I remember the first time I saw one. My first reaction was to unconsciously open my hand slightly and to simultaneously start to reach out towards it. My second reaction was "WHAT is THAT!?!"
I played a little bit of the original FORZA. I basically built my little brother's stable for him by sleeping at his place for several weekends. My favorite "secret weapon" was a Dodge Stealth painted in black with a NOS theme and blue+silver flames, but my favorite car?
Let's just say I was visibly upset when I found out that they'd left the smallest porsche completely OUT of FM2. Like the car it was designed to simulate, the 550 in the original FORZA is a giant killer. The acceleration is decent, but it actually isn't terribly fast. The BIGGEST thing it has going for it is this: it doesn't 'brake' so much as it 'DROPS ANCHOR'!
In game, It had the brake performance of an R class car due to a curb weight of approx 1179 lbs. It's also so small, and specifically so NARROW, that it can just pull up onto the larger curbs as if they're an extra 'passing lane'! Now, if you can picture a little silver go-kart braking INSANELY late on your inside at corner entry and then playing the 'track position game' where you block someone through out their preferred exit line, and you'll get the idea.
It's actually so small that people can have a surprisingly hard time hitting you, even when trying. Most amusing to me, hitting someone with the little Porsche does NOTHING to them, you just bounce off in a new direction! Being able to consistently pull off crap like that just might be why James Dean named his 550 the "Little Bastard"
Heck, you just may have heard that a couple of times if you were ever driving one of these tiny teutonic terrors, OR you might have been just as likely to have called it that yourself! The RL porsche began with a suicidal (IMO) rear suspension install. It was lifted straight from the VW Beetle, and then simply turned 180 around for a mid engine chassis configuration. Unfortunately, trailing arms can do NASTY things to your alignment in the corners when mounted BASS-ACKWARDS, thus beginning a long and proud tradition of Porsche cars that will generally go off-course with their ass end first.
