"halve the horsepower for twice the fun"
Casual gearhead Lete burns the midnight oil at Forza Horizon 4's British automotive festival grounds. Outside, tireless crowds cheer as other Horizon Festival participants rev up their machines, from brand-new hypercars to venerable classic favorites.
But tonight, we retreat to the quiet garage inside one of the festival's main buildings. The task at hand? Lifting the massive hunk of metal that is a 7.2L V8 racing engine block out of Lete's 1998 Toyota Supra (of Fast and Furious fame) and replacing it with the 3.0L I6 engine the car originally came with--one that makes less than half the power.
Midnight passes; it's early morning when the Mark IV Supra emerges from tuning and dyno time. The vehicle lurches forward even after its downgrade to more modest specs, and the first fateful turn onto one of the festival grounds' intersections... feels much better. It's smooth, stable, and most importantly, more fun.
A few loops around the track confirm it. The downgrade makes for a more balanced, more controllable, and more enjoyable ride. The 1,000+ horsepower racing engine monster tune? It pales in comparison to the 489 horsepower setup using the Supra's original engine with a few scaled-back upgrades. Why?
Maybe it's because we're using the engine the car was meant to have. Maybe it's because what it came with was damn fine.
back in the day
Racing sims and simcade games were some of my first real exposure to this idea that faster did not necessarily equal better. As a kid, probably my biggest complaint about titles like Gran Turismo was that "all the cars were too slow." But when I finally did get access to the top-of-the-line vehicles, either by cheating or good old-fashioned grinding, I would end up with the opposite problem: the cars were too powerful. Grand Touring and Endurance cars, open-wheel F1-style racers... they were so fast that my child brain could hardly handle processing the speed I was going before barreling into a wall. This wasn't an arcade kart racer where you could slam the accelerator from the instant the light turned green to the moment you crossed the finish line. No, this was different. Foundationally so. And despite my youthful impatience, it was also captivating.
Over the years I feel deeper into the spell of these odd "slow car games." You had to plan your maneuvers, control your throttle... you had to use the brakes! And of course, you had to pick the right car for the right job. Sometimes I would pass up the vehicles with bombastic levels of power, exotic chassis, and world-record-setting reputation in favor of something seemingly completely opposite: a mundane 90s mass-produced commuter car, something I'd see on the road going 35 miles per hour on the way to the supermarket.
It'd almost make me feel embarrassed, giving me a nagging feeling that I should be driving a hot rod, a Ferrari, a Corvette! Something I'd find on the box art of a Need for Speed game. But there was something that kept drawing me back. These modest cars felt balanced, reasonable. With a little tuning and an afternoon of practice, they could feel fun. They could even feel competitive.
Motorsport isn't about having the fastest car per se. It's about being faster than your opponents, the ones in your class.
tune in
As titles like Need For Speed: Underground and Midnight Club grew popular, they highlighted the tuner scene and the joys of pushing old and unassuming cars beyond their limits. An interesting side-effect of some of these start-from-nothing street racing games was the opportunity to experience that "nothing": that is, the original modest car, fully stock. The loop of buying a used car and tricking it out wasn't just addicting, it was a repeated chance for perspective. Each time I'd restart the process and jump from a fully-upgraded tuner to the next project, I could feel the sheer difference in the driving experience front and center.
What this made me realize is that my favorite part of these games wasn't the final stretch when I have the best cars with the best customizations. It was the midgame, when I was balancing my budget, my car, and my tune, to scrape together a perfect mix of everything and break past the next challenge, the next progression barrier. The racing itself were almost always the most interesting at that point in the game, outclassing anything that would come either before or after.
There was merit in getting faster. But there was merit in staying slower, too.
reclaiming "fun"
Today, I'm more comfortable taking things slow... or at least not in a hurry to max out the speed. And I'm not just talking about targeting B-class spec in Forza Horizon or sticking to 100cc in Mario Kart. Realizing firsthand the inherent fun of an experience matters more than how quickly I could get through it was a game-changer. It sounds obvious in such abstract terms, but when that choice means deliberately tuning your build to clear battles, earn money, drive laps, finish books... but 30% slower, it becomes a harder choice.
But knowing that the decision to forgo speed in favor of fun, and to deliberately avoid the optimal or dominant strategy, has such amazing payoff was enlightening. It took out some of the pressure, some of the stress, knowing that efficiency wasn't the only input in the formula. Heck, it wasn't even the most important one. Fun was first and foremost. And realizing that I had forgotten that, but could very easily reclaim it, was empowering.
The debate between speed and enjoyment is something I mull over constantly, and I won't pretend to have it all figured out. I still have a bad habit of creating unfun scenarios in the name of "clearing content" or "spending time efficiently." But when I boot up a racing game and find myself gravitating towards the mid-class cars because I know they're the most enjoyable to drive... It reminds me that one slow cruise with a smile on your face is worth more than even ten short loops around the circuit if you've forgotten why you're at the track in the first place.