You might think that our team took a 3 days rest during this hot summer weekend, but you'd be wrong. It has been a very difficult week of modding, and in the last days some decisions had to be made. What kind of decisions? Well, part of the team is still doubtful that we should talk about this publicly in our blog. You see, keeping secret some of the things we are working on, could help us maintain some appropriate public image... at least some people still believe that we are mentally sane and just "very passionate".
So what is this all about? Have a look at the latest developments inside our team.

Those images shocked some members of our team. In particular, Luke (HR186S) and Aristotelis were doubtful about them because an exhaust like this would have to go under the suspension, meaning that in the first rebound movement of the suspension the exhaust would have been knocked off the car! But Alex is not a man to mess with. After the initial doubts, he promptly responded and demonstrated how the real car actually had this kind of (outrageous) design and how they solved it only later and after various owners had lost their original exhaust. Talk about British engineering!

After that it was time to decide the fate for some Cobras. One of the problems was about the design of some LeMans* hard top Cobras exhausts, as they seemed different on every picture of the era. Alex again redesigned a new exhaust and as you can see from the images, we have choosed the 2 step version and the exhausts are now passing closer to the center of the car and the differential, leaving more space for the suspension movement, which considering the original bad geometry this car had, for sure can't harm.
Spot the difference!

Beta testers have been complaining about their GoodYear tires. Overheating was the main complain, so the American tire manufacturer had to react. To be honest, GoodYear didn't care about our mod, but our physics guru keeps fine tuning and balancing the tires behavior, every single day, especially the new GoodYear and Firestone tires. This is actually one of the reasons the tires blog article is in delay. We wanted to write a nice article for tires behavior and give you a detailed tire performance table, but he keeps saying "not yet, not yet", arguing that the fine tuning and balance must be finished before posting any precise info. Rumors inside the team are suggesting that David is keep finding more and more detailed information about tires. Other rumors reporting that Aristotelis is divorcing because he keeps talking physics with his wife, are totally inaccurate.
Don't worry though, you might get the tires table a bit later, but we convinced our physics editor to write an article about how to use the differential to drive faster the cars. So stay tuned later this week and who knows... if you write lot's of comments, he might give you a video blog entry too!

As you all know by now GTR, GTL and GTR2 multiplayer lobbies were down for almost 2 days, caused by the bankruptcy of 10tacle, publisher of the aforementioned titles. Thankfully, SIMBIN authors of the three fantastic sims, have stepped in and took control of the situation. Lobby is back online again for all three titles.

GTLWorkshop mod team, would like to thank once more the SIMBIN development team. Without their work, we would have never existed in the first place. Thank you again for all the fun and excitement that you guys have gave us.

The Cobra roadsters dominated the American tracks in 1963. Looking at the coming 1964 racing season, Shelby had his eye on European racing and realized he needed a new weapon to "whip Ferrari's ass." Ferrari was the ongoing World Manufacturer's champion year after year.

The aerodynamics of race cars was just being discussed seriously in the early 60's. Most people, thought aerodynamics belonged in conversations about jets. A 24-year-old Shelby American employee named Pete Brock convinced Shelby he could develop a new weapon for the Shelby arsenal. The coupe project started in October 1963

Blueprints were sent to California Metal Shaping in Los Angeles for the body and inner panels. The first coupe was assembled at Shelby American as CSX 2287. The car did not look like any other car. The roof was odd shaped, the rear end was chopped off and it had a movable wing on the rear. These features didn't just look right to the rest of the Shelby team. But the die was cast and the coupe was assembled. Shelby backed most of Brock's design but he listened Phil Remington about the "ring airfoil" and opposed Brock on it. The car would be tested without the wing. If it was needed it would be added later.

Four chassis's were built at AC Cars in England then shipped to Shelby American for modifications. Shelby American was so swamped with work, the assembly of the coupes was subbed out. From the California factory, two out of the five chassis's were shipped to Carrozzeria Gransport in Modena, Italy. The plan was to also ship the prototype with the unfinished chassis to Modena for use as a model, but they didn't make it, so Carrozzeria Gransport was trying to build the two new Coupes, without the prototype to copy the design from and they used their own disgression. The roof line didn't look right so they corrected the mistake giving the roofline a different contour. The error was discovered when the prototype finally made it to Modena.

As you can see not all Daytona's were created equal. The GTLW team has worked hard to try and provide all the major body styles of the Coupe, as well as its more famous competition liverys.

CSX2287, the first coupe to be built was actually quite a bit different and it never had a rear spoiler when competing at Sebring in 1964. This was the Daytona's first major victory against their main rivals, as well as being a "local" victory for the team. The spoiler was added for Le Mans in 1964, but was different than the 1965 version of GT Legends.

To accurately recreate this special car, the GTL model has been altered. The most significant differences are:

The second Coupe, the first to be built in Italy, was different to the others due to a mistake, subsequently corrected on later Coupes. The cowl hoop tube was 2.5cm too high. The effect was a raised windshield line and a slightly different roof line.

The prototype CSX2287 in the foreground (#6), with the 2nd Coupe CSX2299 at the rear at Le Mans in 1964. Notice the different roof profile of CSX2299 (#5).

Here you can see the differences in the roofline shape of our CSX2299 (Left) and the standard model (Right)

Another comparison of the new roofline, our model up top, with the real CSX2299 below.

The differences in the cars are not just cosmetic, we have also changed the physics to match the characteristics of both of these cars. You can expect high speed instability and oversteer from the first prototype that had no rear spoiler, more stability but slightly lower top end speed from the carrozzeria Gransport wrong roof model, and the full experience from the rest of the cars. All in all, this is a great handling car, with plenty of power and grip. It handles much better than the average Cobra, but it is also heavier and achieves higher top speeds, so you better be a bit more careful on your braking points. Good turn in, and mild understeer in mid corner, that you can easily eliminate with a power on drift.

Here are some in game screenshots, and a little preview music from the Daytona's fabulous 289ci V8.