The 10 worst‑looking cars in Forza | FOS Future Lab

Vauxhall Monaro

We start near and dear to my heart. As a Monaro owner, I want to go on Forza and drive one virtually, without the cost of insurance, fuel, tax and without the risk of lathering my real-world asset in salt during the colder months. But I can’t. Why? It’s on there, for sure – the 6.0-litre Monaro VXR to be precise. But I can’t because the model is that terrible, it hurts my eyes to look at it. Dating back to, we think, Forza Motorsport 2, but possibly earlier, in the HD world of Forza Horizon 5, it looks like a warped, contorted cut-and-shut caricature of the car it claims to be. Genuinely awful. Sort it out.

Nissan Silvia S15

That wouldn’t be a problem in the grand scheme of things, given the Monaro is a car that matters to relatively few people. The Nissan Silvia however, is a different story. This is a car that matters to a lot of people – the darling of a leviathan motoring movement and a car three times the value of the Monaro in the UK as a result of its cult following. In the real world, it’s a perfectly proportioned, svelte, sexy four-seat coupe. On modern Forza games, well, it can best be described as a Silvia S15’s skin draped over a banana. With a bent back like a dog doing its business, the S15 is one of the most famously bad Forza models that continues to serve as ammunition for franchise detractors.

Koenigsegg CC8S

There’s nothing outwardly awful about the CC8S model on Forza Horizon 5 but as you look at it and spin the POV around it, you just get the feeling of how old it is. Then you get down low on photo mode and realise the rake the rear end has is equivalent to that of a Porsche 917K. Then you look at the nose and back at an image of a real one and realise the lights are all weird and wrong. It looked fine back on Motorsport 2 but now… a bit shonky.

Ferrari F50

Indeed the devil is in the detail when you claim to be the most detail-oriented racing and car gaming franchise out there and the Ferrari F50 is a car that’s all about the details. Real ones are a tonic for automotive pervs, from the visible carbon through the paintwork, to the mesh-covered rear end giving a tantalising view of the exhaust system, load-bearing gearbox and engine and suspension componentry. On Forza, however? Out in the world driving around at least, it’s a painfully obvious plank of black, entirely not see-through because obviously, car modelling tech back when this was made wasn’t there yet. We say out in the world driving, because Forzavista (viewing the car back at your house) uses a different, newer model, where you can see all the delicious details. There’s no excuse, then, really.

Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale

The 360 is similarly afflicted, with its rear vent seemingly lacking any of the porosity or cooling ability of the real thing. It also was a bad model to begin with, with a poorly-rendered, misshapen rear end, dodgy exhaust placement and dodgy exhaust modeling full-stop. It was never quite right and isn’t now.

Mazda RX-7 FD3

Another beloved JDM icon that many playing these games will gravitate to straight away and another that, for some reason, doesn’t look quite right. We’ll tell you why it doesn’t. Because in its journey from 2007’s Forza Motorsport 2 to 2021’s Forza Horizon 5, what was already a dodgy jutting chin is now a veritable gurning David Coulthard in H5’s glistening 4K-resolution world.

Honda Civic Type R (EP3)

Another one that was wrong from the off is the Honda Civic Type R EP3, which in Forza Motorsport 2 was a cut-and-shut of pre- and post-facelift examples. Of course, the issue persevering on Horizon 5 is a dead giveaway, this is a 15 year-old recycled model. 

Volkswagen Golf R32

While not exactly the most curvaceous of cars, the real-life Mk4 Volkswagen Golf R32 has quite nice proportions and an attractive design. Those proportions are nowhere to be seen in Forza Horizon 5, with the blatantly years-old model appearing like an R32’s skin that’s been draped over the proportions of a Mk3. Move around it and it genuinely looks like a picture has been taken of an R32 in profile and just slapped on to this model. Weird.

Nissan Skyline

Amazingly, a car as popular as the Skyline has also just been grandfathered in. In fact, they all have, from R32 to R33 and R34. Again as with the Koenigsegg, it’s not one big thing that jumps out to you as irritating, it’s the whole package. Then you look at the details and the proportions – the lights being too big, for instance. A lot of it is exasperated by Forza’s fisheye view but especially in a family lineage that’s been in the games this long, the fact they’ve been dragged up through three generations of console is obvious.

Porsche 911 GT3 996

At the risk of this list getting samey – and near-endless – we’ll round it up with the Porsche 996 GT3. Another model brought in from the old games with wonky proportions, especially at the back, where the flat centre of the rear end is in contrast with stretched left- and right-hand sides of the rear, to the point that it’s like it’s had two rear-three-quarter shunts. The fidelity of the rear light clusters is pretty shocking too and there’s even a bit of straight-lining where there should be curves. Wonky.

Some of these, we admit, you need a trained eye to see. But we have trained eyes. We’ve been playing these games – and others – for many years and as these models have gone unchanged, other games have gotten a lot better. As above, for a franchise that trades so heavily on detail, we’d hoped to have seen improvements and updates to these cars and others like them long ago.