Panoz GTR-1

The Panoz Esperante GTR-1 is a playable vehicle that is locked in both Midtown Madness and Midtown Madness 2.

It is one of the fastest vehicles in the first two games. Its high speed makes it easy for players to win races, but unfortunately also earns very few points for winning.

In MM1, the Panoz GTR-1 is earned through completing 8,000 points as a Professional through races. In MM2, the GTR-1 is earned through completing six London Checkpoint races.

In-Game Description
"Climb into the cockpit and rocket past traffic - but don't let the cops see you!" "Great acceleration, light weight, and an amazing top speed, but not designed for off-road use."
 * -|Midtown Madness=Panoz GTR-1
 * -|Midtown Madness 2 =Panoz GTR-1

Midtown Madness
The Panoz GTR-1 is one of the fastest cars in the game, with top speed going over 200 MPH. The car's light mass and top speed make it good for acceleration, but poor at handling. The low height makes it difficult to travel on sidewalks.

The car is locked from the beginning and can be earned by winning 8,000 points from races. This also makes it one of the most difficult vehicles to unlock. You can only earn points when you select your driver ranking as Professional. Therefore, the car cannot be earned in Amateur. In Professional, the racer will come across this car as a racing opponent in Checkpoint and Circuit Races.

Midtown Madness 2
This car is unlocked by completing the first six London Checkpoint races in a podium position in both Amateur and Professional instead of being a Professional-exclusive vehicle. It is undoubtedly the fastest vehicle in Midtown Madness 2 and the original Midtown Madness, but it is also the least durable.

The GTR-1 has excellent acceleration and handling. It also has an incredibly high top speed of 287 miles per hour. Unfortunately, this outstanding performance comes at the cost of having very low durability. The GTR-1 is also not good for driving off-road as the car has very poor ground clearance and has lots of wheelspin and oversteer because of the amount of power in the rear wheels. The low ride height even causes the car to crash into curbs, which really damages it. Curbs are abundant in the cities of San Francisco and London, which means that it is quite easy to damage out a GTR-1 in a race.

Due to a poorly tuned suspension, the GTR-1 will get pushed through the ground by its own downforce while driving at speeds in excess of around 220 miles per hour, which will also damage the car. This glitch can be fixed by modding the game.

History
The Panoz Esperante GTR-1 is a Le-Mans race car designed by Panoz Auto Development, Ford and Reynard Motorsport. Originally designed for the FIA GT Championship in 1996, the GTR-1 has since competed in the 24 Hours of Le-Mans, American Le Mans Series, IMSA GT, and United States Road Racing Championship. The car competed between 1997 and 1999, finishing in commendable positions in the US, with varied results in Europe. The race car made a comeback in 2003 to star in the 1,000 KM of Le Mans, before taking part in the 24 Hours of Sebring, 24 Hours of Le Mans and Le Mans Series (only at Spa-Francorchamps) in 2004. In 2000, Panoz began development of the Esperante road car, as a replacement to the Panoz Roadster. The Panoz Esperante GT-LM was a Le Mans race car, based on the road-going Esperante, which won the GT2 class of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2006. Also, Panoz has developed the LMP and DP series race cars for future Le Mans Prototype and Open-Wheel races. The Esperante road car's production ended in 2009, and was replaced by the Panoz Abruzzi, which was proposed to enter production in 2011, but is no longer featured on the company's website.

Races As An Opponent
All races with the Panoz GTR-1 as a computer-generated opponent:


 * -|Chicago (MM1)=All races with the Panoz GTR-1  in Chicago:


 * -|San Francisco (MM2)=All races with the Panoz GTR-1 in San Francisco:


 * -|London (MM2)=All races with the Panoz GTR-1 in London:

Stats
Note: All data taken from core.ar
 * -|Midtown Madness=


 * Top Speed: 215 mph (Approx)
 * Horsepower: 690
 * Mass: 1,400 lbs.
 * Durability: Low (900000)

More info:


 * Downforce: 0.25
 * OptRPM: 6500
 * MaxRPM: 9400
 * Number of gears: 8
 * UpshiftThreshold: 6000
 * DownshiftThreshold: 2800


 * -|Midtown Madness 2=


 * Top Speed: 287 mph
 * Horsepower: 650 bhp
 * Mass: 2,130 lbs.
 * Durability: Very Low

Mods
In HQTM Team's Classic Madness mod, the Panoz GTR-1 is replaced by the Ferrari 250 GTO.

