Falcon787B Car Test Zone

Falcon787B · Jan 27, 2012

I've been reviewing cars in the Gran Turismo series on my GTArena blog (link in my signature) for many a year, and now I figured I would set my sights on the huge selection of cars ripe for driving, drifting, racing and general mucking about in in the colossal world of GT5.

Rather than spamming people with constant links to my blog, I thought I'd post up my GT5 reviews right here, for everyone to see. Having taken huge inspiration layout-wise from C-ZETA's excellent series of GT5 car reviews, it's time for me to enter the fray. Here we go...this should be fun :trouble:

Falcon787B's Car Test Zone

Work in progress here, expect more shiny stuff here soon

Below is the index for every single car review/test I ever do. When the reviews are written, the links will be posted here to take you straight to the post where the test is located.
1. DLC Hoedown 1: Supercars (Lamborghini Aventador Vs Nissan GTR Black Edition Vs Aston Martin V12 Vantage) [28/01/12]
2. 2008 Lexus IS-F Racing Concept [20/03/12]
3. 2009 Pagani Zonda R - TBW (To Be Written)
4. 1991 Lancia Delta Integrale Evoluzione - TBW
5. Head to Head: 2007 Jaguar XK Luxury Coupe Vs 2008 Maserati GranTurismo S - TBW

Ultimate Speed Leaderboards

Below is the customary Laptime Leaderboard. Seeing as Top Gear already have run road cars around their test track, I'll be using a different track to them as the proving ground for the street cars I test - the tight and technical Eiger Nordwand Short Track, high in the picturesque mountains. All runs will be conducted on sports soft tyres for the fastest time possible, over 5 laps, with the fastest time of the five going on the leaderboard. Also as a rule I will not test any road cars on the Eiger Nordwand track at all before doing the timed run.

Eiger Nordwand Streetcar Leaderboard

1. 2012 Nissan GTR Black Edition - 1:07.202
2. 2011 Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 - 1:07.237
3. 5. 2010 Aston Martin V12 Vantage - 1:10.531

Here is the seperate leaderboard for race cars. The one type of cars Top Gear have never allowed to register laptimes on their test track is race cars - so if they won't let them, I will! :trouble:

All runs will be conducted on racing soft tyres, and the same rules apply as above.
Top Gear Test Track Racecar Leaderboard

1. 2008 Lexus IS-F Racing Concept - 1:08.474
2.
3.
4.
5.

Happy reading! :cheers:

Jar31Lar · Jan 27, 2012

Oh my... Laguna Seca, I despise that track...

Falcon787B · Jan 28, 2012

Really? I love it, one of my favourite tracks ever

The Corkscrew is such an adrenaline rush when you get it right. Plus it's a good test track for one-lap trials, just the right length and with a good mix of corners, as well as the aforementioned 'screw :cool:

MOTORTRENDmitch · Jan 28, 2012

Laguna Seca is easily on my top 3 fave list.

Falcon787B · Jan 28, 2012

Car Test 1, 28/01/2012:

DLC Showdown, Episode 1:
The Supercars

2012 Nissan GTR Black Edition

VS

2010 Aston Martin V12 Vantage

VS

2011 Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4

2 DLC packs in and fans of outright supercars must've been chomping at the bit and praying someone would give them some serious performance. Okay, so the touring cars are good fun (and will be reviewed in their own test at a later date), but the 2nd car pack was something of a disappointment for high-performance fans - three little hatchbacks, and yet another variant on a supercar that already appears in about 70million different guises in the regular game anyway. A new seat trim and slightly shinier wheels? Oh how you spoil us, Kaz. Happily, the 3rd car pack had a bit more in the way of high performance that we hadn't all seen before, despite being again inundated with cute, fubsy hatches with all the performance and looks of a tickle-me teddy bear. But sift through all that and you find two fire-breathing, snarling supercars with evocative names, aggressive styling and horsepower figures taken from the wrong side of bonkers.

So then, fancy boy GTR with your new seat covers, what've you got? And more importantly, what've you got that makes you so much more different to the inbred family of GTR cousins, sisters, brothers and uncles already present in the main game? Time to find out.

