The Completionist Life: Forza Horizon 4 (Part III — Cars & Upgrades)
Ah, Forza Horizon 4! The game that asks: “Is it possible to have a crush on every car?”
Early-Game Picks
I keep saying we’re going to talk about upgrades, but before we do, I’d like to shout out a whole bunch of cars that are mostly pretty easy to come by in the early game, and good starting points for either driving at stock, or shopping out upgrades to get them to the top of their class.
1998 TVR Cerbera Speed 12
Barn Find. I’ll be honest and say that I was not a fan of driving it stock, with RWD. But upgraded to AWD with all of the best mods, it’s pretty damn good. It might be your first X-class modification. It might make some of your early Personal Bests (PBs) on Speed Traps or other PR Stunts. Heck, it might be the first thing you drive over 200MPH in the game. There will be other cars that come along and steal your heart with even better performance and mobility, but the Speed 12 will get you more than ready for when they do.
1965 Mini Cooper S
Barn Find. This is another car that is … interesting at stock, but in this case that’s because it’s FWD. But upgraded to AWD and with all of the best mods, it’s hilarious.
This car is classified as a Rally Monster, and it actually does perform in the dirt with the right mods, but I rarely ever race it because I find more joy using it to bounce over hills to a Skill Song or at a Forzathon Live.
1998 Subaru Impreza 22b STI
Barn Find. Most all of the Subarus make pretty good Rally cars with minimal tuning, so they’re a good potential kickoff point for driving Dirt and Offroad tracks. The fact that this one in particular is a Barn Find just means it’s more likely that you’ll have an Impreza sooner or later, free of charge.
Honda Civic Type R (multiple years)
Like the Impreza, there are more than a few Type R’s available from Autoshow and Wheelspins, so it’s likely you’ll land on one of them eventually. They’re also mostly cheap, and somewhat interchangeable —partly because I can’t think of any major differences between them, and that probably means they’re “consistent” — and while the Hot Hatch cars are some of my least favorite Championships, the Type R’s are decent enough that they can serve as an entry point for driving Hot Hatch cars.
2016 Jeep Trailcat
This is gifted to you early on for progress in the Cross Country discipline, so it’s another relatively early guarantee (as long as you’re doing Cross Country races). It may or may not be the best Extreme Offroad vehicle, but it’s one that works pretty well with or without upgrades, and it quickly became my first go-to vehicle for future Cross Country races.
2012 Bowler EXR S
The Bowler is one of the more expensive cars on this list (at 200k and Legendary, making it one of the more rare Wheelspins), but it’s also in the Extreme Offroad championship with the Trailcat, so it’s by no means a necessary purchase. I give it a nod because it can be a smoother ride than the Trailcat for some people — so much so that I’d almost describe driving this car as boring. But as un-exciting as it might be for me to drive, it’s also consistent.
1970 Datsun 510
This is one of the few cars like it that I’ve seen in this game, and it’s in the Cult Cars category. It is dirt cheap, at 25,000 CR — you can spend more than that upgrading it for several different classes and racing types. It’s capable of road races, dirt/rally, and some pretty good drifting, depending on what you do with it. If you ever want an old “project car”, you could do worse.
2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk
The Sports Utility Heroes championship is not exactly high on my list of favorites, but vehicles like the Trackhawk are capable of competing (and winning) even at stock, which makes them great starter vehicles to practice driving, modding and tuning for the mud and the hills.
1945 Willys Jeep
It starts at the lowest D-class, but slapping way too much power into it is too much fun not to include on this list. Goosing it to S1/S2 with no advanced tuning will feel like it’s going to fall apart at high speeds, but just consider it an investment into one of the silliest Offroad rides you’ll own.
2012 Porsche 911 GT3 RS 4.0
This one is a little different from all the other cars mentioned here so far, and it’s not just the 200k price tag or Legendary status. The Porsche 911 family of cars has a rear-engine layout, meaning that the engine, and thus the majority of the car’s weight, is in the rear of the car. This has some interesting effects on driving that you may not notice unless you dig deeper into tuning later. But it’s a solid drive at stock, already at S1, and can be modded to the top of S1(900) for a good challenge, or the high end of S2 for goofing around. It’s a pretty good introduction to the general feel of the rear-engine 911s, too.
