Top Gear on 60 Minutes this Sunday
POSTED BY: pizmobeach
UPDATED: Thursday, November 4, 2010 23:11
VIEWED: 8680
PAGE 5 of 5
Know what *I* think is hilarious ?
When one of them little rice burners is strutting their over-badged, flashy little rocket, sees me smirk at them and blip the throttle, and thinking they have a sucker in the bag, tries to make something of it.
*bares the fangs*
Cause sure, it's a 1999 Alero, the epitome of dull, dreary, uninspiring... and in most cases, underpowered.
But it's a fools gambit, it is, cause under that hood likes a 3.4Litre LA1 3400E, a third-generation 60-degree V6 which throws out about 170hp and 210Lb-Ft of torque, which even though it *is* an automatic, it's a GM 4t45E which has a damn good power range and backed up by a traction control unit which in combination with its tendancy to drop the nose when you stomp it, results in a 0-60 in just under eight, and a 1/4mile of sixteen flat.
Which is a right NASTY surprise coming from a car as old and raggedy lookin as mine, especially when it didn't look that damn impressive to begin with.
Doubly so since in the right hands, heh heh, that slight edge becomes a more like a chainsaw.
Worse, if they decide to take to the corners, then they're REALLY screwed, cause while mediocre in almost every other respect, the one hard edge that car has is its spectacular handling, even with the primitive suspension it has, the wide stance, chunky rubber, and ability to dip the nose and dig in with the merest tap of the brakes, allows even a car that heavy to pile it on through the corners since all the weight is up in the nose, and you can kick the back end out with virtual impunity and just power the damn thing over... in fact, it's one of the few cars which allows me to dig deep into my bag o tricks and pull off both the Snaphand (aka Scandanavian Flick Turn) and my "signature move", the Opposite Lock.
Funny thing, Richard Hammond tried to snaphand a Suzuki Super Carry (small van) on Top Gear once and put it right over on its side, heh.
Anyhows, most of the local riceburner crowd kinda avoids that car, cause it's really embarrassing to be shown up by a creaking, pushrod-powered fossil piloted by a crabby old hillbilly, innit ?
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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Quote:
in fact, it's one of the few cars which allows me to dig deep into my bag o tricks and pull off both the Snaphand (aka Scandanavian Flick Turn) and my "signature move", the Opposite Lock.
I love doing that. I took my beater CRX out yesterday just to tool around a bit, and ended up sliding around a few corners with the ass hanging out, dialing in opposite lock, front tires spinning, rears sliding, all four tires trying to gain traction, in a perfect little four-wheel drift.
And all my friends tell me you can't drift a front-drive car...
Reminded me of why I love those little cars - and why I need to sell 'em off before I get too many more tickets! :)
By the way, the G-Tech meter says the 0-60 is down to 7.1 seconds and the quarter-mile down to 15.4 - not too shabby for a mid-line "DX" model, when the top-line Si models (when new) registered 8.0-8.5 seconds (depending on who tested them and when) to 60mph, and 16.0-16.2 for the quarter.
Not too shabby for a 20-year-old riceburner...
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It's the last 2.5 minutes makes this one great.
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I like Clarkson's reactions in this one, as he rides along with a self-driving BMW while it takes a flat-out lap of their track.
Speaking only for myself, I would have been doing a whole lot more screaming...
The modern definition of "socialist" is anyone who's winning an argument against a tea-bagger.
AURaptor's Greatest Hits:
Friday, September 24, 2010
I hate Obama's America. You're damn right about that.
Friday, May 28, 2010 - 18:26 To President Obama:
Mr. President, you're a god damn, mother fucking liar.
Fuck you, you cock sucking community activist piece of shit.
... go fuck yourself, Mr. President.
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One thing I picked up from TopGear that was new and really stood out for me was hearing about the Nurburgring:
I feel a Close Encounters, Devil's Tower need to go there.