First off, it must be said that I was being a bit disingenuous in my intro about the differences between this GTR Black Edition (in blue, confusingly) vs the original GTRs already in the game. The new 2012 model has a slightly tweaked engine, which takes the 478hp the original 3.8L V6 engine put out and pushes it over the 500 mark, stopping at 530hp. If it could casually bend physics with sub-500hp, it can practically write new laws of physics now, and it neatly trumps the V12 Vantage, which despite having twice as many cylinders in it's 6.0L engine, has to settle in for 498hp. 32hp isn't a huge amount in itself, but how the GTR uses that extra 32hp over the Aston is noticable.

Coupled with it's quad-core processor 4WD system, it trashes the plucky Brit hands down in the speed tests at Route X - 0-60mph is done nearly a second quicker, and half a second separates them at the quarter-mile marker. Flat out, that 32hp translates into 10 extra mph. Every little helps, as Tesco always say.

But then the bright orange Lamborghini turned up. And suddenly made 530hp look like the amount of horsepower you get in a kid's pedal car. After all, when you've got 672hp, and 6.5L in your V12, everything else seems a bit meagre. Doing 0-60 in over 3 seconds is just mediocre (the Lambo does it in 2.9). And sub-200mph top speed? Just pathetic. Come back when you've trumped 217mph - you might be there a while.

The Aventador could really only have been designed by Lamborghini. I mean if Mercedes had designed it, they would've trimmed the mad haunches and given the drooling dog a muzzle and an Espresso machine. Even Pagani, a fellow manufacturer of cars designed to look like they lick windows, would've simply made it look like a Zonda. Because that's pretty much all they ever design. Lamborghini have really mastered the art of making a car that teenage boys will slap all over their bedroom walls - and then drool all over. The Aventador in particular feels like a singles compilation of the last ten years - the front and rear ends are less evil copies of the Reventon, the overall slippery shape is nabbed from the Murcialago, and the haunches give nods of the hat to the smaller Gallardo. It completely blitzes the other two off the park, and in particular makes the Aston look a bit anonymous.

In fact, the Aston overall is in danger of becoming a mildly interesting sideshow whilst the two titans duke it out. It's blown away in a straight line, bested at the top end, and once we get to our proving ground - the Laguna Seca raceway in Monteray, California - it's given a right royal hammering there as well. It's perhaps not completely fair to put the Aston into direct battle against the two rivals it's up against here, as it's the baby Aston of the bunch, designed to take on the Gallardo, or the Audi R8. Up against R2D2 with a bazooka, and the Trident nuclear missile system on wheels, it's beginning to look like a small man with a machete in a machine-gun fight.

But it's when wailing these cars through the bends and tackling the fiercesome Corkscrew that things get a bit more complicated. If you boil things down to plain numbers, the Aston is badly lagging in all categories, and trails by nearly three and a half seconds per lap on average to Windows 7 Race Edition and the V12 Godzilla, which are both very evenly matched despite the gulf in horsepower there. It is also surprisingly heavy at 1680kg, compared to 1575kg for the Lambo and 1730kg for the GTR. But get this - I had more fun bombing around sideways in the Vantage than I did nailing every apex in the GTR and understeering off a cliff in the Aventador.

The big Lambo confused the hell out of me. I'd seen the episode of Top Gear where Mr R Hammond himself gives it a spin, and he says it's a Lambo designed for pure handling, before lambasting it for not being fun. Either he was on crystal meth on the day of shooting, or the Aventador he was given was a concept that never made it to the showroom floor, because Rich, I've got news for you - the Aventador is everything you said it isn't. It handles like an absolute pig, there's no other word for it. Jumping on the brakes for a corner feels like I've dropped a parachute to try and slow down a train, and it doesn't so much turn into a corner as make a vague attempt at hitting the apex before giving up and straightlining towards the nearest wall. This is not an easy car to drive, and only with a strict adherence to braking about five miles before you think you should and applying no throttle at all whenever the steering wheel is turned will you make it round the corner with all body panels intact.

It felt like I was driving a 4WD car from GT2, where any dab of acceleration mid-corner would mean the car went on strike and headed straight for the nearest wall demanding a pay rise. Trying to drive this car fast is like trying to turn the Titanic by bumping into it with a small fishing boat. It's hopeless. That fancy raising spoiler on the back may as well have neon lights and a dry ice machine on it for all the good it does.

