GT2 Starter Car Reviews: 1991 Nissan Sunny GTI-R

So it took me a few days to get over the mind-crippling depression caused by having to drive the Mazda 323 Sedan, during which that time I learnt a few things. One, that apparently that horrible bucket of snot and boredom has a few sprightly cousins with 4WD and actual charisma, which is a claim I can barely believe and shall be following up in a future review. And two: that one of the strongest starter cars in the game is a Nissan Sunny, which is a claim that I can barely believe full stop. So you're telling me, knowledgeable people of the GTPlanet forums (in particular jeffgoddin, a man who's opinion I value highly) that one of the best hidden gems in this game is essentially a jumped-up hot hatch?

So I nipped over to the used car lots at the Nissan dealership and had a look, and my disbelief wasn't eased at all upon looking at the thing. I mean come on, this is the sort of garbage that you see patrolling Dartford High Street, driven by faux-macho twats in backwards caps and knock-off Nike trainers whilst annoying everyone else with too-loud dubstep and ridiculously aggressive dump valves. It even comes equipped with pointless gills, fins and spoilers that look like Granny being dressed up with bling necklaces and ray-ban sunglasses for a night out at bingo. At least the turgid 323 Sedan made it clear from the off that it was nothing more than a grey-suited accountant with a briefcase and a chronic impotency problem - this chav-mobile seems to be trying too damn hard to find performance credentials.

Except that it does have performance credentials. Plenty of them. How does 227hp sound for starters? And an overall weight of 1220kg? Just to put that into context, that's seven more horsepower than the 1991 Toyota Celica, in a car that weighs 180kg lighter. It also has the same drive system as the awesome Toyota, 4WD, and a very impressive 210lb/ft of torque. The chav in his ill-fitting baseball cap has come packing some serious heat to this particular turf war. Now those outlandish claims made earlier are starting to have more veracity to them. It's easy enough to miss, as well - technically this is the GTI-R model, but for some reason that acronym doesn't show up on the used car lot screen, and the car is listed just as 'Sunny'. Keep an eye out for it next time you're browsing - find it, and it'll brighten up your day no end.

As is often the case with Q cars, i.e. cars that are souped-up versions of rather mundane models, the chassis and handling isn't tailor-made for the extra power, therefore meaning cornering is a rather mixed bag. As is the case with many an unbalanced 4WD system, understeer is easy to achieve, and it takes a firm cuff round the head with the brakes to bring the mischievous Sunny into line - unless you really want to be ploughing tyre tracks through the gravel traps or scraping what's left of the car off the barriers, in which case be my guest. Like most unwieldy understeer-happy cars, a hard prod on the brakes to bring the nose down anchors the car nicely for corner entry (blimey, I almost sound like I know what I'm talking about), and as long as you adhere to this maxim and don't expect miracle roadholding on a par with a Scalextric car on a track layered in superglue, you'll be gleefully hugging the apexes in no time. Oddly enough for a car with such decent power figures, it doesn't exactly storm up to speed. This is perhaps the first car I've driven in a while that feels like it's going slower than it is, and I'm not sure if that's a point in the car's favour or not. As such, then, I wouldn't say this car is particularly fun to just hoon around in - unlike, say, my old Alfa Romeo GTA from GT4, this is not a car you'd take out one day to have a blast and remind yourself of just how fun driving can be. This car is made for a purpose, and it's single-minded ambition does get in the way of the experience somewhat.

But where the true fun of this car emerges is when you realise just how far this mindset can take this car, as in the heat of combat, this car is an oasis of calm and ruthless efficiency that belies it's cutesy-hatch origins. I seriously couldn't have had an easier time in the Sunday Cup race if I'd brought along a GT-One - even the trademark rubberbanding had no effect, and indeed I'm pretty sure the AI cars had actually given up on this tactic altogether by halfway around lap 2, safe in the knowledge it was having less effect than a smelly protester urinating on a monument has on influencing government policy. I then entered it into the 295hp limit Japanese Championship race, not exactly expecting miracles, and was treated to an exercise for hanging on for dear life as the fiercely determined Sunny went for victory once again - and came damn close. After a truly sensational performance where fenders crunched, tyres screeched and my little Nissan refused to give up, I eventually came home a close second, just over a second (most of that gap being made in the final straight) behind the winning Nissan Silvia Spec R Aero, and quite comfortably clear of the trailing field. Not long ago, I was finishing 3rd and feeling ashamed to be driving such crap. Now, I was finishing 2nd and feeling elated.

