Meet GoRacer's original cars: hot hatches, hillclimb monsters and desert trucks
GoRacer is starting to get a garage of its own. Alongside the tracks and the driving, I've been building original cars for it: a lightweight 16V hatch, an 800 hp hillclimb monster, two very different desert trucks, and rebuilt versions of the rally cars that started it all. Fictional names, their own bodywork and liveries, and plenty of that old arcade-racer character.
Rook HC4 in Summit Works colours: an original GoRacer hillclimb hatch with very little interest in being sensible.
This update is about the six Original cars in GoRacer's current catalog. There are addon vehicles in the project too, but these are the designs made for GoRacer rather than conversions of third-party car meshes. The four newest additions are Kestrel 16V, Rook HC4, Dacar 2000 and Nomad 2000; Comet and Bulldog have also had substantial rebuilds.
The screenshots below are from the game and its car-selection screen, not concept paintings. Click any of them for the full-size capture.
Rook HC4: a hatchback with an 800 hp problem
The white-and-orange car at the top is Rook HC4, the least subtle member of the new lineup. It's a purpose-built three-door hillclimb hatch: wide arches, recessed twin-projector lamps, deep cooling openings, a front splitter and a high, two-plane rear wing. A familiar small-car silhouette, with rather a lot of competition hardware attached.
Its current in-game specification is 800 hp, all-wheel drive and 1,120 kg, putting it in class S. It starts on slicks and is aimed at tarmac competition. Summit Works is the white/orange number 48 scheme; Torq Ice and Vertex Ascent give it blue/cyan and white/green alternatives. The sponsors are fictional too.
Kestrel 16V: the small-car end of the garage
Kestrel 16V is a different proposition: a naturally aspirated 1.8-litre, front-wheel-drive hatch, with 180 hp, a five-speed gearbox and a 980 kg game specification. It sits in class B. Next to Rook, it's almost sensible.
The design is about compact proportions, fitted lamps and glass, and restrained club-racing details. Its number 27 comes in Club Blue, Club Red, Heritage Green and Night Privateer liveries. Inside, it keeps a proper five-seat family-car layout: molded dashboard, patterned cloth, a rear bench and analog speed/RPM instruments, rather than pretending every small hatch needs a stripped competition cockpit.
Kestrel 16V in Club Red: a compact, lightweight hatch rather than another oversized aero package.
Dacar 2000: bring the desert
Dacar 2000 goes in the other direction entirely. It's an original two-door landrush pickup, with broad fenders, an open rear bed, big off-road tyres and two fixed spare wheels behind the cab. The white/orange Desert Works finish carries number 205 and fictional DUNE sponsorship.
Underneath is a class-A, 600 hp AWD setup with six gears and a 1,850 kg game weight. It has much longer suspension travel than the road cars, with visible damper movement and a dedicated truck-sized contact footprint. This is still GoRacer's arcade vehicle model, not a claim of full racing-truck suspension simulation.
The alternative liveries get less restrained: Heritage Oil is a retro sponsor-style scheme, Arcade Clash wraps pixel-art fireball graphics around the body, and Close Encounter adds an alien-and-circuitry theme. Building our own vehicles means the paint jobs can have some fun too.
Dacar 2000 in Desert Works trim, with its open bed, wide fenders and twin rear spares.
Nomad 2000: same family, different silhouette
Nomad 2000 is Dacar's enclosed landrush sibling, not just a new colour on the pickup. It has its own canopy, rear hatch and glass, plus a supported single rear spare instead of the open bed and twin-spare arrangement.
It shares the 600 hp AWD foundation, but uses shorter final gearing and a lower nominal top-speed target. That changes the gearing tradeoff; it doesn't magically make it faster everywhere. Both trucks keep their own identities in the car selector.
Nomad 2000 wears the Sandstorm livery over a separate enclosed-canopy body.
Nomad's finishes are Sandstorm, Pocket Rally and Gold Chrome. Pocket Rally is particularly appropriate for this project: a tiny top-down racing world, complete with cars, roads, trees and kerbs, wrapped around the truck. The little scene is authored as livery artwork, not a game screenshot pasted onto the doors.
Pocket Rally turns Nomad's bodywork into a tiny top-down racing scene. This is the actual car-selection screen.
Comet and Bulldog: the originals, rebuilt
The first two GoRacer cars haven't been left behind. Comet now has a longer four-door rally-saloon body, square shoulders, integrated box arches and a substantial rear wing. It retains the blue-and-gold stars, number 7 and muddy rally finish that made it recognisable.
The rebuilt Comet keeps its blue-and-gold number 7 identity, now wrapped around a distinct four-door rally saloon.
Bulldog takes a shorter, wider two-door coupe shape: a blunt wedge nose, pronounced haunches, bonnet louvres and a compact deck spoiler. Its yellow, black and green number 12 scheme stays. The cabins and dashboards are different as well; these are no longer two variations of the same basic shell. Both remain rear-wheel-drive class-B cars.
Bulldog takes the shorter, broader coupe route, with yellow, black and green number 12 graphics.
More than the outside shape
A car isn't finished when it looks good from one angle. These builds have separately authored interiors, steering assemblies, exterior details and wheels, plus four levels of mesh detail for the game to use. Mirrors, cockpit viewpoints, wheel placement and suspension clearance all need to agree with the actual body.
The newer cockpit work gives the cars more character from the driver's seat, too. Kestrel has its everyday analog dashboard, Dacar has a stepped Desert Works dash with amber instruments, and Nomad has a rally-raid-style digital display and navigation tower. Speed, RPM and gear displays are driven by the game; decorative radios, roadbook graphics and auxiliary switches shouldn't be mistaken for fully simulated equipment.
Inside Nomad: live speed, gear and RPM instruments alongside the rally-raid-style navigation tower. The roadbook and auxiliary switch details are decorative.
The authoring work lives in Blender and the cars run in Unreal Engine 5.7. There is a lot of less photogenic work between those two: fitting windows to real openings, keeping wheels out of the arches at full lock, preserving material detail through lower-detail meshes, and checking that an interior still fits when it's back inside the car.
A garage with its own character
GoRacer is still a work in progress, and the figures here describe the current game tuning rather than real-world manufacturer specifications. Handling, presentation and cockpit details will keep getting attention. Dirt, Sport and Slick tyre choices are available across the lineup, with tyre and livery choices remembered per car.
But the garage is already much more varied: a little 16V hatch at one end, a winged 800 hp hillclimb car at the other, with rally saloons and chunky desert trucks in between. That's a good spread of excuses to take the long way around a corner.
