Beater or Sleeper? GT6 Car of the Week Thread

Well, the panda was never meant to be beautiful, or fast.
Just a very cheap, robust and reliable car. Those are qualities aswell.
Pretty sure its one of the best selling cars he designed, if not the best selling. To the FIAT's sold, you have to add the spanish variant SEAT Panda (which were at the time just rebadged FIAT's made in spain)

The russian T-34 was the best tank in WWII. Why? Because it was cheap to build, reliable, robust, and did the job.
They beat the much more complex, powerful and heavy german tanks (particularly, the Tiger), because those were far more expensive and unreliable, and expensive to maintain and run.
Due to this the russians managed to produce the T-34 in very large numbers, and the germans couldn't do the same.
 
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Design is not about appearance alone. Form follows function, folks.

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Don't be getting yourself addicted to Gran Turismo, now; you won't be spending any time on here. Or doing anything else either.

Took the stock Piazza through Sunday Cup, Amateur Cup, Novice Championships, all wins, then onwards, and onwards.

I would have liked this car to be the '88, but will have to make do with the '81.
A firm suspension, longer tranny, 2nd Stage Turbo, and better tyres make her a bombshell passenger ride that can play chase pretty good.

Finally at City Trials against 550PP cars. Running 400PP now with SHs.
The City Trials has one of the drivers that take part in the Beginners Seasonals - B. Vitale who drives a green NSX - he drives a white one in this race; maybe every colour has a different tune, though the driver skills of the Rabbit are unique.

He's a vicious little rabbit and spun me out a few yards from the finish line; I came in first and backwards.

Next stop - backwards and upside down in flames - here's looking at you GT7. :)

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He crowds me all the way to the finish line, then spins me out.

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I straightened out pretty quick too - hey, after all Motorsports is a spectator sport, no?

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Hoping to get off early tonight so I can join the other Car Of The Week petrol-heads.

I have to strip off the turbo, tranny and suspension, though.
Bye-bye 'Lotus' handling and peppy acceleration :lol:
 
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Sometimes I just question how people were buying cars like this for 'first cars' in GT, instead of Miata's or RX7's :odd:

I get the Mirage Cyborg, that one was a surprise... :lol:

But the rest just leaves me scratching my head, nothing personal, but just... WAT? :boggled:

Anywho, I've driven the Isuzu, decided to take the 80's car to an 80's track, Monza to be specific, and it left me somewhat surprised.

Not surprised like the Cyborg, where it was just hidden-performance everywhere, more of surprised how 'springy' it felt to drive. Body roll is clearly pronounced, "front, back, and side-to-side" (bonus points for whoever gets the reference), but it also feels 'floaty' over bumps, compression & re-bound noticeable (to me), that or I'm too used to the LM55 LMP. :D

However the engine does leave much to be desired, but then again it isn't a race-bred engine, or anything near one, to begin with. I did like how it felt nimble on its feet, probably due to a lower curb-weight in the name of design and efficiency. (as well as cost-saving measures, I'm sure)
But trying to use race-car braking & turn-in points in an old 80's :censored:box on economy summer tires, does not look pretty, trust me - there is a bunch of tire-squeal noise, then big clouds of dust, followed sometimes an audible 'thud' accompanied with some yelling and cursing, though the driver always seems to laugh it off after words, before reeling those 'points' way back that the timid little Italian-designed ... whateveryouwannacallit, can actually complete a lap next attempt, a slow lap at that, like slower than the Mazda Atenza felt :rolleyes:

Which ultimately brings me to my conclusion, is it a sleeper ? - no, not one bit, it is definitely a beater, it'll move you around, and like an old Jeep or other 'explorer' it can be fun if you get it to bounce around and roll onto its side-mirrors, but it lacks the grip of modern tires & suspension, and doesn't have anywhere near enough power to make it's light-weight properties truly shine-through for more than a fleeting moment.

And yes, this is the first time I've directly given a sleeper-or-beater verdict without putting my own spin on it. 👍
 
I would give this car a sleeper verdict.

I thought the handling was good, it had nice balance, rotated well, you could make it rotate more or less any time you needed, as well as being predictable and very controllable. Only downsides for me is it is a bit of an ugly duckling and the wheezy engine was borderline pathetic. To be honest I thought the handling was remarkable considering it had a 58:42 weight distribution, I was expecting understeer galore.

In a low pp tuned room though, with a little engine tuning to add some torque, stiffer springs and LSD to get rid of the one wheel peel out of hairpins, I think this would be a great sleeper.
 
So after a train wreck of connection issues, we got some racing done (albeit still with some issues :rolleyes:) and really got to grips with the Piazza and what it can do.

