Someone made a point earlier about legality being irrelevant in justifying PD's action with the recent anti mod patch, and I completely agree with that point; as much as we are legally able to modify our saves as we wish, PD is free to block use of said saves on their online services. It's kind of a pissy argument, you know, "my ball, my rules" and what not, but it is what it is.
But the point was expounded upon as if the almighty Kaz saw that his creation was becoming unfair and unbalanced, and he smote the infidels to preserve the precious virginal racers' integrity.
But wait, special parts are still abound (rocking some CH[C] tires myself), grip multiplier is here to stay, I can still bypass real work to up my level and credits, and there are multiple vehicles that still can be visually modified outside the parameters of the UI..
I hate to be a sore loser, but I am not ashamed to say that as a player that was interested in building nice drift cars, sensible stancers, and replicas of photographed vehicles, I never even considered entering them in races, online or seasonal, because I simply thought they could potentially present an unfair advantage.
But as much as I hate being a sore loser, I can't stand smug winners...to the gloaters, I understand your spec races or time trials or whatever were getting infiltrated by trolls that happened to pick a hybrid as their weapon du jour. I and a host of other players would have liked nothing more than for PD to make some sort of hybrid marker so that regulations could be set, or cheating could be verified via replay(like something as simple as red characters on lap time like on non ghost generating practice laps)...but PD's actions were not some homage to satiate your butthurtedness, they were to to satiate some manufacturers' butthurtedness(my gut still tells me Ferrari) and ensure their license in an upcoming GT game.
So hopefully PD took the hint, variable rim widths/offsets, wider range of suspension adjustment(including caster), reasonable(read as manufacturer specific, sorry LS1 fans) engine swaps, and the ability to remove spoilers for GT6..anything less let's me know that maybe its Fanatec and Forza time( and this is from someone that would literally refuse a free Xbox360).