On June 17th, 2008, Team IRT uploaded the "Panoz GTR-1 IRT NOS" to Midtown Madness 2 eXtreme, although the car was originally made in early 2002. The new car was only available in one color (black), but used the unique "NOS" hack, which gives a negative deceleration when the brakes are applied. This allows the car to accelerate rapidly and reach speeds of up to 1,118 mph.

Oddly, the  Panoz GTR-1 IRT NOS  was one of few known add-on Panoz cars ever made for Midtown Madness 2, despite their status within the game, until April 21st, 2012, when Aaro4130 released the Panoz Esperante GTLM add-on. On January 17th, 2014, he also released a high polygon Panoz GTR-1 on Midtown Madness 2 eXtreme, following another custom, user-made Panoz GTR-1 released by Sajmon14 on March 12th of the same year.

In MIDTOWN2_Core's mod, Steir, the Panoz GTR-1 is given improvements to its handling and durability. The mod also fixes the car's suspension tuning, which was the main cause of the speed glitch.

Quotes
All in-game commentary pertaining to the Panoz GTR-1:
 * -|Chicago (MM1)= All Chicago quotes that apply to the Panoz GTR-1, provided by the announcer:


 * -|San Francisco (MM2)= All San Francisco quotes that apply to the Panoz GTR-1, provided by various announcer:


 * -|London (MM2)= All London quotes that apply to the Panoz GTR-1, provided by various announcer:

Trivia

 * The Panoz GTR-1 is the only car from the first Midtown Madness game that has to be unlocked in Midtown Madness 2, despite being only unlockable in a non-American city, London, instead of San Francisco.
 * For unknown reasons, in the original Midtown Madness 1, this car was unlockable exclusively in its Professional mode (unlike all the other unlockable vehicles in the same game) as you have to achieve 8,000 points by winning a lot of races and running into various objects (without completely damaging out the vehicle driven by the player each time), making it impossible to unlock in Amateur mode, although a custom .ar file for a separate copy of this car can be created and installed to drive it in Amateur mode. Fortunately, this car was made unlockable in both difficulty settings in Midtown Madness 2.
 * In Midtown Madness 2, since this car is unlocked in the same way as other vehicles, this means that it's easy enough for players to obtain the GTR-1 early on in a save and have a huge advantage in completing all the races in the game, especially complicated ones (except the Crash Course missions). However, in Professional mode the GTR-1 earns the least points for winning, so one may choose a slower vehicle to earn more points.
 * The Panoz GTR-1 and the Ford Mustang Fastback are the only vehicles that originally appeared in Midtown Madness 1 to have custom paint jobs in Midtown Madness 2.
 * This is the one of the two LHD cars to be unlocked in London in Midtown Madness 2, alongside the New Mini Cooper.
 * This is one of the three vehicles in the Midtown Madness series that crashes into curbs while driving, along with the VW New Beetle RSi and the Aston Martin DB7 Vantage. However, this problem can be fixed by modding the game, or just downloading the Curb mod or the MM2 Revisited V6 mod from the web.
 * Since digital tachometers are not supported in dashboard views of the first two Midtown Madness games, the GTR-1's interface was replaced by analog gauges instead.
 * In the early beta versions of Midtown Madness 2, this racing vehicle's custom paint job, "Secret Shadow," was originally named "Phantom."
 * If an add-on vehicle is installed into the game without its own engine and/or horn sound effects, it will reuse the ones from this car. As a result, the GTR-1 is commonly associated with unfinished add-on vehicles as they use the same sounds unless they have custom ones, which is why the Double-Decker Bus and the London Cab didn't have their own sound effects yet in the alpha version of Midtown Madness 2. This has been noticed in the game's trailer.
 * Outside of the Midtown Madness series, the Panoz GTR-1 appears in Gran Turismo, rFactor, Sports Car GT, and more recently as downloadable content for Project CARS 2. It also appears in the Project Gotham Racing series oddly as a roadgoing vehicle.
 * In real life, the Panoz Esperante GTR-1 has only one reverse light on the left, similar to cars sold in right-hand drive countries, although this is a left-hand drive American race car, whereas in both Midtown Madness games, it has two reverse lights separate from the taillights.

Gallery

 * -|Midtown Madness=