Quite a few of us thought that the gear ratios were a bit too long, the engine felt gutless and we noticed it had an open differential so one tyre fires were possible.

However, the chassis was surprisingly good, it behaved and it was easy to drive fast.

I won't call it a full blown sleeper, but it's a sleeper with some serious potential, after I left I built up the motor so it's making about 350hp and despite some ballest weighs 1060kg, gearings been sorted and the suspension and driveline have been addressed. ;)

So standard car verdict? A sleeper. 👍

And speaking of piazza.... :D
 
I too would give the car a Sleeper status.

Personally I liked how it drove, as it was predictable once you ran with it a few times, and was a joy to toss around with minimal braking required on the majority of tracks I drove it on.

It's not the car you want to be caught dead in for the looks department, but just like the plain girls, it's a fun ride as long as you don't get caught with her by your friends. :lol: With added parts, she is keepable, and the looks just add to the unexpected aspects within.

Angry about the server issues, as I really wanted to race with it to see how I stacked up against the faster COTW regulars. But with the races I did get in beforehand with MC, who is no slouch at all btw, we had some fun super close results, which is exactly why I gave this ugly duckling a chance. This will get second and third chances as well... I found it to be that much fun!

Cheers
 
Sleeper. But only in terms of what it will do after even a light tune-up.

I used the EXA in GT4 to good effect in some races, but not on GT5 or GT6.
I never did have the opportunity to test out the Piazza (it must be obvious that the game provides a multitude of cars to use in several different ways - and there is only so much time some of us have to spend on the game) but it didn't disappoint me; I underestimated it.

The first thing that impressed me was it's 'swingability', the first thing that let me down was its sluggishness.
As a comfortable passenger vehicle it does its job, while pretending to be a mix of De Lorean and Espirit in looks.

Taking it stock to the Career Mode I worked through the Events till I was brave enough to take it with hard suspension, a custom transmission, tweaked LSD, and a 2nd Stage Turbo (that brought it up to 450PP) to the present 500PP Intermediate Seasonals.

Close races.
Now what would be the definition of a 'perfect' race - this?:

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You can be sure when I take this 'matched' car to this particular event I will always be on the edge of my seat. Time to buy a helmet.

It is unfortunate that Sony lets PD down. Last night was another packed house:

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And it was plagued by glitches of one sort or another, resulting in many Host changes and lagging.
That didn't prevent the top dogs in the pack having very close races when the connections were stable.
 
On the subject of 'swingability', I just took the Piazza for a slide around SSR5 for the drift seasonal and got 13.656 points, only 1.120 behind Lewis in his Supra RZ.

Not bad for 350hp. :D

Even on sports softs it wants to dance, it's definitely a fun car with some tweaks. 👍
 
Oh boy, it's time for...

BAP_Shockz's Car of the Week Experience

This week's car..

the '81 Isuzu Piazza XE!

After the travesty that was the Crossfire, I spent the next 3 weeks preparing for a move to a more, automotive-friendly country. I spent the next 3 weeks getting all my stuff ready and renewing my visa to plan for this big move. So, where could I have gone? Obviously to one of my favourite countries, the Land of the Rising Sun, Japan.

I love this country, I really do. Touching down in Japan, with the nice cold winter wind blowing on the back of my coat, it feels a brilliant time to be alive. I bought a place in Tokyo (and boy, was that difficult), so after a week of settling down and getting used to everything being new, I decided that I now needed a car to get around. International driving license in hand, and with about 2 million yen to spare, I headed for a used car dealership.

There were plenty of mint condition cars, some of them not more than half a decade old. Depreciation must have hit them hard. I saw Mitsubishis, Toyotas, even the odd Mitsuoka or two. They were all rather cheap for what they were, but still out of my reach. I proceeded to continue searching, when I hit the classic car turf. Good looking classic Japanese cars were aplenty here, as I grinned from ear to ear, continuously searching.

Then....I saw it. A car, an old one. It looked rather derpish, yet subtle. I looked at the badging in front. An Isuzu?? This car was from a time where Isuzu made rather wonderful cars, the Bellett GT-R comes to mind. But this isn't a Bellett. It's a Piazza. It's rather unassuming, and from the specs sheet I was given, it wasn't very fast either. But none of that matters, it's something I could afford, and therefore, something I would take home with me.

Driving out of the dealership and into the streets of Tokyo, which were surprisingly empty this time, I took time to spread the little Piazza's legs a bit.
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Oh dear, this engine leaves something to be desired. It's not nearly punchy enough, and it suffers immensely from feeling like it has little to no torque in the lower revs. It doesn't really feel like it has 140 horsepower to give to me. To add to that, the gearing on this thing is just....bad. It's very hard to shift down in turns because you always run the risk of staying on the redline when you shift down. Could be very dangerous for the clutch and engine. The gears also felt way too long, especially the last 2 gears. I can honestly say, driving this thing over two days, I can count the number of times I hit 5th gear on one hand.

