Greetings. Today I noticed some oddities with some in-game vehicles which, honestly, left me wondering about their nature. The biggest issue I've found is with the Moonhawk. I am aware that the model is very old, it has been around since forever and will be remastered in the future, but it doesn't hurt to point out some issues. Check this out. The entirety of Moonhawk's grille (I checked all versions, they're all like that) is blocked off by plastic. For a highly powerful, big V8 car from the 70's, it doesn't make any sense, does it? It is apparent that it's been like that since the very day the car was added to the game. The second car that has been remastered already is Grand Marschal. I don't understand why, but its main grille is blocked off too! I thought about including SBR4 too in here, but it is a modern car, so it does have a lot of fake grilles. Finally, I will include Sunburst. I don't remember how it used to be, but since the last update all of Sunburst's grilles and vents are open, even though it is a pretty modern car and a compact car at that. For example, the top vent and the side vents could be easily blocked off, since it doesn't need that much air.
These are all things boiling down to textures. They probably did so out of ease most likely, especially in the older days. Not a lot of people tend to look through the grill. As for the Moonhawk, it's more a matter of what'll look better I suppose. They could've easily left the grill open, but instead opted to close it out of looks. Now the Moonhawk isn't a highly powerful car (considering all early to late '70s cars were severely underpowered because of the Oil Crisis) So considering that and the larger engine having more passive cooling and less heat to deal with, it would probably have been fine. You have to understand that many of the grilles are not actually 3D Models and instead are simple 3D planes with a texture. They could open up the texture on the Grand Marshal, but if that'd make it look bad. They could raise the resolution, right? Yes, they could, but why do that if this looks just as good. It's a matter of balance between good deformation performance, good game performance, and looking good. The sunburst is most likely using a common texture for its grille texture since the PBR update. Hence why they've opened up. If you really are bothered by it, you can make your own mod to fix these things for yourself though.
I do understand that these are often just textures, of course, so nitpicks like the Grand Marshall one is too much. I was more wondering about the Moonhawk's grille, because, compared to many cars of the same era I've seen, they've never had such a fascia idea, for quite obvious reasons. Of course I can make such a mod, and I might, assuming I will have time and experience. Great thanks for elaborating on the matter, though, have a nice time!
