Car Builds: Advice About PI And Classes Please

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Hi, I am just starting to get into car building and upgrading and wanted to know some basics or a general rule of thumb about how far to push things and which upgrades to go for.

Obviously you can max out everything and go from a low class like D or C up to an S class or something but I know that’s not always the best approach. What would people say is the best way to go about things, should I be aiming to stay within 2 class ratings of the stock rating or does it not matter? Also, I know the PI number has a big influence over things so is it best just to make sure it doesn’t tip over into a higher class?

Another thing I’d like to know is which parts to upgrade for each race type: rally, trucks/off-road, street, track etc. It’s kind of hard to go for something specific sometimes as many tracks and races can involve multiple road types. A lot of people suggest converting pretty much every car to AWD as this suits FH better as oppose to say FM so is that a good idea in general as well as to use wide tyres for extra grip?

I am using the ForzaTune and QuickTune apps for a base tune level so I don’t need to know specifically about tuning, more just the build aspects.

Thanks for any advice.

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It depends on what you want to do with the car? Drag? Street? Drift? I have setup cars in Forza 7 in drag strip. I also set up cars for street in horizon 4. I use Forzatune 7 android app for suspension setups. ride height, gearing, aero, braking is my own. I use the following gearing though for most setups; 1st 2.68, 2nd, 1.78, 3rd 1.30, 4th 1.00, 5th .80, 6th .64 … braking for street i set the pedal at 125 to 130%…good luick

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The PI system is pretty heavily weighted towards handling. Often things like rear aero and wider tires subtract PI, though they provide universal improvement for most cars. All the HP upgrades cost PI. Start with handling, then work in HP if you have points left. I prioritize accel and launch after handling.

I do not think there is even a rule of thumb for how far to upgrade cars - some cars work well 2 or 3 classes from base. Pay attention to the weight of engine upgrades.

I play pretty much only online ranked, so the rest applies to that:
Try to hit the max PI for your class (A, S1, etc.) Everything but off-road builds benefit from all weight reduction.
AWD is required. Even if RWD is faster around a track, the minute you have other cars, there’s a chance you’ll leave the track, and then you’re dead. To say nothing of free roam rushes. Guys driving Ultimas always finish last.

Then, to get the hang of things, I’d slap rally/snow tires on everything. And rally suspension.

Race tires and suspension are faster around tracks (strangely including wet ones), but at a meaningful PI cost difference - so the same car is more powerful with rally tires. And the off road advantage to rally tires and suspension is significant.

At this point, I often use the same car model for street/road and dirt races - with the street/road version having race tires and suspension. Then perhaps one car model for sprint/fast tracks, another for tight circuits.
Off road requires something in an off road or SUV category. The buggies aren’t heavy enough, and the dedicated rally cars aren’t generally fast enough (top speed).

There’s also a wide variance in how cars perform within each PI level - easily a 5+ second difference on a 1-minute track between fast and slow cars in the same class.

And last, brakes - wheelspin or sliding on locked brakes means you’re not going as fast as you could. I run with brake pressure at 70% to avoid locking up. Can’t imagine going over 100 unless you’re using HOTAS and have good pedal feel.

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You’re asking for advice that is way too generalized. The only way to learn to build is to do it and figure out what works and what doesn’t. Some cars can be built from C to S1 class and will work great there. Others will be terrible if you try to upgrade them that far. It’s completely dependent on what car your building and what you’re building it for.

Building for different surfaces isn’t that difficult. You’re right that most dirt and cross country tracks incorporate some paved roads, but a rally suspension is going to be able to handle asphalt a lot better than a race suspension is going to be able to handle dirt. So if you’re building for dirt races, use the rally suspension. It’ll be soft and high enough to handle the dirt but will still be able to handle the asphalt okay as well. If you’re building for the road racing series or street scene, use race suspension if possible because you don’t need your springs to be as soft and you can keep the car lower to the ground. If you’re building for cross country, start with a vehicle that is optimized for it such as a truck, SUV, or buggy. They’ll have access to offroad tires and higher ride heights to handle the extremely harsh terrain.

Whether or not you swap everything to AWD is really a question of principle. Are you going for leaderboard spots or do you want to have fun and experience each car’s individuality? Swapping everything to AWD means you lose out on the experience of driving RWD and even FWD cars. Yes, AWD might technically be faster, but if you’re only ever going to drive the fastest car in the game then there are a lot of fun cars you’re going to be missing out on. Same goes for drivetrain. If you take a Subaru BRZ and throw an AWD drivetrain swap on it, you’re basically defeating what makes the BRZ so special: It’s an RWD sportscar from Subaru. Personally I typically leave drivetrain stock. Most rally cars that I build for dirt are AWD stock anyway which is where it really matters most. And even FWD cars such as the Fiesta and Civic are fine in their classes. I think people overhype the AWD a bit too much.

Regarding the apps/calculators, just don’t use them. They’re garbage, I don’t care what anyone says. Open up the telemetry and tune by actually driving the car. Are you oversteering? Understeering? Is your car rolling too much? Does your suspension take too long to settle after going over bumps? Learn what changes you can make to the suspension to fix that. No calculator is going to be able to give you a one-size-fits-all tune that works for every car in the game and you’re better off starting from scratch and tuning by feel than going off some arbitrary formula someone who’s never actually worked on a real car came up with.

I’ve spent hours building and tuning cars in both Forza Horizon and Motorsport titles. You’re going to make a lot of bad builds/tunes before you start making good ones, but you’ll understand why those builds/tunes didn’t work and what you can do better in your next build. It all comes with experience, not from calculators or guides. It’s not for everyone, and that’s why you’re able to download tunes from other people.

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Thanks very much for the detailed replies, I really appreciate it. I think perhaps my questions were a little too general but I am going to build cars for each race type, so one for rally, one for off-road/cross-country, one for street/track racing and one for drifting. My main concern was whether I should worry about making such big jumps in class from say C to S1 or similar or does it not really matter as long as the car feels ok when driving?

I usually play offline and in online co-op campaign with a friend so seeing as the AI ramps up or down based on what class you’re driving I suppose it doesn’t really matter too much.

At the moment I am trying to stick in the stock class of each car and just make marginal upgrades to get up to the maximum PI of each class before tipping over into the next class. I am also leaning towards keeping the stock drivetrain of each car rather than swapping to AWD as I suppose if I upgrade every car to AWD then they will all start to feel the same, just with varying power levels and speed. The trouble is that Horizon is primarily an arcade experience and the physics behave as such and so it probably is a more comfortable experience with AWD. I wouldn’t say this game is a simulation at all (and I don’t want it to be) and so it’s kind of a bit pointless comparing the cars and upgrade/tuning abilities of this game to what the real world car would have and feel like. To that end, maybe it doesn’t matter if I go for more unrealistic parts and tunes.

I primarily want to have fun and lap times and winning comes much lower down the list for me. I enjoy collecting the cars and upgrading them but in order to get more credits to buy them and upgrade them, I need to complete challenges or races and more often than not I find it all boils down to how well you can drift. A lot of the skills and bonuses etc are based on drifting. That’s something I am terrible at (I usually oversteer or spin out) so I want to build a good drift car that I can also handle. On a side-note, do you just tap the handbrake button or hold it down a bit to drift? I find the handbrake just results in a spin or oversteer and braking to be a bit more manageable but either way, my technique is probably rubbish.

Anyway, I think I will keep experimenting with different builds and see if I can get my head around tuning. I feel I have a bit more understanding now about what to upgrade first and that a lot of it is down to personal preference rather than what’s best in general. Thanks very much for the help!