There really isn't an importance to have both Z06 C5s in the game.
I don't agree with that, nor do I think it is even in the same time zone as being a duplicate. How slippery do you want your slopes to be? Do I not include the AP1 S2000, just because it is fairly close to the AP2 S2000 (especially in the context of a driving game, since most of the improvements were focused on increasing liveability rather than the car being any faster)? What about the NSX Type R? That's not too terribly different from any other NSX on paper. They may have half-assed it for everything but the Evo GT-A, but what about cars where they modelled an automatic version and a manual version? Do those get the boot even when there should be drastic differences between the two? What about the M3 CSL vs the regular M3? I could go on.
If there are appreciable real life differences (rather than ones PD fabricated to justify the inclusion of a duplicate, like the Miatas), and those differences are actually modeled (like... probably half the duplicates failed to do), then a car can absolutely be just as worthy of a conclusion as if it was a completely different car.
Yes there is a power increase, but there is no point in having both when the more powerful should be the mainstay.
Why? Even Forza 4 didn't do that with its car list. Yeah, it's ridiculous when PD takes the time to model a Premium car, and instead of (say) the hot rod Fiat 500 Abarth we get... the poverty spec 70 horsepower 1.2L version and
only that. It's similarly ridiculous when PD model two different Suzuki Swift models whose only difference is the mirrors. But there is plenty of space between the two that they don't even begin to overlap, and if those differences would be relatively simple to model (like the differences between the two Premium Jaaaaaaaaaaag XK models) there wouldn't be much of a conflict of interest to having 3 or 4 (or probably even more) legitimate fully Premium variations or one car at the expense of one maybe wholly unique Premium car. I'd certainly see no harm in having the original Golf GTi, with its 110 horsepower and 4 speed because of its historical significance; then the later more powerful 1.8L 5 speed car as well; then the
really later South African Golf Citi 1.8iR with its modern interior and slightly different styling as the final one of the "series."
One of the major issues with the current car list that makes so many of the Standard cars expendable even when not talking about true duplicates is the incredibly lazy way so much of it was put together. That includes duplicates. That includes odd omissions at the expense of cars considerably more significant. That includes cars that did have big significance in trim levels, but those trim levels are
not the ones represented in the game (like the Eagle Talon ESi instead of the TSi, or the failed Mitsubishi Starion Group B car instead of the road car that was one of the major mainstays of Japanese sports cars of the 1980s). That includes the cars that are horrifically misrepresented, like many of the real race cars are. That really even includes all of those fictional race cars and ultimately irrelevant concept cars from 2+ decades ago.
If the effort was actually put into the car encyclopedia aspect the series seems to enjoy flirting with, you could easily get rid of all of the straight duplicate models and replace them with legitimate model variations and the list would be better off for it. There would still be the ones that are such duds that their inclusion even when they were new was glaring (like the ten year old Opel Vectra, for example) that could be dropped without too much protest, but I'd much rather see 40 Skylines and 2/3rds of them be the more pedestrian models like GTS-Ts or GTS25s or what have you than 40 Skylines and every single one is a GT-R; and the game would be better off for it instead of just chopping out all of the Skylines except the best performing ones because the cars would still all be different. With the first two games, PD seemed to understand that, and while they didn't do the best job replicating for the most part I still highly enjoy the game for allowing me to sample (as an example) 4 different versions of the Z30 Toyota Soarer. If PD are so dead set on chasing raw numbers,
that's the reason that they should be doing so; rather than having numbers for numbers' sake like they have since GTPSP.
The issue of many of those 1990s economy cars being increasingly unimportant in modern times is always going to be there so long as those cars are included (mainly when their modern equivalents fail to make an appearance), but there's no reason that PD couldn't at least attempt to head it off.
