Gran Turismo 5: unboxing the Thrustmaster T500RS
Thanks to Engadget, we get a first look at the hottest wheel and pedal set for GT5 that has ever been offered.
The T500RS retails for $599 USD. Is it worth the extreme cost? Keep an eye on InsideSimRacing for more details as testing continues. And take note of their extensive RSS feeds, by game and h/w.
My SHO never did the Nurburgring :-(
But this one did, and thanks to very creative use of a custom editor for Gran Turismo 4 (courtesy of HunterVF via YouTube) we get to find out what it would be like.
This is a really nice peice of work. If you want to quibble on the details… the V-8 SHO wouldn’t actually sound like this unless you spun it up to 9000 RPM (and hopefully the cams are welded!), and of course the tranny that is envisioned here is about 10,000% better than the terrible production 4-speed auto. So I like it!
Production SHOs are rarely seen on tracks. My ’97 SHO did do Texas World Speedway – just once. My new ’99 Cobra hadn’t been delivered by Ford to my dealer yet (it was the first one in Central Texas, and we believe the entire state – and Ford delayed production for several months while some – but not all – of the bugs were worked out). So our daily driver SHO was all there was to drive (it’s lease would run out a month later) when I had the opportunity (I was an instructor in the LSRPCA Porsche club before they got too snotty to put up with) I took it.
Clearly the SHO wasn’t the worlds greatest track car, but it did stay unruffled.
What’s the ultimate SHO track car? About ten years ago, I was lucky to have several laps as a passenger at Bondurant in their early V-6 SHO instructor car. With a opened-up engine, unrestricted exhaust, a Quaife limited slip diff, a fuel cell, and of course a great driver - the difference was astounding and the tremendous flexibility inherent in the SHO V-6 really came out. I wonder whatever happened to those cars… and I wonder what it would be like having one now for fun. It’d be easy to duplicate it. Anybody out there have a limited slip diff in their Gen 1/2 SHO?
More Information
More information on DrivingEnthusiast.net:
- SHO section: http://www.drivingenthusiast.net/sec-ford/special-report-sho/index.html
- SHO blog: http://www.drivingenthusiast.net/sec-blog/?cat=519
- SHO blog RSS feed: http://www.drivingenthusiast.net/sec-blog/?feed=rss2&cat=519
Ford Mustang: The Legend Lives (Xbox)
Rated at 4.4 out of ten, according to c|net the game suffers from poor graphics, poor physics, and worse. Generally pointless… not taking advantage of any of the potential sophistication the xBox offers.