However, the moment you stop being serious and you decide you want to muck around, the big Lambo suddenly grins mischievously. It's as if when you try and drive it fast, it sulks and wonders what the point is of trying to shave another tenth off your laptime - when you could just go sideways in a cloud of smoke? And then when you do want to have some fun, it gleefully bins it's ADHD medication and goes a bit doolally. So what we have is a car that's useless at what it's supposed to do - be a 4WD precision track weapon - and better at being a mental RWD hypercar.

The GTR is literally the complete opposite. This was a car designed from the ground up to chase lap records - shaving tenths of seconds off lap times is what it was born to do. It knows how to do nothing else. If you try and powerslide it, it'll threaten you with a blue screen of death and multiple error messages. 'Program 'fun.exe' has encountered a problem and needs to close. Now stop being stupid and beat your last laptime, irrational human.'

From a racing driver's perspective then, this is the car for them. When tenths, hundreds, thousanths of seconds make all the difference, the GTR will nail it every time. Even under my ham-fisted control, clipping apexes with ultimate precision became as easy as making a crisp sandwich. And the results were perhaps as tasty. Despite being down nearly 140hp on the Aventador it ran the fake tanned cruise missile very close, and came up just two tenths of a second short. The steering is effortless, and the car will always go where you want it to go - you have to really drive this car like a colossal moron to induce understeer and a cuff round the head from it. This is the ultimate My First Supercar - it's raw performance is strong enough to challenge the very best, but you don't have to be the Stig to get it's full potential. In the five laps of my timed run, all of my laps were within a few tenths. In the Lambo, I had one lucky lap where everything went my way before I stuffed it in the tyres for the umpteenth time.

But what was perhaps the biggest surprise of all is when I was done in the GTR, I got back in the Aston for a few more laps. Not to see if there was any more miniscule bits of a second I could shave off, but to just have a right blast.

I said earlier that the Lambo is at it's best when your IQ has dropped to it's blitheringly low level, and it is indeed great fun when it wants to be. But it still doesn't take away from the fact that it's cumbersome and has the turning properties of a bridge. What the Aston is best at is being the best of both worlds. It's rear-wheel drive, and as I said earlier, surprisingly heavy for it's size, so it's not going to be as fleet-footed as the Intel Pentium-R in the corners, or as face-bendingly quick in a straight line as the Eurofighter LP-700. But the steering is crisp and responsive, it's nice and agile and also not that difficult to drive to the very limit of it's capabilities.

So it's easy to drive fast. And it's also very easy to drive it like a hooligan.

Overall, it was the car I enjoyed driving the most in this test. And let's not forget that this is the world of Gran Turismo - if you used real monies to buy the car, you'll probably have in-game monies left over to spend on shedding some weight and adding some horses. I can see myself genuinely getting attached to the growling little Aston, because let's face it - you don't grow fond of a your laptop. Or for that matter a flamethrower that threatens to burn your face off whenever you try and use it.

3rd Place: 2011 Lamborghini Aventador
Drivetrain: 4WD (MR)
Engine: 6.5L V12
Power: 672hp
Weight: 1575kg
Performance Points: 579PP
Recommended First Modification: Upgraded Suspension
Rating: 76%

2nd Place: 2012 Nissan GTR Black Edition
Drivetrain: 4WD (Front-engined)
Engine: 3.8L V6
Power: 530hp
Weight: 1730kg
Performance Points: 542PP
Recommended First Modification: Aero Parts
Rating: 85%

1st Place: 2010 Aston Martin V12 Vantage
Drivetrain: FR
Engine: 6.0L V12
Power: 498hp
Weight: 1680kg
Performance Points: 518PP
Recommended First Modification: Exhaust/Air Intake
Rating: 86%

Thanks for reading folks, and I'll catch you next time! :cheers:

Jar31Lar · Jan 28, 2012

Falcon787B
Car Test 1, 28/01/2012:

Rating: 86%[/SIZE]

(OFFTOPICOoh! 86! My football number!)

I like all of this data, I really do. But, maybe I haven't been nice enough to Laguna Seca.

