at least has that commodity. Even the most plebian sedans and compacts have a manual transmission. Which makes them all the more fun to drive compared to their automatic counterparts, despite it still being a basic vehicle.
It's not a complaint you can level against SUVs alone, sadly. Most road cars sold in the United States are automatic. Many of the cars in GT4 (strangely) are the automatic variants, even if a manual was available at the time of release. (I hate automatics, mind you.)
Look at Forza. 400 cars is a lot of cars (and they were picking the popular cars/SUV's too). Maybe not when compared to GT... but they blow quite a few other racing games out of the water when it comes to car list. After skimming the list, I will tell you that I would love to drive every single one of the cars and trucks on that list.
Personal preference, again, no argument against that.
Also, you really need to pull away from GTPlanet. There's only 100,000 users here. Not even that many actively participate in the discussion... and those 100,000 users represent a small portion of the people that buy GT. Sure, we can enjoy going and driving all the odd cars, but for every one person that likes it, 9 others may not. As much as GT is a passion and a piece of art, it's also a business.
Again GTPlanet does not equal all of the people who buy GT. There were over a million downloads of the GT Time Trial Demo alone! If half of those people buy the game then that's four times the amount of people here on GTPlanet.
Part of business is making money. Part of making money is marketing. With its huge car list and dedication to doing as wide a variety of cars as possible, Gran Turismo markets itself to people who wouldn't
usually buy a racing game.
I know people in real life who don't play racing games who've been attracted to Gran Turismo because... hey... dude... that's my car!
Even going back to your Forza example... a friend bought it and races it extensively online because he can buy his own car in the game (which he couldn't in GT4... because it only had the non-turbo automatic variant). Gran Turismo appeals much to the casual non-racing gamer and the non-gaming car enthusiast. Look around here... you've got people who don't play any other video game... older people who've bought systems just to play... I won't deny that Forza isn't doing the same thing for the X-Box... but that's because they're following the GT example. People may not buy their own cars to race... but they might just buy your game because their car is in there, and they'd like to know what it'd be like to do so.
This is my bad, I meant withdrawal instead of denial. We haven't had a new Gran Turismo in awhile and we're starting to feel our addiction reach it's limits. People need their fix, there's nothing new and sensible to talk about, so people just focus on new things to talk about.
No problem... it's been like this before...
...it's mostly the new guys who do it... the rest of us just hang around the general sections of the site (and on other forums) until there's actually something concrete to talk about.
I also find it funny that GT4 is the poorest selling major GT title in the American and Japanese markets (Though the strongest in the European market, Mr. Yamauchi should take note of that fact). I don't blame trucks for this... but it's interesting nonetheless.
Blame increased competition. GT4 was released late, and into a market with lots of alternatives that have grown up in the time since GT3 came out. Also, the physics engine was a little too... understeery... for most casual gamers.
Interesting, doesn't say much about trucks being in GT4... since GT3 gave us minivans and Pajeros.
.