So, much like the football teams that take abuse from the fans for 'not playing the game the right way', this car won't win your heart with style, flair and oversteer. But as long as you keep winning, who gives a toss? And that's one thing this car is very good at: winning.

Rating: 84/100

GT2 Starter Car Reviews: 1989 Mazda 323 Sedan

You know that horrible feeling of tedious inevitability you get when you just know something is going to be an absolute waste of your life and time? That's how I felt when I first pressed the accelerator in the Mazda 323 Sedan. I was still recovering from a hangover, so it's possible that alcohol was still clouding my judgement, but other than that I'm struggling for reasons why I looked at the humble Mazda and thought 'hmm, I'll review that'. Because let's be honest here, which cretinous bonehead would pick up their controller, start a new game on GT2 and think to buy this punit of snot and tedium as a first car?

Sorry for rather spoiling this review in the first paragraph, but seriously, take one look at this car and tell me it has potential. Really? Does it? It even looks breathtakingly mediocre. One of many plain boxes on wheels built in the late-80s, it looks like the sort of thing a five-year-old would draw when told to draw a car. Whether or not the lead designer at Mazda sketched out this car on 'bring your children to work' day 1989 is unknown, but it would be a convenient excuse otherwise. I mean seriously, even ugly cars have a place in car design history, even as a lesson in how not to build cars. You could show a picture of this car to someone, then ask them to describe how it looks 30 seconds later, and they'd be struggling. These are the sort of cars I despise the most, because they just don't even try. They're blisteringly mediocre without an ounce of personality or uniqueness at all. This is the car equivalent of Will Ferrell's character in Stranger than Fiction - an epic nonentity with no personality beyond being able to recount the amount of brushstrokes he gave his teeth that morning. If it were asked to describe itself, it would list numbers - 109hp, 93lb/ft of torque, 1.5l 4-cylinder, front wheel drive - as monotonously as it would read the shopping list from the corduroy carpet sellers.

So before I've even gotten in the car, I've lowered my expectations to the pathetic level of an obese kid in the 100m sprint on sports day, but even then I was disappointed. I changed my location of proving ground/test track to Laguna Seca, and I couldn't have picked a worse test car for my maiden proving session. It was begging for a break and a skinny latté at the mearest sight of a hill (and as you know at Laguna, there's a few of those), it coughed pathetically through the corners with bucketfuls of understeer, and damn-near had a panic attack upon being confronted with the Corkscrew. Like an introverted nerd confronted with the girl next door with her bra undone, it wobbled and gibbered uncontrollably before emerging on the other side in a cold sweat, a slap round the face and worryingly moist trousers. It didn't so much take the Corkscrew as it did blither straight across it. And when I tried to induce a bit of aggressive driving to proceedings, it merely understeered off into the grass placidly. Some cars throw tantrums and hissy fits when I drive them hard - this car, still in boring character, just shrugs and says 'no, I'd rather not'. Ditto, Mazda 323 - I'd rather not be driving you full stop, as it goes.

I approached the test races with dread - I mean Christ, if the flabby CRX struggled with them, what's the Mazda Accountant-Mobile going to make of them? At least the CRX won, just about. I survived major embarrassment in the Sunday Cup, although the anorexic rats in the engine bay were struggling to keep it ahead of the Kei brigade on the straights. But it was in the Japanese Cup that the final nails were ruthlessly banged into the grey coffin. For at least half a lap, the office worker woke up, undid his top button, loosened his tie and got stuck in, biting surprisingly well into the corners in the middle section of the Midfield Raceway circuit, but then it collapsed in a pile of sweat patches and mid-life crises before the end of lap 1. Already well beaten by a Suzuki Alto Works (you know, that bastion of performance), the final insult came as a Mazda AZ-1 barged past on the inside at the hairpin, and I fought a desperate rearguard to even protect 3rd place and any lingering elements of my honour. That I did was scant consolation.

The only tenuous recommendation I could give it is that it's so cheap, one can buy one and stick a stage 1 Turbo kit on, but even so, a jump from 109hp to 164hp is not enough to cure the massive limitations it has. It's akin to giving the self-imposed loner geek kid at school a mowhawk and shoving him into a frat party - he's still gonna get laughed at for being a virgin and fantasising about Dungeons and Dragons characters. Interplay? No amount of foreplay can get this pile of tedium going.

