1953 Burnside Special

There are several typos in the config descriptions:
- "252 V8 4-Door Sedan" has wrong model years
- The 1952 "252 V8 2-Door Sedan" and "252 V8 Luxe 4-Door Sedan" descriptions says "3-speed automatic", but for the early model, only the 2-speed Dual-Matic was available
- Inversely, the 1953 "313 V8 2-Door Sport Coupe" and "274 V8 2-Door Sedan" have the 3-speed Super-Matic, but their description say "2-speed automatic"

 

And the 1952 252 V8 2-Door Sport Coupe has "V8" in its title twice, as of 0.36.1.

 

Or, ya know, maybe like, a bigger, more accurately sized steering wheel. Or, or, or, an instrument cluster that makes sense, with period correct fonts and unimportant stuff like that


Its really nice to see the Burnside get some love, however as much as i hate to bash the devs work, it kind of seems like the refresh was done by someone who had "an assignment" rather than a passion. The Miramar though got some really nice upgrades and is actually a joy to drive now (and look at!), especially with its new left hand drive configuration.

Anyhow i digress, perhaps the Burnside's getting a multipart refresh like previous vehicles. Or perhaps the key word here being "Refresh" rather than "Remaster" so that we shouldn't hold our expectations too high

 

Is the end of the hood ornament supposed to be white?

 

I'm really happy to see the flathead V8 fitted into another vehicle! It is THE engine noise I imagine when thinking of 40's/50's cars.

 

Forgive my autism, but it irks me when the cars in the game are much too quick for the era they're supposed to represent. So I looked into how the Burnside compares.

I found this road test of a 1954 DeSoto with the two speed PowerFlite and the 276ci, 170hp OHV Hemi V8 with the two barrel carburetor and 3.54:1 rear axle ratio. A four barrel wasn't available in this generation.




1954 DeSoto:

Quarter Mile: 21.38 seconds @ 69mph (the article stated that the quarter mile was slower from 1953 by 1.7s with the change to the new PowerFlite transmission)
0-60mph: 17.9s
Top Speed: 101mph
Stopping from 60mph: 181 feet

I matched the Burnside Spec to the DeSoto as close as possible. I used the four door sedan with the 274ci, 146hp OHV V8 & 2 speed automatic with the 2 barrel carburetor and 3.54:1 rear axle ratio:

1954 Burnside 274ci (OHV):
Quarter Mile: 18.45 seconds @ 73mph
0-60mph: 11.5s
Top Speed: 102mph
Stopping from 60mph: 170 feet

Compared the the nearly same spec DeSoto, Burnside's stopping distance and top speed are right about spot on, however it seems to me that the Burnside is just a little too quick for the year it is and the specs it has.

For fun, I did a second test with the 252ci, 104hp flathead V8 & 2 speed automatic with the 2 barrel carburetor and 3.54:1 rear axle ratio:

1953 Burnside 252ci (Flathead):
Quarter Mile: 20.5 seconds @65 mph
0-60mph: 16.7s
Top Speed: 88mph


The flathead performance is closer to what the OHV 274 should be. The 274 OHV is much closer to the 1955 DeSoto with the 291ci, 200hp Hemi in terms of performance:


Anyway, I hope that was interesting to folks. I don't know if the Devs use historical information to set their performance parameters. If so, then some adjustments are needed.

 

I mean, these are the same devs who didn't want to give the Piccolina a 900cc engine due to gameplay reasons, so it wouldn't surprise me that the Burnside's a bit faster than the comparable DeSoto.

 

The game lacks a lot in terms of American car hubcaps I think. Wendover has two custom sets Moonhawk has 1 and the LeGran has a bunch but those don't really fit on any other cars. The D-Series has so much opportunity for hubcaps

Spoiler: D-Series

These are all hubcaps on trucks of the same era.

These hubcaps also came in a painted variation with the large flat piece being color matched

and yet we don't have any besides center caps. The Moonhawk having only 1 set is also really weird. The Lansdale and Grand Marshal only use generic replacement hubcaps. The Barstow only has center caps from the Bluebuck the Bluebuck only has 1 set of full hubcaps etc etc. And the Burnside should definitely have more.

 

Overall, I am a bit disappointed that the Burnside just got a refresh. It was in desperate need of a remaster since it only had 8 configs and was not period correct. When I first watched the video on the official Beam channel, I was underwhelmed and was surprised not to see a wagon. I also do not think that the interior should be identical to the old one besides new textures. For example, the hood latch should be in the hood, like cars of its period, and the dash lights should be green, not red. Although, I did like the new variety of engines (which are modeled very nicely), the new grille, and the coupe. With a couple tweaks in the next few updates, I think the devs could maybe improve these things. And btw, I'm not telling the devs that the remake was bad, everything added was great. I'm just saying that maybe just a bit more updates for it could be great

 

That would honestly be great! We could see that in an eventual remaster sometime in the future. Hopefully people won't explode about it as they did with the Sunburst.

 

Also, I love the custom hot rod suspension, with the radius arm front beam axle on the Nine and the ladder bar on the Special