The saving grace though is the chassis. Okay, it has quite a bit of body roll, I will admit, but it feels nice to throw into a corner, and come out of it with your tail sticking out a little bit. It's not plagued heavily by understeer like the Crossfire, so it's alright in my book. It's quite fun.
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Now that I've gotten my first car in this country, it's time to do what I enjoy doing the most, take it to some Japanese race tracks and trash the hell out of it. I decided to pay a visit to the short, technical Tsukuba Circuit, an 82 kilometre drive up north, to the Ibaraki Prefecture. The miles were easily chewed up by the Piazza, and it felt nice to sit in.

I got to Tsukuba, and surprisingly it was also empty. Weird. Anyway, I get clearance to drive a few laps around it, and I get to see how this thing handles on a track.

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Oops. I braked too late on the first hairpin and proceeded to lock up the brakes and come so very close to hitting a wall. No matter, it's not badly damaged, so it's time to brush it off and keep driving. The chassis of the car is alright, I like it quite a bit. The tires also grip relatively well, although it's very easy for the brakes to lock up and the tires lose traction for a bit. The downside of not having ABS.
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After throwing it around the track for a couple of hours, I can safely say, it's not the worst car around. Obviously it's not the best either, but it's good fun in corners. However, I wasn't satisfied, and decided to then go to another course, 464 km west, in the Mia Prefecture. This is gonna be a long trip. Halfway through I slept at a hotel, and proceeded on my merry way, the Piazza all happy to oblige.

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Suzuka is a highly technical track, and one of the longest in Japan. While Tsukuba showed me the best of what this little Piazza can do, Suzuka brought out the worst. The engine is gutless, it has absolutely no punch, either at low or high revs. I always find myself aching for more speed out of the turns, and at 2 of the high speed sections of this track, it was painful. I'm guessing a little tuning might be able to fix this, so I'm not too worried. It's still fun to drive, and I grew to be quite fond of it after nearly 600 kilometres of highway driving.
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My verdict? Well it's not a sleeper, by my definition. But, it's also difficult to call it a beater, because it has a lot of potential in it. Unassuming as it may be, it's good fun. Now to get to work fixing the engine and the horrible, horrible gearing.

Overall score: 6/10
 
Alrighty guys. Time for me to review this........ Wedge on wheels.

My initial thoughts on the car were on the styling. As I looked at it on the dealership spinner I was not impressed. The shape of it reminded me of a wedge of cheese. Totally not a good looking car to me. I had two words for it. Boring and uninspiring.

I bought it anyway... much to my detriment.

I took it for a spin at Australias greatest, and only track in game... Mount Panorama, Bathurst.

The acceleration of the car is pathetic. I was expecting performance like a CR-X or the FF Celica from 1981. To my immense disappointment it was not. The engine is weak and the gearing is just too long for the car.

The brakes on it are what you would expect from the era. They are akin to boat anchors. In other words it takes a while to stop.

Top speed of the car down Conrod Straight (bare in mind it is mostly downhill) was semi-impressive 202km/h. It just took forever to get there.

The biggest disappointment to me was the power to weight. 9.01kg/bhp. If it was lighter it would be a better car... FULL STOP! (Even if I did use an exclamation mark :P )

Once you got it slowed down sufficiently the cornering was good. the balance through the corners was the redeeming aspect of this car. I did detect a hint of understeer through some corners.

The FR layout had me thinking of being able to achieve some wheel spin.... Disappointed there... YEP! The rear wheels just gripped up and refused to spin. Must have been from the dismal 17km/fm torque.

To me the car was easy to drive once you sorted out your braking points. Too easy really. To me that took all the fun out of it.

My verdict for this car is Beater.

Best time over 5 laps: 3:03.047

I couldn't be bothered getting any photos of this car. I mean buy a wedge of cheese and stick some wheels to it. There you go, the rough shape of the Piazza.

It's name made me hungry. I'm going to go buy a Pizza.
 
With an engine that sounds like a vacuum and styling that looks like a refrigerator, it's easy to regard the Piazza as an appliance rather than a car. However, as others have alluded to, this car's saving grace is its relatively competent handling. While this is almost certainly the first rear drive car I've come across where the front tires are more likely to start smoking under hard cornering rather than the rears, you can do a lot worse in terms of steering responsiveness and modulation than the Piazza. So it's not a terrible car at all, in fact it's probably worth the sleeper status.

Problem is, I think there are better alternatives out there, including one I bought for COTW comparison purposes nearly a year ago.