Rating: 24/100

0-1000m Rankings Table

Exactly the same as the 0-400m test table, except this time, we're dealing with the longer, 0-1000m sprint test. Exactly the same rules apply - may the fastest car win.

The Area G.T. 0-1000m Leaderboard

1. 1995 Venturi Atlantique 400GT (GT2) - 0:22.905/155mph
   
2. 1991 Nissan Skyline R32 GTS Type M (GT2) - 0:27.549 (run made by karelpipa)
3. 1991 Toyota Celica GT-Four (GT2) - 0:28.155/117mph
4. 1993 Honda CR-X Del Sol 1.6ESi (GT2) - 0:31.092/106mph
   

GT2 Starter Car Reviews: 1991 Toyota Celica GT-Four

Talk about contrast. I had just patted myself on the back for finishing off the massacre - sorry, review - of the Honda CR-X Del Sol, sat back, and then saw a post on my 'starter car' thread on GTPlanet where a fella by the name of n1nj4ofshr3d put forward the 1991 Toyota Celica GT-Four for the title of 'best starter car of all time'. Here's his post:

'I used this back when I didn't care about being the same car as the series, (convertible in convertible, etc...) I didn't tune it 'till the races that were 394 or over, and it got to a point that I had only the little guy in my garage. I got a racing modification for the rally races, and it never won a single race. I still think to this day the Celica is the best starter. Winning just about every race in the game says enough for its reputation. It even won the Super Touring Car races, and the GT300 championship.'

A bold claim to make, and especially seeing as it's a car I've never driven before, it's one I simply had to put to the test. So the other potential starter cars I was going to review can wait until I've tested this wannabe rally star to death and seen whether the claim that it can beat the majority of the game on it's own from off the forecourt at the start of the game onwards has merit.

First impressions are very good. Firstly, it's one of the most powerful starter cars you can get - I thought the 197hp Honda Prelude 2.2 VTEC had an impressive power-to-credits ratio, but here you get 221hp right out of the box, and when you marry that to 4WD and rally car pretensions, you can really begin to see that potential for world-beating greatness. This impression only increases more when you take it out on a track, where it drives so crisply and effortlessly that if someone tapped you on the shoulder and told you the car weighed 1400kg, you'd laugh in their face and tell them to stop sniffing so many carbon monoxide fumes.

Seriously, this car is a blast. Acceleration is smooth and powerful, with rolling dips and hills being dealt with effortlessly. Corners are comfortable and devoured without the nimble Toyota even breaking sweat, and only if you give the car excessive amounts of speed on corner entry will you force the dreaded understeer to emerge, upon which the car will cuff you over the head for being a bonehead. Actually, such errors are pretty difficult to do, seeing as you'll more often than not be braking miles before you need to for every corner, largely because you'll feel like you're going much faster than you actually are. On the flip side, this is a car that rewards good drivers by lavishing speed and easy drivability onto them - I can't stress enough how easy it is to ring the maximum speed out of this car, as it's somewhere between effortless and not even particularly taxing.

All of this means that there was no threat of a repeat of the embarrassing near-defeats the Honda CR-X suffered in it's test races. The Sunday Cup run was probably the easiest race I've ever run, and despite a desperate bit of GT2 rubber-banding and the best efforts of the suicidal Yaris, I still coasted home with a good 3-5s gap on the opposition in my back pocket. I exceeded the horsepower limit for the first GT Japanese Championship race, so I decided to give the old Celica a real test and enter the 2nd race (295hp limit), and after much furious late-braking and panel-bashing with the opponents, and despite ceding age, weight and horsepower to the opposition, I managed a highly respectable 3rd place, eventually loosing out to a 1999 Honda S2000 and Mitsubishi 3000GT, respectively.

So the Celica is certainly living up to the tag of 'best starter car in the game' thus far, but here comes the clincher: all of the above testing was on a completely stock chassis. Not only will you have money left over after every race to plough into hop-up parts, but this car is turbocharged, meaning that a simple strapping on of upgraded turbos (up to stage 3 for 45,000) and intercooler means that you can expect a good 100+ extra HP before adding extra engine and exhaust upgrades. Allied to this car's excellent handling straight out of the box, you can quickly see the potential for greatness. Oh, and what did this car get famous for again? Would that be rallying at lunatic speeds through forests in a certain red, white and green Castrol livery? Well, take a look in the Racing Modifications section, and...yeah, exactly.