Lamborghini Reventon, Forza Edition
Putting this on the list is almost a cheat. It’s essentially a hard-to-find car. The only way to pick it up guaranteed is to own the ’67 Miura, an older classic Lamborghini that costs 1,000,000 CR(!), and buy a perk off it that gifts you the Reventon FE. Wild.
But like the Porsche above, it’s one of the better Lambos as far as getting the feel of what a Lambo is. Maybe don’t worry about it too much, and just know that when you’re driving other, more-easily-attainable Lambos, a lot of them are trying to be this one.
If you’re itching to try it out but don’t have the scratch, you could also try the cheaper Huracán for a taste.
McLaren Senna
It looks like we’ve almost accidentally gone in order of “how hard is it to get this car”. The rather-pricey Senna is basically Horizon’s mascot, since you’ll recognize it from the title screen every time you load up the game, and it should be obvious that there’s a pretty good reason. Despite it not being one of the cars I drive very often, it’s incredibly good at what it does.
Upgrades
We’re finally here! Upgrades! Mods! Same thing, really.
There are a couple of philosophies when it comes to modding. Some will start with engine conversions and upgrades and jam as much power into a car as they can stand, and then worry about whether they can actually drive it. That’s certainly a way, and it’s fun, for a while. You get to throw your car at every wall (and occasionally opposing AI, too) and ham-fist your way to the finish line. This strategy will only get you so far, especially if you go online and run into the game’s recent changes that have started punishing players for intentional collisions and “wall riding”.
There are also degrees of overpowering that will only sacrifice some of your handling for speed. And when you’re mostly just racing against varying levels of AI, a car that can get out in front of its less-powerful competition (and stay there, more importantly) is hard to beat.
In Part I of this series, I mentioned that most races will be locked to a particular Class and Championship — usually that of the car that you’re bringing to the table. I also said that the AI opponents will be at, or near, your car’s actual rating. Here, we’re going to talk about adding mods to your vehicle that put your car at the top of a Class, in the hopes that your car will be more likely to be equal to, or slightly better than, your opponents.
The Upgrade Shop Layout
The Upgrade Shop has a lot of stuff, and it can be really easy to get lost. Quickly, from left to right:
Engine & Upgrades has all the different engine bits, each one usually upgrading to something that is lighter and/or adds horsepower.
Platform & Handling has brakes, suspension, rollbars, rollcage, and “weight reduction” (from removing components not needed for racing, to shaving down the actual frame).
Drivetrain covers transmission, clutch, and differential.
Tires & Rims is exactly what it says, sometimes including front/rear track width.
Aero & Appearance can include front/rear wings, removing bumpers, or custom hoods.
Conversion, finally, will offer completely swapping out the engine (which changes the options available in Engine & Upgrades), swapping out the RWD/AWD/FWD drivetrain (which will change the options you’ve selected in Drivetrain), different kinds of Turbo modules, and sometimes different car body modifications.
Prioritizing Upgrades
The path we are going to take for our sample vehicle — the ’69 Chevy Camaro shown above — will look a little bumpy and roundabout, but it has a purpose, which will become clear when we tune it.
To follow along with this lesson, you’re going to need 141,500 CR. That’s 110,000 CR for the Camaro in the Autoshow, if you don’t already have one, and 31,500 CR for its upgrades.
The Camaro starts with a 584 (C class) rating, and rather than feeding it everything available, we’re going to put it to 600 (the top of C class). This isn’t a lot of room to work, and in fact, we’re going to skip upgrading the tires or the engine completely. I know. Bo-ring.
We’re going to build this pretty quickly, so I’ll try to make the walkthrough fairly terse. Select upgrades in this order:
Conversion -> Drivetrain -> All Wheel Drive
Platform & Handling -> Front / Rear Rollbars -> select the “Race” model for both. When you select the right component, you’ll notice some text that says “Unlocks anti-roll bar stiffness tuning”.
Drivetrain -> Differential -> “Race” (Again, you’ll see an “Unlock” message next to the model.)
Tires -> Front/Rear Track Width -> select the furthest-right option for each.
After all of these, the car’s displayed rating should be 586, which leaves us more room for upgrades.