StrikeEagle737 · Jan 29, 2012

I disagree with the part about the Aventador's handling. I found it to feel very much how Hammond described it in the Top Gear episode. If you drive it right then it definitely becomes a RWD missile. I find myself driving it a whole lot because it has such a great feel to it.

Falcon787B · Jan 29, 2012

StrikeEagle737
I disagree with the part about the Aventador's handling. I found it to feel very much how Hammond described it in the Top Gear episode. If you drive it right then it definitely becomes a RWD missile. I find myself driving it a whole lot because it has such a great feel to it.

See, this is why I'm so frustrated with the Aventador. I just cannot unlock this potential. I've got people like you and Hammond saying it drives really nicely and handles great, and I'm not disputing your opinion at all - I mean why would I dispute the opinion of a guy who drives supercars for a living on the most popular car TV show in the world? And yet when I drive the Aventador I just cannot get it going. It understeers like a pig :confused:

How do you drive it? What is the correct way to drive the thing? I'm curious to know, as I don't doubt that the Aventador isn't a great car - I'm just banging my head against the wall trying to unlock that potential :banghead:

haha!

leepangfu · Jan 29, 2012

Falcon787B
See, this is why I'm so frustrated with the Aventador. I just cannot unlock this potential. I've got people like you and Hammond saying it drives really nicely and handles great, and I'm not disputing your opinion at all - I mean why would I dispute the opinion of a guy who drives supercars for a living on the most popular car TV show in the world? And yet when I drive the Aventador I just cannot get it going. It understeers like a pig

How do you drive it? What is the correct way to drive the thing? I'm curious to know, as I don't doubt that the Aventador isn't a great car - I'm just banging my head against the wall trying to unlock that potential haha!

Like you said in your review you need to adjust your braking points. The first time I drove it I thought the handling was bad too. But you have to understand that this is not a normal supercar anymore. 700hp really is a lot. If you brake a bit earlier than you would with normal supercars you should have no problems steering in and accelerating out of corners.

Falcon787B · Jan 29, 2012

leepangfu
Like you said in your review you need to adjust your braking points. The first time I drove it I thought the handling was bad too. But you have to understand that this is not a normal supercar anymore. 700hp really is a lot. If you brake a bit earlier than you would with normal supercars you should have no problems steering in and accelerating out of corners.

Mmmm, I guess you're right. I'm used to handling a lot of horsepower, but it's usually in a racecar with high downforce and slick tyres. I'll give it another run later on, as I'm determined to find this potential that people all talk about

Falcon787B · Feb 2, 2012

Quick update folks, some things have been tweaked in the first post. The 0-60mph, quarter-mile and top speed leaderboards have been done away with, on the basis that there are likely already very detailed databases with this information in readily accesable, and it declutters the first post somewhat.

Also, the laptimes leaderboard has been split into two seperate leaderboards - one for road cars, and one for race cars. The road cars will be run at the Eiger Nordwand Short Track, and the race cars tested at the Top Gear Test Track

Next review will be coming soon, and will NOT be of the Pagani Zonda R - but it will be of a rather cracking car

stay tuned!

leepangfu · Feb 2, 2012

Are you sure about TGTT as a testtrack for race cars? I've tested the XJR-9 on it and I felt like it wasn't really a place for the higher end race cars.

Jar31Lar · Feb 2, 2012

High Speed Ring is good...

lilcat89 · Feb 2, 2012

Falcon787B
Quick update folks, some things have been tweaked in the first post. The 0-60mph, quarter-mile and top speed leaderboards have been done away with, on the basis that there are likely already very detailed databases with this information in readily accesable, and it declutters the first post somewhat.

Also, the laptimes leaderboard has been split into two seperate leaderboards - one for road cars, and one for race cars. The road cars will be run at the Eiger Nordwand Short Track, and the race cars tested at the Top Gear Test Track

Next review will be coming soon, and will NOT be of the Pagani Zonda R - but it will be of a rather cracking car stay tuned!

I wonder when you will test your R8 LMS that you used in your DCC reports. Also, if your interested in reviewing tuned road cars, you can test a couple of mine that I am pleased with.

MOTORTRENDmitch · Feb 2, 2012

Loved the review 👍 Absolutely loved it...

I however found the Aventador handles amazingly, goes around turns with massive grip, but will get squirrely when you ask for it..

