Ever since the age of 13, I have had a passion for cars that nothing could keep me from. I would watch my dad work on his old '61 corvette in the garage, sitting next to him, silently, shining the flashlight where he wanted it, handing him socket wrenches & screwdrivers until whatever problem the car had was fixed. I loved doing this, & my dad was probably the biggest part in my developing passion for cars.
At the age of 16, when I got my drivers license, me & my dad spent hours looking for the perfect project car for us, that I could drive to school & work on in my spare time. After months of looking, we found the perfect car for me: An '83 fox body Mustang GT 5.0. It had been wrecked, we got it from a private seller & I spent all of the money I had been saving for years on it. Me & my dad had it towed home, & got it running later that afternoon without much trouble.
Over the next year & a half, the two of us worked on this car nearly every weekend, making repairs & mods & doing everything we could to make it the best car we could. Our work on the car was constant & expensive, I had to start mowing our neighbors' lawns to save the money I needed for it, with my dad chipping in some money of his own on occasion. This old Mustang was the joy of both our lives, & I look back dearly on the time we spent doing this.
When I was 18, my dad was in a crash in his old Corvette, he was coming home from work & a car swerved in front of him, pushing him into oncoming traffic. He died later that evening in the hospital, & I cried for weeks. I never could have expected that he would die while I was still so young, & for something that wasn't his fault. I mourned & mourned, having been extremely close to him before his passing, I didn't know what to do after this.
As a safe place, I went back into the garage, & kept working on the Mustang. I was committed to making it the best car that I could, in honor of him. He had always talked about how he wanted a perfect car, one that would be fast on straightaways, while also cornering well, one that would be comfortable to drive, but also dangerous to race. He wanted a car he could go to the track with, & then get groceries on the way back. I was committed to making this now, I wanted to make the best car that I possibly could make, & I had the tools & knowledge to do it. I worked on the Mustang day in & day out, I modded it & tweaked it & tuned it until it was a beast of a car, I was revered in the local street racing scene & I had one of, if not the fastest, Mustang GTs in the country, regardless of year. All of this I did for him, for my dad, who died too young to see it happen but old enough to know that it would happen.
At age 22 I was signed into a professional rally cross team, using my very own '83 Mustang to compete & win hundreds of events, with a podium percent over 80. A national icon in the rally cross scene by age 25, I was known for my car & my skill, with major sponsors contacting me nearly every week. I did all of this for my dad, who I could only wish was there to watch it unfold. I had him to thank for all of it, for my success, my passion. I did all of this to honor him.
I now knew that I had to become the best. I was already one of the top in America, but I wanted to be the best in the world. I needed practice, so I grew an interest in racing simulations, buying a complex personal computer system to let me practice even when I wasn't on the track. I tested dozens upon dozens of racing simulators, many of them being considered some of the most realistic racing sims ever made, with physics engines as accurate to the real world as possible, with cars that mimicked real life cars to perfection. But none of them satisfied me.
After months of looking for the perfect racing simulator, I found this game. This game, this could be the one. This might be the perfect simulator I was looking for. I bought it, installed it, tried it out, & made a decision.
This game may, in fact, be the worst game I have ever played in my life.