Spring & Dampers -> Race Spring (More “Unlock” stuff). Rating is now 590.
Tires -> Rim Size -> again, select the furthest-right option for front and rear. (The car’s rating shouldn’t change. Also, trying to upgrade either the tire width or compound might put us over 600 before we get to other things we want, so we’ll skip them for this attempt.)
Drivetrain -> Clutch, and Transmission -> furthest-right options. 591.
Aero & Appearance -> Rear Bumper -> Remove.
Platform & Handling -> Brakes -> Race Brakes. Unlocks tuning, puts us to 599(!).
Drivetrain -> Driveline -> Race Driveline. Our car’s rating is now exactly 600!
You can purchase all these parts and take it out for a very slow spin at this point, but there will be more work to do soon.
Wait. What am I thinking? You should absolutely take this car out for a drive. Let’s go see what’s happening over at the old Moorhead Wind Farm.
Specifically, go check out the Moorhead Wind Farm Circuit. Now, I could run this race myself and upload a video of it and say “that’s how it’s done”, but have I done that yet? NO. Because that’s not hands-on learning. And the best way to see what your car can do is to drive it.
I’ll give you a pointer, though. A Class C race is slower than you might be used to. You haven’t tuned it at all yet, so you might be a little skeptical. It’s got a stock engine, and only a few things that feel like they could give it a slight edge over some cars in its championship. But there are two things you have that your AI opponents probably don’t: a Rewind button, and Race Brakes. These two things can make all the difference in your trials here. You might be faster than a few opponents, and you might outmaneuver a few more, but you might not catch first place on the straightways. What you can do is brake more effectively leading up to a corner, which gives you a little bit more time of traveling at higher speed before you actually have to brake and corner. So the corners are where you can more likely overtake 2nd and 1st. Got it? Go for it. Take a note of how long it takes you to complete the race, if you like. Then come back and keep reading.
Why These Upgrades?
The philosophy behind this upgrade priority is to make sure you can unlock the tuning on as many components of your car as possible, and get a decent amount of handling, and then — if there’s any room left — choose a blend of horsepower and/or additional weight reduction that works until you hit the top of your class. (Horsepower and Weight Reduction are being considered interchangeable, since they’re both part of the power/weight ratio that car folks love to talk about.)
The Driveline and custom Rims, as well as the Engine Flywheel, are three components that are primarily about weight reduction (without being part of the fully-packaged Weight Reduction option in Platform & Handling, which can be more expensive). Not every car will let your remove front/rear bumpers, but this one let us do that, too. All of these little upgrades are good, cheap, and let you fine-tune if you’re a bit under or over the top of your class. It’s harder to do that kind of fine-tuning with engine upgrades, which tend to add horsepower and reduce weight at the same time; and for this car, the handling is still nowhere near as good as the car’s potential speed at this class.
Many of the other upgrade components also have lower weight than their stock counterparts, but it’s overshadowed by their primary role in the vehicle. (This includes the Race Brakes I was talking about. Don’t underestimate them.)
But enough about that. You already did the Moorhead Wind Farm Circuit race, right? Okay, then. Time to optimize.
Don’t go anywhere — just get to the Pause menu, and hit the Cars tab where the Tuning panel is. You remember, right? Well, you do now. We’re going to blaze through eight screenshots so we can get you back into that race before you forget how to drive. I’ll explain later.
First page! Really simple. Tire pressure affects two things: grip on the road, and response time when you’re turning. 28.0 PSI is as good a starting point as any. (If you’re in metric, you might need to convert it from PSI to BAR; my estimate is about 1.93 BAR. I could easily be wrong. Don’t trust me.)
Second page! Gearing! It looks … a little more complicated, sure, and I would usually do this part last, but, just match up the numbers and trust me for now. Go go go!
Third page! Alignment! These basically deal with the angle of your front and rear wheels; having them rotated a little bit this way can change how your outside tires hug a corner. This is really just a minor tweak, and it might be sub-optimal, but it’s the setting that requires a lot of effort to get perfect (and a comparable lot of effort to screw up), so these estimates are okay for now. Proceed!
Fourth page: Rollbars, or Antiroll Bars, same difference, really. Again, I’ll explain the settings later. For now, just get them as close to these settings as you can. Moving on.
