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Soliad Wendover SM

The Soliad Wendover isn’t exactly renowned for being the most interesting of cars, the base model having but 134 bhp and 222 Nm measured from the engine… in a car that weighs over 1.7 tonnes. This is where the SM comes in, a fun Soliad Wendover. Although that may sound oxymoronic, it’s true, equipped with a race-spec all-wheel-drive system and limited slip diffs it can easily be thrashed round corners.

It’s not exactly lazy on the straights either, as Wendovers go, with a tuned 3.8 L V6 from the S 3800 with an incredibly effective supercharger that practically doubles the power to 322 bhp and almost 500 Nm of torque.

Despite all these performance and motorsport bits, the SM is still completely usable in everyday life with comfortable seats and without a hard ride. The SMs were the last Wendovers to be made, an amazing send off for a car that didn’t really deserve it.

Picture from 1999 of the SM we tested refuelling in Belasco.
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Ibishu Diana Street Racer Review

This is a 1993 Ibishu Diana GTz Turbo, given to us by an anonymous owner. It is not exactly street legal due to the massive wing on the back and the slick tyres as it was reportedly used in street racing.

We imagine it would have done well, because this thing certainly packs a punch, with 475 bhp and 453 Nm of torque measured from the engine (A 2.0L inline 4) because of its rather hefty turbocharger. This allows a 0-60 of 4.6 seconds and a top speed of  192 mph. What if I told you that it also has a nitrous oxide injection?  75 kilowatts of it that’ll make you go even faster!

Backfire!

As for the interior, this GTz has a custom carbon fibre dashboard which features many race-style buttons and switches, a cool red gearstick and handbrake and a speedometre that shows up to 300 km/h (186 mph) . Apart from these and the bucket seats, there is basically nothing else inside.

By the Foundry

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Introduction to BeamNG.

BeamNG.GmbH is a company that makes a soft body physics and driving simulator that uses many nodes, which define specific mass at a specific point on the car, and beams which connect the nodes together. Beams have no mass but always have a node at each end and cannot be bent but just pivot around the node. An example of this is on the homepage of the BeamNG website. The first picture shows the whole car and the second picture shows the wireframe – this only shows the beams.

 

Hence their logo.

BeamNG makes two separate pieces of software: BeamNG.drive and BeamNG.tech. BeamNG.tech is used by Audi and many others use BeamNG.tech for ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) testing which typically involves putting multiple vehicles together in complex scenarios to see if the car’s computer can detect the crash is going to happen. BeamNG.drive has the exact same physics as .tech but is made to appeal more to the general public. BeamNG is highly moddable and due to the immensely realistic physics engine people can easily make fully functional aeroplanes, helicopters and boats due to almost all reactions being taken into account.

A picture of a trophy truck with the body taken off, exposing the springs, shocks and dampers in the suspension.