That C-Spec Miata kinda looks like it was trying to cosplay a S2000.
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Tonight we will take Eden to the Gran Turismo All Stars races. There are five in total. The first race takes place at Super Speedway. This is an ovalish track with one end being a tighter turn than the other. When I see what’s next to me on the starting line, I get a bit tense. These battles won’t be as easy as the ones before! The first race ends up not being so bad, but we don’t have many turns to worry about.
I try to take screenshots when the “looks good up close” textures are loaded, but sometimes I screw that up 
The prize car is a Mine’s Lancer Evolution V! I like Lancers a lot! I think of them as underdogs to the WRX STis of the world. This is a cool car indeed! I hope there’s a one make Lancer race! This car is going to be called Celia.
Next up we hit Special Stage Route 5. We win, but the times are closer here. Eden is going to understeer a bit more than a svelte FR pure race car.
The prize car for winning the second race is a Mine’s R34 Skyline GT-R. This might round out our Mine’s Skyline collection. I honestly have no idea how many different model Skylines got the Mine’s treatment. This is definitely the most powerful Mine’s Skyline. This is Willard.
The next race is at Red Rock Valley. This course has very long sweeping turns, and the amazing Ford GT40 in Gulf livery puts up a hell of a fight! We are able to best the other cars, but it takes some serious concentration.
For the third victory, we win a TVR Speed 12 prize car. With 807hp and weighing only 2094 pounds, I am actually afraid of driving this thing. It also takes the honor as most powerful car in the garage over Eden. We’ll call this mad machine Ursula.
I had to see what Ursula was about, so we went to the fourth race in the GT All Stars series at Rome Circuit. Ursula’s 7.7L V12 sounds like a deep machine gun. Everything about this car is as scary as I imagined. That includes trying to control it. I couldn’t keep it straight to save my life. We DNF!
Back to Eden, we head to the Rome Circuit GT All Stars race. It’s another tense one with the Team Oreca Viper and the Ford GT40 keeping me on my toes. We manage to eek out a win. Ursula, the GT40, and the Viper trade places a few times before I get the hang of the course and pull ahead.
We win the race version of the ZZII for our trouble. A truly mad looking car that might just have what I need later for the MR races. This is Rubin.
The final GT All Stars race is at Laguna Seca. I go in knowing every small mistake I make will mean I hear the buzz of other race engines catching up to me. Luckily, I don’t make too many mistakes. We take the win! I like how short the GT40 is next to Eden. They say it’s called the GT40 because it’s only 40 inches tall!
That’s it for the Gran Turismo All Stars series. We win one more prize car. It’s a Nissan R390 GT1 Road Car. I really need to study up on my Nissan R390 history. Apparently it did pretty well in Le Mans in the late 90s. We’ll call it Delphia.
That’s it for tonight!
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It took my brother some 8 months of tuning a fully upgraded Speed 12,and once he did I can confidently say I was done thinking I could ever hold a candle to him in a racing game if we were on an even-footing performance wise.
A few fun facts about the Speed 12:
The engine’s power is rated as it is 'cause that’s how much it was making when it destroyed the dyno it was hooked up to. It sheered the input shaft.
The Speed 12 eschewed TCS, ASM, and most curiously, anti-lock brakes.
The company president, Peter Wheeler, drove the pre-production car home, then the next day drove it back and told the engineers that they could not sell it because people would frequently be getting . Of note, Wheeler was a very experienced race driver and found the car to be a handful and then some on the street.
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Good to know it’s not just me! I knew absolutely nothing about the Speed 12 and could tell it was a death trap.
You know a car is dangerous when even TVR decides it can’t be sold!
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back from my Le Mans weekend shenanigans at my dad’s place (where else to host a group of eight people easily):
that all stars race features some pretty and rare machinery there… the Vector, Lister Storm and Venturi Atlantique 600 are pretty rare in terms of featuring in future games. afaik, only the Storm made it into (PAL) Gran Turismo 3, in NTSC/J- land, there was at least the Vector included (or a lambo countach instead?).
The Storm I used as a punching-above-my-weight type of car to take a knife to the gunfight that is trying to beat the GT One and R390 GT1, and there are a few tracks where that setup worked.
That TVR though… deathtrap is a proper custom title for that car.
It’s cool to see how GT2 oozes rawness in the choice of cars they included, especially with the tuners’ hot versions of normal boxes and small coupes, feels like they turned that down in GT3, added more in GT4 before it faltered in subsequent entries to converge to an all stars cast that we have seen a many times across different entries of the genre…
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Tonight I decide it’s time to do something about those two MR Challenge races that are left. I take Rubin to the third MR Challenge race at Red Rock with a 591hp limit. Rubin has too much power for the second race. We get a victory here, but Rubin is a lot to handle.
I honestly don’t love the feeling of overpowered MR cars as I just have to concentrate so much, and the margin of error is so small. This is evident in the fact that we spin out on the last turn of the first lap. We are able to recover and pass the GT40 nonetheless.
Speaking of powerful MR cars, we win a GT40 race car! It’s wearing Gulf livery which is some of the best looking livery ever to grace a race car! We name this Ferrari killer Carol. Carol has no info screen.