Springs. These affect how your car rolls around when you’re cornering. The numbers may not exactly line up for you to the tenth of a pound (especially not if you’re in metric!), but as long as the sliders are roughly in the right places, that’s all we want for now.
Damping. Rebound and Bump Stiffness are how tightly or loosely the wheels get pushed up into the suspension when hitting a bump, and then rebound back out of that bump to come down and find the road again. Some of this is personal preference; some people like a bouncier ride than this, and tuning for dirt/offroad can be a little different too. But enough about that for now.
We’re skipping the Aero tab, because we didn’t buy the front or rear wings that unlock Downforce tuning, but just know that they’re there.
Braking pressure is another personal preference, but with my controls I find the 115–120% spread to be a good starting point for me. You generally won’t need to change Balance more or less than 50% unless you have a reason to apply brakes more unevenly, which, for this example, we do not. Moving on again!
Finally, Differential! A simplistic definition of a Differential is that it controls how evenly you distribute power to your inside/outside wheels during a turn. Rather, at 0%, the outside wheel and inside wheel can always receive different amounts of power, and travel at different speeds. At 100%, the left and right wheels must always receive the same amount of power, and travel at the same speed (which can make it difficult to turn, but might be preferable for some drift specs).
And the Center differential (only present on all-wheel-drive cars) controls power distribution between front and rear wheels. In other words, setting this to 100% would basically make this a rear-wheel-drive car, which would be a weird flex.
I know, it’s probably more information than you wanted right now.
But once you’ve made those changes, let’s try that Moorhead Wind Farm Circuit race one more time. But this time, I’ll give you a different heads-up. You might notice that you’re going to have to brake sooner for some of those hard right turns… especially after the first lap. Are you ready? Go for it, then come back again.
Back already, good. Hopefully you noticed the longer red driving line yelling at you to brake sooner. That’s because we traded maximum top speed for better acceleration (on the Gearing tab). This means you were getting to those corners quicker, and at a higher speed. This also means that you actually can pass more of your AI opponents on the straightaways, because your gears are better configured to do so! (If we shortened that graph too much, we might have missed out on some useful power, and/or made our top speed lower than our opponents.)
It gets harder to see those little things directly at the higher classes and the higher speeds, and your reaction time becomes a bigger factor. That’s why we’re learning this with a C class tune, so it’s a little easier to potentially spot these things.
If you brake and accelerate well through the corners, the rest of the ride is a little smoother too, because I took particular note of something I didn’t tell you about. Er, sorry about that. I was just anxious to let you try it out.)
The statistics you see on the left of this image can be accessed one of two ways. You can press the up arrow on the keyboard (or Up on the D-pad) while looking at any individual upgrade on these screens. You can also get to these stats while highlighting a car on any car list (Garage, Autoshow, etc.)
The particular stat I look for on this page is labeled “Front”. What it’s telling us is how much of the car’s weight is distributed more towards the front half of the car. This stat is why the Front Rollbars, Front Springs, and Front Rebound Stiffness sliders all look the same: they’re all somewhere around 60% of the maximum. The Rear counterparts to those sliders are all around 40%.
Everything we just did is Base Tuning: using what you know about a vehicle to configure a starting point, with some acceptable margins of error, just good enough so that you can tweak it further if you need to later. Not everyone decides on the same kinds of settings for their own base tunes, and setting up a base tune for anything other than Road Races will have its own necessary stipulations and things to pay attention to. But all of that is for a future article.
If you want to get more into this without having to keep reading (or waiting for me to write about it!), all of my current tuning methods and philosophies come from HokiHoshi’s FH4 videos, which I briefly shouted out in Part I.
Of course, if you just want to try doing this some more, you can try saving this tune (using the View button while in the Tuning window) and see if you can upgrade this car to B class or higher by yourself! In any event, I’ll be back when I’ve got more to show you.
Next Time
I’ll cover all the aspects of this base tune one more time but more thoroughly, and even cover the differences for offroad and other racing types, and I’ll try to get as far as what it means when your car does a thing you don’t want it to do. (Troubleshooting, I mean.)
That’s right. We’re almost there. Next time… we become Tuners.