I couldn't help but laugh at the Windows 7 and error screen mentions you made about the GTR :lol:

amazing review mate

Falcon787B · Mar 20, 2012

lilcat89
I wonder when you will test your R8 LMS that you used in your DCC reports. Also, if your interested in reviewing tuned road cars, you can test a couple of mine that I am pleased with.

I will test the R8, I love that car so it will be getting a good review

And tuned road cars I'm not sure of - I've got plenty of stock road/race cars to test out for now, but at some stage I might give one of the GTPlanet specials a go - there are guys around here casually bending physics with their tuner cars, quite extraordinary :scared:

MOTORTRENDmitch
Loved the review 👍 Absolutely loved it...

I however found the Aventador handles amazingly, goes around turns with massive grip, but will get squirrely when you ask for it..

I couldn't help but laugh at the Windows 7 and error screen mentions you made about the GTR

amazing review mate

ANOTHER ONE!! :banghead:

I just can't work out the Aventador! Literally everyone who has drive it, including yourself, Mr Hammond et al, say its a brilliant car that handles amazingly. Have I been sent a dud version or something? I just can't get it to handle at all no matter how I drive it - so frustrating! :grumpy:

I will give it a re-test at some stage and see if I can crack it. I am determined to, haha!

Thanks for the nice complements as well

Next review going live very soon with any luck...stay tuned.

Falcon787B · Mar 20, 2012

Car Test 2: 20/3/12

2008 Lexus IS-F Racing Concept

The Gran Turismo series likes to pride itself on the multitude of racing series it features. In GT5 they went overboard, splashing out on NASCAR, cramming in plenty of cars as well as tracks and a whole challenge section devoted to it, complete with a virtual Jeff Gordon animated like a Gerry Anderson puppet suffering a stroke. And yet one type of racing car has always been rather under-represented. The touring car.

Barring GT2's extensive race modifcations that enabled you to recreate an entire decade of the BTCC, or perhaps the token DTM events in recent installments, touring cars have been rather neglected. Maybe it was because there are no Skylines involved, and PD couldnt be bothered to model something that didn't have 'GTR' on it. So we've had a motley crew of DTM cars hanging around, as well as just one Ford Falcon from Australia. For a type of motor racing that has produced so much thrilling racing down the years, this is almost inexcusable. But we DO have every variation of the Nissan Skyline since the dawn of time, as well as some fake Porsches and and a Volkswagen military vehicle with about 40hp to tootle around in, so that's alright then I guess.

This probably explains why I was completely stumped when I discovered this in the Lexus dealership. Next to the IS350 JGTC car, there was an ISF race car. All in black, with monstrous flaired wheelarches, a sinister front air dam and a spoiler so massive that Max Power readers would think it a bit too vulgar even for their Peugeot 106, this genuinely caught me by surprise. What helped my intrigue was that PD had done it's standard thing of not bothering to put the actual stats for the car up. No horsepower figures, no nothing. I had a bit of spare cash and was looking for a car anyway, so I snapped it up and stored it away in the back of the garage, promising that I'd get round to driving it at some stage out of curiosity if nothing else. That stage did come soon afterwards, where I was testing cars, and I decided to give it a spin at Monza. This'll be easy enough, then. As soon as I pressed the accelerator, however, something truly astonishing happened.

The car snarled and growled at me. I jolted, bolt upright. Shaken and suddenly alive. Blipping the throttle again, the same response - an awesome bellow of noise. I slam it to the floor, and the car launches forward, belting up through the gears, screaming and roaring. Flames spit from the side-exit pipes. I'm clinging onto the steering wheel in a mix of terror and raw adreneline. What in God's name is this monster that I've unleashed?!

It becomes obvious why PD witheld the stats from us - not only are Lexus reluctant to reveal any details, but we truly wouldnt have believed them. From what I'd assume would be a heavily tuned variant of the 5.0L V8 engine found in the standard IS-F, it packs, right out of the box after a quick oil change, 530hp. From a standing start, this tarted-up estate-agent-mobile will go from 0 to 60 in 3.3s, 0 to 100 in 7s, and with stock gearing it will top 180mph. This is truly awesome power and acceleration, in a four-door saloon car weighing 1350kg. It's blistering, and with that awesome V8 soundtrack bellowing in your ears the whole way, it electrifies your senses and dumps bucketloads of adreneline all over any coherent thoughts in your brain.