So from one extreme to the other - from a car that looks sporty but is struggling for fitness and barely looks capable of winning the Fatigued Snail 500, to a car that looks capable of taking on all comers in the Gran Turismo universe - and winning. Oit, Justin Bieber, pack that never say never shit in - this is a true rags to riches story.

Rating: 92/100

Spec Sheet:

Engine Type: L4 DOHC
Displacement: 1998cc
Power: 221hp/5900rpm
Torque: 224.85 lb-ft/5000rpm
Dimensions: 4420mm x 1690mm x 1305mm
Weight: 1400kg
Drivetrain: 4WD

Machine Testing:
0-400m: 0:15.391/89mph
0-1000m: 0:28.155/117mph
Top Speed: 155.23mph

Top Speed Ranking Table

Exactly the same as the Sprint Ranking Table post, except this time, as should have been explained in the title, will be dealing with the very limits of engine power and excess - the Top Speed Test.

Same rules apply as in the 0-400/0-1000m sprints, and also consider the differences between the test track in GT2 versus GT3/4.

The Area G.T. Top Speed Leaderboard

1. 1995 Venturi Atlantique 400GT (GT2) - 195.69mph
   
2. 1991 Toyota Celica GT-Four (GT2) - 155.23mph
   
3. 1993 Honda CR-X Del Sol 1.6ESi (GT2) - 142.21mph
   

GT2 Starter Car Reviews: 1993 Honda CR-X Del-Sol 1.6 ESi

So here begins a series of reviews where I analyse the perennial crux that has befallen every new player of Gran Turismo - which car do I part with my starting cash with to take those first tentative steps onto the Gran Turismo racing ladder? I'll be analysing every single car that costs under 10,000 credits (all in GT2 for now) and summing up their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their potential for greatness.

So we start with the very first car I tried on my very first attempt at GT2, way back in 2000, when I was all of 8 years old - the venerable Honda CR-X. More specifically, this being GT2 and all, the 1993 Honda CR-X Del-Sol 1.6 ESi. Thingy.

Now, my primitive 8-year-old self had an absolute nightmare with this car, in fact, this car fell into the dreaded category of 'being so bad I had to start the game again with a fresh save because I couldn't win a bloody raffle with it'. Maybe it was my naive choice of race, my ham-fisted driving technique (think average current BTCC driver and you have an idea), or something else, but I remember swearing an oath never to touch anything with the CR-X badge on it again.

So here we are, ten years down the line, and I'm staring at the very car that threatened to derail my love of Gran Turismo before it had even began. My chance for ultimate revenge has arrived. This'll be easy - throw some hyperbolic bile at it, declare it a steaming pile of dog puke that drives like a drunken tramp in a trolley and with roughly the same amount of horsepower, and have done with it, moving on to infinitely better cars. But my conscience tells me to give it another chance. Maybe it was my own blithering, youthful ineptitude that fooled me into thinking this car was as awful as it was. A lot has changed in ten years - I've grown up (honestly), gotten better as a driver (again, honestly), and that youthful exuberance has all but disappeared (would you stop laughing at the back). So here we go - the moment of redemption has arrived.

Let's deal in facts first, shall we? It's a front-wheel drive coupe, not too much unlike the Prelude, of which I have very fond memories of sliding around Tahiti Road in the formative years of my GT career. It's relatively light at 1025kg, which makes up for a slightly underwhelming 125hp rating - underwhelming because the previous generation car from 1991 had 30hp more, and was also 65kg lighter. What does 'Del-Sol' stand for, 'had-one-too-many-burgers-and-large-fries'? Whilst it's been sunning itself en del sol, it's put on a few pounds, and found a few love handles. Still, pretty respectable figures, considering some of the wobbling fatties you can part with your starting 10,000 for.

Unfortunately, whilst 125hp sounds perfectly adequate in terms of horsepower, the 101.94 lb/ft of torque it produces wholly isn't. Simply put, when testing this car on the rolling hills of Tahiti Road, I couldn't help but wondering what else puts out this amount of torque. A hungry hamster? Ants returning leaves to their nest? This is one of those cars that doesn't roll and accelerate with gradual ease - more sort of wheezes and coughs along like an asthmatic moth lugging a multitude of flight cases.

