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

 

Single 4-Barrel carb on the 423cui engine has the Dual carb model

 

Improving on details like that, more hubcaps and maybe replacing flathead V8 with inline 8 if they get their hands on proper sounds would be nice to see at some point in the future, but this is a great start. But when it comes to additional bodystyles, it would be nice to see something like this:

 

Not that I'm complaining or anything, but I've wondered where the inspiration for Fine Blue comes from. It was featured prominently in the pre-refresh Burnside and now is one of the interior colors, but it really does not look like a 50s color. There were plenty of blue tones available back then for sure, but they were less saturated.

 

It's there to match up with one of the exterior paints. But it is indeed an odd shade of blue.

 

eh i stand by my statement the burnside gasser should have collector extensions. Just dumping it right out the header is bad for torque

 

yeah but then it doesn't look as cool

 

So, I've had a couple weeks to think the refresh over, and I have to say that while it didn't get nearly as much as it could have, what it does have is used quite well.

-There's a solid balance of configurations between each engine (4 for the straight-six, 7 for the flathead V8 (including a supercharged version), 4 for the 274 V8 (including the tuned Bootlegger), 4 for the 313 V8 (including the supercharged Ratrod), and 3 for the 423 V8)
-Every transmission is used at least once
-There's a solid mix of facelift and pre-facelift trims (although some have a mix of facelift and pre-facelift parts, like the Drag - not sure if that's intentional)

And I'm happy that the "Stunned" uses a straight-six instead of one of the V8s. That config's one of my favorites for this vehicle - it's quite nice to drive. (Also, I like that the Lead Sled has dummy spotlights, which were common mods in the 1950s - very nice to see that.)

However, there's one major omission among the configurations - the chopped 4-door sedan body. I don't understand why this wasn't used for the Lead Sled. It just makes sense to me that the Ratrod (which is a higher-performance car) would be a sport coupe, while the Lead Sled (which is not tuned as much for performance) would be a sedan. Or perhaps the Ratrod could be a sedan (to differentiate it more from the Custom), while the lead sled could be a coupe (since lead sleds often are coupes). And yet, both of them are coupes - as are the other three high-end hot-rod configs (and the Stunned).

If the Lead Sled was meant to be styled after a specific one (like the Hirohata Merc, which is a 2-door), then I could understand that. But it seems to me to be just a generic lead sled. I'm not mad about this - just confused. I'm at least happy that we still have the chopped 4-door body as an option.