And it only gets better when you throw it at a corner. You'd expect it to attack a corner like a drunk bloke attacks someone outside the pub - with inelegant, inaccurate swings, a total collapse of hand-eye coordination and maybe some vomit. But no. Jump on the brakes, get the nose down hard, then turn in, and this car will devour apexes all day long. Feather the throttle on corner exit and it will respond by leaping off the corner and storming up the next straight in a cloud of ear-bleeding noise. Give that right pedal a prod mid-corner, and out comes the rear end, smoking and sliding and shouting. You can't help but burst out laughing as the tail hangs out effortlessly, mainly out of the nonsensical sense of theatre about everything. It's just brilliant, and what makes it so superb is the knowledge that, when you want to turn it into a track weapon to take on all-comers, it can do that too. Easily.

Having said that, I certainly wouldn't call this an easy car to drive. Not at all. If you've tired of wall-riding the Clubman Cup in your mate's traded X2011 and want to learn the art of actually taking corners, the IS-F is about the worst learner car going. Brake too late into a corner and it will dump you right off into the gravel as punishment for your hubris, and stamp on the throttle mid corner and you'd better have sharp reflexes to avoid spinning off and making an armco supplier's day. However, unlike many lunatic cars, it isn't completely undrivable, and it can be tamed. It's a vicious attack dog, but if you pat it on the head and give it it's favourite bone, it will sit down and obey your commands. Plus that element of danger and struggle for control only adds to the epic sensory overload of driving this car at ten-tenths; because when you nail a corner at high speed, and you realise you've tamed the beast, it sends shivers down your spine. It dawns on you that you're no longer wrestling with the power and the torque - its on your side, and entirely in your hands. And that's a truly electrifying feeling.

On that point, I decided to take it racing, and seeing as it looks like a DTM racer, the DTM series was the obvious candidate. I had an absolute blast in all three races, and it was more than a match for the assembled Audis, BMWs, Mercs, Opels and Alfas. I swept to victory at Cape Ring, chased down the CLK DTM and held off the M3 GTR in a thrilling battle at Nurburgring GP/D (where the photos were taken), and came back from being barged off into the grass and spinning down to 12th place to pass the Audi TT-R for victory on the penultimate corner at the full Nordschleife circuit. And let's consider for a second the availability of my rivals' cars - nearly all of them aren't available from the dealerships. In fact, the M3 GTR has only just turned up now in the Online Car Dealership, for a cool 1,000,000 credits. The big Lexus is ready to buy whenever you want for a quarter of a million credits less than that. It can also take on the more expensive JGTC cars, dispatching of all except the fastest NSXs effortlessly in the Super GT races and having enough left over to reign in and defeat those top-end NSXs. It's just a shame that the one achilles heel of the car, it's atrocious tyre wear, cripples it for use in the Suzuka 1000km, as a brilliant battle could be had with it's Japanese rivals for the whole distance of that race.

You may never have heard of this car before, and I don't blame you if you haven't. But now I've told you about it, you owe it to yourself to set aside a spare three-quarter-million quid and get it. You need to experience this thrilling, high-octane, four-wheeled rock 'n' roller at least once. It only took one brush with this beast of a machine for me to be hooked, and now it takes pride of place as one of my favourite cars ever in Gran Turismo history.

2008 Lexus IS-F Racing Concept
Drivetrain: FR
Engine: 5.0L V8 (unconfirmed)
Power: 530hp
Weight: 1350kg
Performance Points: 580PP
Recommended First Modification: Various compound Racing Tyres.

Rating: 93%

Thetruth28 · Mar 20, 2012

excellent review.

Falcon787B · Mar 21, 2012

Thetruth28
excellent review.

Thanks

I need to be more productive with the reviews, and I'll get going on the next one soon. Didn't mean to deviate from the planned list, but I do love my Lexus

As you probably got the jist with in the review, haha! Pagani Zonda R review coming soon with any luck.

Thetruth28 · Mar 21, 2012

Zonda R, Nice. I agree with the Lexus though, just purchased and drove one recently, great car and fun to master considering it bites when you get aggressive