What’s Good?: Seasonal Events in Forza Horizon 4 for Series 12 Autumn (August 8–14,2019)

Ah, Autumn in the Horizon Festival! It feels like a year has gone by since last month. There’s a few hard-to-find cars to earn, and one of them is brand spankin’ new and locked behind a potentially aggravating Trial, so let’s get right into it.

If you don’t have your own Vintage Racer for the Autumn Championship, store-bought is fine. Maybe.

There’s nothing new or exclusive in the Shop this week, but the VW and the Type D are both pretty good if you’ve never gotten your hands on them.

We may never find the culprit.

Forzathon Weekly Challenge: Modern Classic

This week’s challenge features the 2013 Ford Shelby GT500, a decent freeroam muscle car and a pretty straightforward set of challenges. There’s not too much to say about either of these except “they’re good!”, though you might spend a little longer than planned on banking Skill Points with it. Upgrading it to the top of its class should power you through the races just fine.

Seasonal Championships

Racing Through The Years: The 1960's

This series has one championship per week where the only car restriction is the car’s year, in this case the 1960s. Also, unlike most other championships, the Racing Through The Years series encompass multiple race types, both on- and off-road. If you run this championship solo, you’ll have a chance to switch cars between races if you think a different one will be better-suited to the next race. Online co-op / PVP championships won’t give you that option, so you’ll have to find one car that can hold up decently all-around.

That might not be as difficult as it sounds, because the championship is locked to C-class with a max rating of 600. If you’re interested in building something from scratch, I prefer to start with the lowest-rated stock possible (D-100 or close to it) so that I can control my upgrade path more precisely.

Nobody likes this corner.

If you do decide to power through it all with one vehicle, chances are that you’ll get a little bogged down on at least one of the tracks. Picking one car out of multiple car types that will get this particular job done wasn’t easy last week, and it’s still not easy this week, but it’s doable. Believe in yourself!

Family Car Frenzy

My car (left) managed to not hit the wall or the other vehicle in this pass. I don’t know how.

I have somewhat of a bias against this championship as I’m not a huge fan of the Super Saloon car type. I’m also not the biggest fan of the Ambleside Village Circuit included here but it’s good for technical racers, much like the Horizon Festival Circuit.

I did not cause these collisions, believe it or not.

Unfortunately, my go-to Kia Stinger has done better when I’ve tuned it up for Dirt races than Road. I was still able to force it through the most aggressive AI I’ve seen in a while, but other cars might fare better for you, and you might need some very careful adjustments to their tuning and driving to survive this.

Beat the Highly Skilled AI, and you’ll be rewarded with a BMW M6 Coupe FE.

Out Of Retirement

The 1939 Auto Union Type D in the Shop this week could be used for this championship — in theory. The problem is that it’s so close to the top of A-class already, at 692, that you don’t even have room to shove an AWD transmission into it. If you don’t already have a bunch of Vintage Racers, you might not have a lot of options here unless you have lots of CR lying around. All of the Vintage Racers in the Autoshow are 10,000,000 CR apiece, and all but the Bugatti Type 35 C start at mid-to-high A-class. I went with the Bugatti myself.

Back then, if you wanted music in your car, a banjo player had to ride on your hood.

The Ambleside Sprint, also known as “the one with the switchbacks”, is less of a pain for my Bugatti than it was for previous vehicles in previous championships, because a well-tuned Bugatti oversteers more than adequately. If you’re able to clear the initial hurdle of affording and owning a Vintage Racer you feel good about, you might have a good time with these races.

The Trial: Power on the Prairie

This is a trial with several gotchas. First, it’s locked to Modern Muscle A-class. If you don’t immediately see the gotcha, a portion of the Modern Muscle cars available are S1 at stock. Your favorite might be one of them, and ineligible for the race. Second, it’s a Cross Country series; these have been done before with championships featuring vehicle types that are not often used for offroad races, and every time they do, it’s a challenge. And of course, the third gotcha is the same one as it is for every Trial; it’s the Trial, and it’s locked to co-op versus the highest-difficulty AI.

Unfortunately, it might be worth grinding out, as a new hard-to-find VW “Notchback” Type 3 1600 L is listed as a reward for completion.