Here it is, back again, the '88 Nissan Silvia Q's. First bought to utterly humiliate the hapless Volvo 240 so long ago, it meets a far more game competitor when paired against Isuzu. But even after it takes a hit in horsepower to be in what GT6 considers an "even level" with the Piazza, I came away feeling that the Silvia did everything that the Piazza could do, except with better styling, a better engine note, and a slight PP advantage out of the gate. As surprisingly sleeper-esque as the Piazza managed to be, I'd be hard pressed to choose it over the Silvia.
 
Bunch of savages in this town.

At least the connection looked nice and smooth once it finally(!) let us all play together. I only experienced jumping cars on Redbull Ring because two people who couldn't see each other were trying to occupy the same piece of road. Let me know if you want to use my connection again when things go tits up.
 
@JackRyanWMU interesting comparison between the Piazza and '88 Silvia Q's. I wouldn't have thought of that.

Tested the Silvia to see how it does at Laguna Seca on CH tires against the Piazza.

Nissan
1,809 cc
132 hp / 6,400 rpm
117 ft-lb / 5,200 rpm
1,090 kg
Laguna lap - 1:58.779

Isuzu
1,949 cc
118 hp / 6,000 rpm
123 ft-lb / 5,000 rpm
1,190 kg
Laguna lap - 2:01.890

With a 140 cc disadvantage, the Nissan has 14 more hp, and loses only 6 ft-lbs. That's okay because it weighs 100 kg less than the Isuzu. All this leads to the Nissan being faster by 3 seconds.

I'm about to test the '79 Bluebird and we'll see if that's a closer rival than the '81 Celica.

Edit:

The Celica was 1.9 seconds faster than the Piazza, while the Bluebird is 1.5 seconds slower. And finally, the '67 Skyline is 1.0 seconds slower than the Isuzu. Okay, I'm done lol
 
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Sometimes I just question how people were buying cars like this for 'first cars' in GT, instead of Miata's or RX7's :odd:

Congratulations Kurei!

Tell everyone what's on tap for this week. Ferrari 250 GTO? Ford GT40 Mk I?

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It's the 2004 Hyundai Click Type-R!!!

Interesting story for the car, getting it's own little race series and everything. I imagine everyone will have a great time with it, plus it's cheap !.

Actually, what's been the cheapest COTW ?, this might just take the title @ 10k a pop.

Actually, I think you might be right. But let's consider a few things, shall we?

'04 Hyundai Click Type-R: 10,000 Cr
Set of new Super Softs: 9,000 Cr

So, we basically have a 1,000 Cr car with 9k Cr worth of tyres added on.
 
Ah, my first GT6 car ( I don't count the Fit :P).

Served me well in the early days of GT6 for being cheap and good to drive, despite being new to international gamers it actually got its start on GT4 (not sure which version but it wasn't the EU or US version ).

In a sense, this could be some really close racing as there isn't much power and it has a ton of grip from the Sports Softs, might even be an upset in the making with an equal playing field. :D
 
Type-R...Type-R...let's see...there's the NSX Type-R, that's probably the king of all Type-R's...then there's the Civics and Integras...I believe there's an RX-7 Type R as well...which leads us to this, the Hyundai, that's HYUNDAI not HONDA, Click Type-R. Can it live up to the name? First, let us check out the specifications...

Hyundai Click Type-R '04
1.5L
98 hp / 6,000 rpm
98 ft-lb / 3,000 rpm
950 kg (2,094 lbs)
331 pp

65.3 hp/L
21.4 lbs/hp

It's looking more like a Type-caR than a Type-R at the moment. What a dismal power-to-weight ratio...



We have a 2:02 best lap at Laguna Seca on CH tires. Of the 350 cars I've tested, let's see which ones finished directly before and after.

2:02.303 - 328 - Honda Insight LS '09
2:02.688 - 331 - Hyundai Click Type-R '04
2:02.782 - 328 - Honda Fit W '01

The Type-R got sandwiched by two Hondas which happen not to be Type-R's themselves.

But I suppose testing at Laguna is unfair. You see, I noticed something during my testing. It seems that this Type-R lives up to the name for one particular reason, and that is it handles marvelously. There is absolutely zero understeer. It corners flat as a sheet of paper. I'd say it handles better than a Mazda MX-5.

So let's put it back on its original SS tires and take it to a flatter, twistier track with minimal straights. I'm thinking of Tsukuba...



Best time of 1:11.155 and I gave it all I had but could not break into the 1:10's. If anyone wants to try, be my guest!

On a track with more tight curves than long straights, it's a sleeper, especially after some tuning. Would love if there was a version without all the stickers...
 
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