Instead of having to add an entire new car for a given model variation, allow these varients to be applied on to a base car.
These variants may include a shooting brake vs a coupe, or a Manual vs an Automatic, maybe it can include facelifts or higher trims, or those varients already present in some cars in the widebody section like the Lancia Delta S4 featuring the rally versions bodykit despite being added as an entirely new vehicle in the Blizzard Mountain expansion for Forza Horizon 3. Seemingly this is a very polarising topic as to whether these should be added as entire new cars or not, so I think this is an appropriate middle ground.
I believe the best place for this option is in the Conversions subsection of the upgrade shop menu:
Here is a concept I have made for the sort of thing I mean:
Examples and Effects:
Going in to this menu in say the 2020 Porsche Taycan Turbo S would then have an option to change it to the estate/shooting brake (what porsche calls the Cross Touring). This would allow for many complaints about “too many mustangs” or “not enough modifications” to be nullified, along with adding more value to existing vehicles, and potentially less bloat in the game files as all of the handelling data for these vehicles would not need to be duplicated over the many iterations of the car in game.
It may also be interesting to change the name and year of the vehicle once these modifications have been applied where applicable, maybe even going as far as changing the car class (such as retro hot hatch to retro rally, as is often the case with cars such as the Ford Escort RS Turbo or VW Golf GTI).
This would also allow the changing of interiors on several cars, such as the previously mentioned 2020 Porsche Taycan Turbo S, which could be changed to the 2023 Porsche Taycan Touring Cross (or TC), or the 2020 GR Supra becoming the 2023 Toyota GR Supra upon switching to the manual transmission model which only came out several years later.
The final Grand Potential this could see is allowing for more fully stripped out interiors for use in Race and Rally cars alike. Although the GTE cars as seen in the Allstars Car pack may be a bit extreme for this, many other cars in game provide good examples of this:
the different bodies of these two ford focuses could very much be contained within one car, then allow the player to modify the car to the specifications of the rally car. This is also true for the older escort RS1800:
As mentioned before, the Group B Lancia Delta S4 featured in the Blizzard Mountain expansion for Forza horizon 3, moving to Horizon 4 the car returned in the form of a bodykit on the base Delta S4 homologation road car. This was also true for the Lancia Stratos Group 5, however both only featured as bodykits in later games, and none featured the stripped out interior seen in the actual rally cars, instead retaining the interiors used in the homologation road cars. This menu option could allow for stripped out interiors and tube-chassis as seen on many race cars and drift cars in game. The Audi Quattro features a similar situation, however the S1 varient does include the rally spec stripped interior while the Sport quattro keeps the road spec.
Something like the Mosler MT900 vs the MT900 GT3 may also be a fair comparrison here, as the base car is the same:
It may also be fair to include the Mini Countrymen to the X-Raid in this, but I would need to research that further to be sure:
How many versions of like, just the original beetle do we have that are all just lifted and chopped up bodies?
I understand for hoonigan and mayers since the brands themselves may need represented, but the ones under VW could very much just be the base model beetle with this body conversion concept applied…
it would also apply to facelifts, these are the same car after all, right down to the power and weight -
and Finally
Lets count how many 6th generation mustangs we have that couldve easily been 1, or at most 3, cars:
Hopefully I conveyed this idea well enough, but it would be cool to see in either this game or saved for future titles, and to some extent this may also go along with my other thread asking for more performance modifications to be added to existing cars in game: Add upgrades to existing cars to make them more competitive . Basically if that thread was specifically for the performance side of cars, this could be seen for the aesthetic side, though I assume different body styles may have some performance differences from either weight, aerodynamics, etc.
This latest update featuring a total of 2-4 actually new cars while also having a car pack with 5 cars in it was just the straw the straw that broke the camels back I suppose, there are so many more examples of this in game, I hope they at least entertain the idea for the next game if they cant do something about it this game. It is a problem and I feel with every update it happens with, more and more players are just skipping them, and chances are the duplicate cars are not a mistake and are meant to pad out the updates with cars where it is easier to get the deals for and model in game than actual unique chassis players are asking for.