Fwiw - after looking around I found Need for Speed: Shift for xbox, from 2009 (so it's pretty cheap now) that has almost all the cars from TopGear and, especially, the Nurburgring (that's the game the guy references toward the end of one of the clips) and it's worth every penny ($29). There's even a race on the full Nurburgring (10 minutes) between 6 Bugatti Veyrons... 240+ mph on that track even in a GAME is crazy.
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Gran Turismo 4 for the PS2 has the full Nürburgring Nordschleife (the North course, or North Loop, as the old track is called). There's even a 24-hour endurance race you can run on it. Really. Twenty. Four. Hours. In real time. You can run the 24 Hours of Lemans if you'd like, too. Crazy.
There are sections of the 'Ring where I'd feel I was doing pretty well, and then I'd forget one of the 170-odd turns, and be off in the weeds, or spinning down the track.
As for realism, the course in PS2 is said to be accurate within a couple inches. You get wonderful features like the Karussel (Carousel) turn and the Flugplatz ("the flying place"). When you hit Karussel, you'll swear you can FEEL the suspension compress, the traction increase in the banked curve, and the car clawing for traction as it slingshots out of the curve.
Did you see the video of the woman tour guide who drives her van on the 'Ring? (It may be one of the ones you posted, as I think TopGear did a segment on her, but she's all over the 'net, too) It's bonkers. She's passing guys on sportbikes with her vanload of passengers, breezing by Porsches, Ferraris...
The modern definition of "socialist" is anyone who's winning an argument against a tea-bagger.
AURaptor's Greatest Hits:
Friday, September 24, 2010
I hate Obama's America. You're damn right about that.
Friday, May 28, 2010 - 18:26 To President Obama:
Mr. President, you're a god damn, mother fucking liar.
Fuck you, you cock sucking community activist piece of shit.
... go fuck yourself, Mr. President.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Gran Turismo 4 for the PS2 has the full Nürburgring Nordschleife (the North course, or North Loop, as the old track is called). There's even a 24-hour endurance race you can run on it. Really. Twenty. Four. Hours. In real time. You can run the 24 Hours of Lemans if you'd like, too. Crazy.
There are sections of the 'Ring where I'd feel I was doing pretty well, and then I'd forget one of the 170-odd turns, and be off in the weeds, or spinning down the track.
As for realism, the course in PS2 is said to be accurate within a couple inches. You get wonderful features like the Karussel (Carousel) turn and the Flugplatz ("the flying place"). When you hit Karussel, you'll swear you can FEEL the suspension compress, the traction increase in the banked curve, and the car clawing for traction as it slingshots out of the curve.
Did you see the video of the woman tour guide who drives her van on the 'Ring? (It may be one of the ones you posted, as I think TopGear did a segment on her, but she's all over the 'net, too) It's bonkers. She's passing guys on sportbikes with her vanload of passengers, breezing by Porsches, Ferraris...
Gran Turismo 4 sounds like Need for Speed: Shift - same track, same features, except the 24 hours part - that actually sounds so nutty I would like to try it.
Yeah, Sabine Schmidt - she's in all 3 clips and the last one is the one where she's passing motorcycles and porsches in a van. She has this kind of cartoonie/Viking warrior woman expression that is priceless, "Get out of the Way!"
Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com
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Well, problem with GT4 is that it's freakin boring.
I like racing games, but I am kinda funny about em, and I really don't like "entertainment" that makes me do a whole lot of crap I DON'T want to do, in order to get to the stuff I DO want to do!
(DO YOU HEAR ME, MMO MAKERS ?!!)
And GT3, and GT4, really chopped out most of what made the franchise palatable to me - sorry, pretty graphics do not a game make, and if there is no sensation of speed and power in most races, if your racing game is BORING, well...
Not to mention frustrating, challenging is one thing - but so MANY games put you in a position where you are always, ALWAYS stuck with inferior equipment/gear/skills, sometimes vastly so, and you know what the result of that is ?
Your game winding up on the $4.99 clearance rack at gamestop, rather than the beloved top shelf of a gamers collection!