Carol happens to fall 1hp below the limit for the second MR Challenge race. A victory here means we are finished with the MR Challenge. We head to the High Speed Ring and try our luck. Carol easily wins the race, and proves to be much easier to control than Rubin.
thicc
With that victory and the completion of the MR Challenge, we win a Tom’s T020. This is another MR2 with the Tom’s treatment. I really like the air snorkel coming up from the mid-engine bay. I also really like that this is an NA MR2 with a stroke job and not a turbo. I bet this car delivers power smoothly and doesn’t try to kill you if you lift just a hair early. We’ll find out eventually! This is Dorian.
That’s all I have in me for tonight. We will finish all the special events soon enough!
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how does the GT40 not have an info screen. I mean I get it, Yamauchi and co tend to forget cars that aren’t Skylines exist, but yeesh
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Probably because it had been intended as the race upgrade for the GT40 road car but was spun off into its own model last minute.
I think, but can’t check, that the GT40 road car in the Ford dealership has the info block.
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At least the second gen GT40 got the cover of GT4. At least in the US version. I’m not sure about worldwide. But yeah, the GT40 has quite a story to tell. I’ll try to remember to check the road car for an info screen.
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Yeah, for once a GT game had the same cover in all regions, modulo some logo rearrangements and additional text
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however.
we didn’t get moon over the castle in the GT4 intro, and not even a cheesy Feeder song - for no apparent reason! I wanted to play that intro in my CD player player player player player player player player player player player - all by myself
and, back then, on release day, only to realize the cruel fate that was bestowed upon us - nothing noteworthy to rock on to. 
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it is at least available in full in GT4’s jukebox, so there’s that, but yeah
I’ve actually also assembled a copy of PAL GT2 with the NTSC-J soundtrack hacked in because it turns out the original score rules, maybe one day I should share a tutorial/patcher or something for it
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GT2 doesn’t seem to have the GT40 road car at the Ford dealer at all. Maybe it’s a prize car only. There are no Ford GTs for sale whatsoever.
I was totally wrong! Thanks, @ticky!
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Tonight we take Eden to the GT500 Championship. This is five five-lap races with no power limit. This is also the last of the special events. I’m surprised to see that there are a total of four Skylines out of the six cars in these races, and two of them are also Edens!
The first race is at Laguna Seca. I can’t really say that I’m using an overpowered car here as two of the cars on the field are identical to mine! We still manage to pull ahead and take first pretty easily.
That’s promising! The next race at Super Speedway is another cinch.
At this point I pretty much expect to win at the third race on the Rome Full Circuit. This is feeling almost too easy! I love the STP livery on the Viper!
Next up is the fourth race at Trial Mountain. I’m starting to get lazy with how well Eden handles, and this track brings me right back to reality. There are lots of elevation changes and dips/bumps that can easily upset even a controllable car like Eden. Lots of hilarious mistakes are made, but we still somehow manage to get first!
The final GT500 Championship race takes place at Apricot Hill Speedway. I pay more attention this time as Trial Mountain really humbled me. Eden does a perfect job for the win!
With that we win the GT500! We also complete all the special challenges.
Our prize car is the Cerumo Supra GT we just faced. It’s a very potent car with a really cool livery and no info screen. This is Sasha.
The special events may be over, but there are a ton more races to participate in. There’s the GT League, the Rally Races, and the brutal Endurance races. I need to start thinking of non-Japanese cars to buy for all those regional races in the GT League. Eden sure has propelled me to success! I’m sure Eden will do the same in future races!
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Weird, the wiki says it should be in the Ford special section 
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Oooh! Maybe it’s paged! The only car I saw there was the Focus rally car. But I sometimes miss the little arrow icons for paging in the UI. I’ll check next time!
Edit: Yep there’s a dang pager there!
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Tonight doesn’t go super well for us. We take Desmond to the Rally races and give a shot at the Green Forest Raceway race against an Astra SRi. Repeated attempts to win don’t work out. First we have to buy dirt tires to compete.
We see this screen about four times before giving up. The closest I got was about .4 seconds behind. This will clearly take some practice! Rallying in GT2 always felt a bit off to me. I think it’s cool that they included it, but I kind of have to unlearn a lot of what I’ve picked up in other rally games. It’s really more of a rally cross with a ghost car. We’ll come back and try this another day. Jumping around sure is fun!
Next we take Susan to the US Nationals’ first race at Laguna Seca with a 246hp limit. I really don’t have many American cars, but GT2 considers Acura to be an American brand. Excellent!
We’re back to what I consider the essence of Gran Turismo. Racing a bunch of regular cars! And it’s a hell of a fight! We can only manage third place in two attempts even when resorting to dirty tactics we will not speak of! There sure are a lot of Fords out there! I bet the Ka is fun to drive!
Not a single win tonight! But we get back to the roots of GT and have a blast! Driving slowly and finishing in the middle of the pack is the true Gran Turismo experience! I’m thinking about maybe putting Susan on a diet and getting some stickier tires for next time!
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