FH6, Series 6, Week 3

I actually knew where to find the treasure this week, and not because I’ve seen several posts on Facebook as well. North-eastern corner of the lake near Hakusan Mountain Lodge.

I should’ve used the Honda Beat to do the daily as well as the weekly challenge.

I already had a Polaris of some sort for the photo op. at the spaceport.

For Touring the Sights I switched between cars for each race, starting with the AM DBS Superleggera before swapping to the 2025 Bentley Continental, and finishing with the MB AMG GT-S. The last of these was the most drivable. I still don’t see how some ghastly off-road bathtub was a suitable reward.

With Daily Exercise we were back in the world of novel car categories, in this case, high-performance dailies. As far as I can tell, this seems to be super saloons and SUVs that start in A class. I chose the 2012 BMW M5, which in spite of the driving conditions and Okishinaimura with its annoying touge zone), turned out to be a good choice.

And finally from the catalogue of seasonals was heavy hitters in Hitting your A Game. I thought this group was anything over two tonnes, but the game didn’t let me use my Range Rover SVR, which is slightly above that limit. I can only guess that the car must be two tonnes stock and (?) not have any sort of weight reduction. I chose the Halo Urus for the first race before building it for the second and third races. Yahikoyama was a pain partly because I don’t know it (possibly this was only the second time I’ve ever raced on this course) and partly because of the time of day. Also, real-life conditions with a bit too much glare from the light outside didn’t help.

For the Hokubu TA event, I picked the Toyota Celica Sports Speciality and absolutely smashed the target. This car was also a good choice for the PR stunts, which I one-shotted by large margins. Two good WSs, although I sold one car (the FE Porsche) that I might otherwise have kept if the game wasn’t so stingy with rewards.

I kept the same car for the drag meet, but had to do an engine-only rebuild to just reach the target time.

The Trial was essentially B-class modern rally, but restricted to Subarus. My first attempt was in the 2022 Subaru WRX, but this was a mistake, and I quit the third race after missing a checkpoint. I switched to the Subaru Legacy RS. 4th in Hokubu Trail and a team win in spite of one player possibly missing a checkpoint, which was something I feared I’d done myself. I was 5th in Waterfall Trail and the job was done, but the player in the lowest PI car was probably a cheat because I don’t think his magical teleporting from sliding off the course was lag.

I’ll have a play with the Saleen S7 some time, and try it in FH4 and 5 as well to see how the three versions compare.

DeBerti Ford Mustang

Since I have this car in FH4, 5 and 6, I thought I’d do a generations comparison. In FH4 the car is overpowered, with the tyres letting it down because the best we had were semi-slicks. In FH5 I had converted the car to AWD, but had also done an RWD build. I restored it to the latter, but with slick tyres and would say it had the best handling. In FH6 the DeBerti Mustang is more like the FH4 version. All three are fast in a straight line (the FH6 car has an excellent launch), but rubbish at corners.

Afterwards I jumped in the 2023 911 GT3 RS, which apart from tuning is virgin forest. Vastly better to drive out of the box than this Mustang is.

The Chevrolet ZL1 and ZL1 1LE

Since I’d driven neither of these, I thought I’d also do a comparison. About the only real differences are that the ZL1 1LE is more powerful, but the ZL1 has a sexier rear wing. The two cars are much of a muchness. Better to drive than the DeBerti Mustang, but that’s about it.