Mind you, I did buy GT4 (and can you GUESS from where, hmm ?) and how the HELL could they make the baddest road course in history... BORING ?!
Although, I did have some fun with it in one case - the retro challenge on it, I put my B-spec driver in my 1970 Hemi Cuda and left em to it, sure you need to change the tires out every lap, but it's hilarious to watch an AI set up for slow, stately, traction controlled, brake balanced, hold-your-little-hand "sports" cars try to cope with the savage beast that is an old school american muscle car.
One of the things that also annoyed me is restricting races to only certain cars and making the classes so tiny and focused that it sucks all the fun out of it - especially when they throw in the catch 22 of not having any realistic chance against the one car IN that class you cannot obtain, because you have to beat that race to unlock it!
stupid. stupid. stupid.
As Top Gear shows, half the fun of it sometimes is tackling a race in a car wholly inappropriate TO it - if I wanna race a hopped up Fiat500R or Subaru360 against say.. a bunch of modern <100hp cars, I gotta go all the way back to GT2, which was, and still is, freakin awesome - cause it also has the flavor of scavenging something from the used lot, and hopping it up insanely, with full performance customisation, and putting it on the track, a feat that GT3 and GT4 have chopped out in favor of... I dunno, but whatever it is doesn't appeal to me.
While trying to hold a fully upgraded Nissan March Super Turbo on the track isn't, yanno... the most EFFICIENT way to race, damn me if it isn't a holy hell of a lotta fun - as was bagging up one of the endurance races in a 1971 Skyline GT-R KPGC10, or racing the unholy wonder (one of my favs) the 1982 Toyota Starlet, heh heh.
So few racing games cater to the "Fun" factor, which might appease the hardcore, but doesn't do a lot for the rest of us.
Mind you, I have most of em, so I'll toss out a couple from the shelf here...
XBOX
Test Drive: Eve of Destruction.
kind of niche game this, has a very (accurate!) redneckish flavor to it, if you want a taste of smash up, demo derby kookieness, this is your go-to game.
Juiced
has serious staying power, heavy on the fun factor, but the "respect" system is bloody annoying.
Need for Speed: Underground 2
pinnacle of the series, excellent immersion and fun factor - downside is small car list and ridiculous rubberband AI.
PS2
GT1/GT2
classic, GT2 in particular is a tuners delight, and allows for some wacky fun other racing games don't.
Xbox360
Split Second(?)
jury is still out on this one, but it's been neat so far - just that I had to get the RROD repaired and haven't gotten to fully explore it.
I think what really kills a racing game is, again, when you find yourself having to do crap you DON'T want to do, in order to do the stuff you DO want to do - even NFSU2 fails a bit at this, cause if I wanna race circuits, WHY should I have to Drift ?
(worse when they require this kinda thing to advance, cause you get to lookin at all that crap you DIDN'T want to do and skipped, and realize you'll have to spend an hour and more NOT HAVING FU
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I liked that I was still able to grab at least a 2nd-gen ('88-'91) CRX in GT4, and tune the hell out of it - but alas, not as much as you could in GT2 - and go out and beat the hell out of much snazzier cars with it.
I also liked that an awful lot of the tuning of the chassis, brakes, tires, and suspension was very realistic in the Gran Turismo series. I used to mess with it a bit in working on car set-up for the old first-gen CRX that I raced. Go in and play with settings a bit on the Playstation, and then go try similar setups in real life. It was really good at teaching me set-up, and resulted in a handful of class championships for me, against cars that people had ten times more money sunk into. :) It also led to spending some time wrenching on other peoples' CRXs and setting them up for racing, based on what they'd seen my car accomplish.
The modern definition of "socialist" is anyone who's winning an argument against a tea-bagger.
AURaptor's Greatest Hits:
Friday, September 24, 2010
I hate Obama's America. You're damn right about that.
Friday, May 28, 2010 - 18:26 To President Obama:
Mr. President, you're a god damn, mother fucking liar.
Fuck you, you cock sucking community activist piece of shit.
... go fuck yourself, Mr. President.
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