It's a shame, as this one huge Achilles heel threatens to overshadow the good parts of this car. It grips the road in much the same way a snail grips a paving slab in your back garden, i.e. solidly and with never a hint of oversteer. In fact, this may be the first car I've driven which is impossible to oversteer. Being front-wheel-drive, it does understeer if you really slam the nose into corners, but give it a healthy dab of brake before turning in, and this is never much of a problem. And given a completely flat road, it launches well as well, and accelerates nicely; not raucously and aggressively like a scalded cat, more a sort of mildly grumpy one that's fed up that it hasn't been fed dinner yet. So, bar the blithering way it gets up any upwardly-inclined surface, this car is ticking every box in the 'not bad' category. But sadly, as soon as you put any other cars on the track alongside this, any recommendations I can give it begin to look very tenuous indeed.

My two test races for this series of reviews are the two races people are most likely to attempt first in their GT career - the first race of the GT Japanese Championship, at Mid-Field Raceway, and the first round of the venerable Sunday Cup, at Tahiti Road. And at both of these tracks, the CR-X del-love-handles flattered to deceive more than your average English politician. The assorted motley crew of Kei cars and compacts that feature in both of these races managed to show up a number of hitherto unknown problems - the gasping, wheezing engine was stretched to choking point off of the corners, and the brakes, whilst perfectly fine when cruising around on your own, are pretty much woeful in combat, with a heroic Toyota Yaris managing to outbrake me into a number of corners on Tahiti Road, and a Suzuki Alto Works threatening to cause a sensational upset at Mid-Field by barging rudely up the inside on the corner just before the first tunnel section, and whilst the hamster in my car's engine bay quickly stocked up on carrots, he nearly made a getaway, and it was only a mix of banzai cornering for the rest of the lap and a desperate last-ditch slipstream on the main stretch that took me to victory by just over 2/100ths of a second. Dear oh dear.

The sad thing is, the chronic lack of power is something that's difficult to remedy no matter how many new bits you clunk on - torque is tricky to modify without major mods to the engine itself which are near impossible in GT2, and if you are to spend any more money on this machine, go straight to the transmission section for new clutch and gearbox parts to help get what power it does have down as effectively as possible. But my best advice possible would be to not bother buying this thing at all - there's no point, not when (as I'll demonstrate in future reviews) there are much better cars that don't make every single hill a torturous exercise in wheezing and gradual deceleration for the same, or even less in some cases, money.

So it turns out my 8-year-old self had it right all along - unless you're prepared to plough money into it and drive like a maniac just to get decent results, this lumpy, unshaven excuse for a coupe is a waste of time and dosh, and will see you limping up the GT2 ladder as opposed to scrambling rapidly up the rungs.

Rating: 37/100

Spec Sheet:

Engine Type: L4 SOHC
Displacement: 1998cc
Power: 125hp/6900rpm
Torque: 101.94ft.lb/5000rpm
Dimensions: 3995mm x 1695mm x 1255mm
Weight: 1037kg
Drivetrain: FF

Machine Testing:
0-400m: 0:16.894s - 80mph
0-1000m: 0:31.092 - 106mph
Top Speed: 142.21mph

0-400m Rankings Table

So here it is, folks. This is a complete and regularly updated table of the 0-400m test. Every time I test a new car, the table will be updated, and we'll find out once and for all just which cars are kings of the 1/4 mile.

Standard rules apply: Car must be in stock, as-bought condition, with the tyres it wore when it rolled out of the showroom/used car lot, with the only change being (GT4 only) allowed to turn off ACS and turn traction control down to 1.

The Area G.T. Sprint Leaderboard

0-400m Sprint

1. 1995 Venturi Atlantique 400GT (GT2) - 0:12.685/117mph
   
2. 1991 Nissan Skyline R32 GTS Type M (GT2) - 0:15.203 (run made by karelpipa)
3. 1991 Toyota Celica GT-Four (GT2) - 0:15.391/89mph
   
4. 1993 Honda CR-X Del Sol 1.6ESi (GT2) - 0:16.894/80mph
5. 1989 Mazda 323 Sedan (GT2) - 0:18.023/77mph