why the AC GT40 has always felt a bit lame

[Mark J]

watch this!  stunning onboards and i never get this feeling conveyed using AC's GT40. Dont know if there is a much better modded version of it around?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBz3V-U-LAQ

[MaxVeloce]

is it because you're not a crackhead who thinks 3 wide exiting paul frere passing backmarkers is a good idea, or that driving with candles for headlights is fun?


j/k though,  that's a great video.    Also I agree, just watch Goodwood revival every year to see how beastly these cars really are 


As brilliant as AC is in general, some cars are definitely a miss as far as how you would imagine they drive, and the GT40 is really a bit of a pig unless you can get it "up on the plane" floating through every turn.   I guess that's what happens when they add so many cars and the people making / approving the physics only have a limited idea and data of how the real thing behaves...

[FullMetalGasket]

Given that most of the rear end shots show GT's with twin rear lights it's probably different because those appear to be Mk2's
Trying to find a decent entry list including capacity is very hard so it's nigh-on impossible to figure out from that video which car that was.

The AC version is specifically a Mk1a

[Geoffers]

Not saying the GT40s in AC are accurate, probably not. But you need to consider that GT40s today are probably more powerful, handle better & are faster than they were in the 1960s. It is difficult to find laptime comparisons as few tracks are the same as they were in the 1960s, Goodwood is one though. In a quick internet search I could not find any period laptimes for GT40s at Goodwood but comparing GT car laptimes gives some idea of how much faster the cars are now.

In the 1964 TT (the last at Goodwood), Dan Gurney set the fastest GT laptime at 1m27.8s in a Daytona Cobra, in the TT race at the Revival this year Jenson Button lapped an E-type in 1m23.8s!

[goldtop]

Of the hundred or so original GT40s that were built only a few hundred still survive 

I watched the Le Mans 66 film a few months ago and laughed out loud at some of the footage. It was like they shot the film and then the director decided that the cars looked really slow so they decided to speed them up a bit for modern audiences. It was like watching the Benny Hill show 

There are a few iterations of GT40 modded in AC and a couple of them feel more involving to drive than the Kunos version. There is a MkII around that drives quite convincingly but as with most content, it much depends on how good your imagination is.

As for current historic series, I think Geoffers hits it on the head. Maybe historic series run on very different tyres compared to those back in the day 

[FullMetalGasket]

Tires, brakes, engine components, fuel.....

You name it - it's better now. The regs in historic series always state original period parts. This means to the original drawing as they obviously can't be bought off the shelf.
Pretty much anything built prior to 1975 will have been made without a reliable DRO even, let alone a reliable CNC machine or the ability to really measure the parts being made.
An apprentice with access to a CNC machine can now make better parts than pretty much any of the artists from the days of true manual machining sadly.
Also modern roll cages can be strategically mounted to add chassis rigidity if you know what you're doing

Brakes are specified - like tires - to be far superior to period as you simply can't make stuff like that anymore (Try the GPL 1955 mod if you want the scary reality)

I was watching a support category from this years Bathurst and the commentators noted how some of the big block cars were running anything upto 100Bhp more these days Vs when they originally raced

Another example is I used to help in the mechanical side of a pre war Brooklands car. In it's day it ran about 250Bhp thanks to burning pure methanol and having a blower as big as the engine (not kidding).
It's it's day the engine was the weak point thanks to component failures and/or fuel, these day the transmission can't cope with the torque being generated as the car actually has grip now

[Geoffers]

As for current historic series, I think Geoffers hits it on the head. Maybe historic series run on very different tyres compared to those back in the day 

Not just tyres, which although they have to be period tread pattern are most likely a much improved compound to that of the 1960s. Spring & damper technology improvements probably means the cars handle better & knowledge about how to set cars up has improved, just watch a Lotus Cortina today & compare it with how they cornered in the 60s, totally different. And of course engine technology has moved on so that today's engines are producing much more reliable power than 60 years ago. This particularly applies to mass production based power units, the Ford V8s & Jag 6s are much more powerful now. It is interesting to note that a 1100cc Formula Junior car (Ford Anglia power) is lapping Goodwood as fast as the 1960s 1.5 litre F1 cars are.