Hello Fellow TXR enjoyers,
In case you are really struggling with the Speedmetric Regulations in Master Tune (like me) and really want a reliable car for the first stages I went through a lot and I mean around 400mil CP to find some good and funny cars with tunes which will do just fine for technical and high speed courses to easily beat those nasty early 350 and 400 Speedmetric racers. It would be interesting to know what you think about those builds, please feel free to let me know in case you try them out.
This is based on a lot of testing and some info from grey's Steam Guide for tuning in TXR 2025, where he perfectly explains everything, huge thanks to him and a big shoutout for all the work and effort he put in, as an automotive engineer myself I was stunned by the amount of information.
As if not being able to use nitro and any skills isn't punishing enough, I feel like a lot of AI cars handle better and feel a lot faster compared to any starter car that you would usually tune to get your Speedmetric close to 350. And if you use additional rules, your car overheats faster and won't be able to keep up on those long distance runs at high speed.
As stated by the game the Transmission Ratio is the key to victory, but you can also get yourself a huge advantage if your Acceleration is fast enough to gap any car in the first 5 seconds of the game while having that sweet spot of high speed.
I found the sweet spot for Stage 1 at around 230ish to maximum 245 km/h, since anything over that will not comply with the Regulations or will make your car super sluggish in acceleration.
There is no real viable RB38DETT swap early game since it overheats pretty quick and makes light cars handle like cows on roller-skates unless you really do some extremely perfect suspension tuning and defy the laws of physics.
My absolute bonkers tunes for Stage 1:
Suzuki Cappuccino Rotary engine swap. Accelerates like an absolute Kei Car out of Hell and caps around 238 km/h if done right with gear ratios, weighing around 784 kgs.
- no power upgrade, Brake lvl 5, LSD lvl 3, Suspension lvl 5, Transmission lvl 2, Body lvl 5, Tires lvl 5. I pretty much annihilated every racer on the C1 course with this funny thing + it's fairly cheap to tune. The rotary engine is super tolerant in terms of heat build-up, which makes it a good choice for longer and more forgiving battles in case you don't hit every corner perfectly or get slammed by your rival.
alternatively and better for high speed courses:
Mazda Eunos Roadster Type II also with a rotary engine swap, making it as light as 941 kgs and caps around 245 km/h which will win almost any high speed course, it also corners very easily on technical routes. There is no real perfect tune here, you can either upgrade your performance a bit and tank the top speed, or you leave the power stock and tune it similar to the Cappuccino making it a little more expensive alternative with higher top speed but less acceleration.
For the 400 Speedmetric regulations I stayed with the Eunos Roadster, as adapting the gear ratios with some power upgrade works just fine for any racer at that stage. I was able to beat every 400 regulation Racer + Devils Road Run (450) with the Eunos Roadster.
If you really want to race the crap out of anything at 400 Speedmetric and have the Credits, I found the IMPREZA WRX TypeR STi VersionVI '99 with the 3,5l V6 swap out of the NSX (typo error by the dev's, it says 1,5l) to be an absolute 4WD Monster with good cornering, insane acceleration and a top speed of 287 km/h while staying below 400 Speedmetric. The engine does not overheat as quick as the R35 engine and puts less weight on your car, making it a very good allrounder for any Racer at that stage. I was able to beat them all on the first try without any problems.
I am sure a lot of you out there have tried lots of builds and I am certain that there are better ones, please let me know what you think if you try one of these out. Also feel free to throw in some build suggestions, in my opinion this is what makes TXR such a fun and challenging game, having to tinker out your own build and master the highways of Tokyo.
I may update this Topic for future stages.