Forza Horizon 6 is here, and it’s pretty perfect. One of the only downsides is the smaller vehicle roster versus its predecessor, but with more than 550 available at launch you’re hardly limited for choice.
You’ll see articles out there telling you about the fastest cars, the best for each event type and category, but that doesn’t tackle the most important aspect of all: how cool they are. These vehicles won’t win you races regardless of your skill, or outpace your rivals. But they will ensure you’ll look absolutely immaculate, whatever position you finish in. Buy them, and sit back in the knowledge that you’ve won before the race even started.
The fact that Alfa Romeo is in the game at launch this time is a victory in itself, with Forza Horizon 5 having launched with nary a cloverleaf in sight. We were tempted by earlier models, but the touring car pedigree of this confrontationally boxy 155 wins out.
The 1964 DB5 has appeared in Forza titles all the way back to Horizon 3 , and every time it returns it looks better. A genuinely timeless chassis design, sure it has the 007 factor in its favour but it doesn’t rely on big screen appearances to retain its cool. It even drifts pretty well …
Simply a perfect car. Not only do its analog dials and abrupt right angles conjure a dearly missed motoring era, it retains incredible poise and purpose over 40 years after the first one rolled out of Ingolstadt. “The car that did more to further the cause of the performance car than almost any other," we say in our review , “Audi’s 4WD icon still has relevance today.” Worth having in your FH6 garage, then.
Feel free to mentally swap in your M3 of choice for this entry if you feel passionately enough about it, since FH6 ’s car list features all the important ones. For our money, though, it’s the E46 and its beautifully balanced, Need For Speed cover-gracing looks that warrants an immediate Japanese road trip.
Plus, in videogame form, you don’t even have to worry about the harsh gear shifts – the only con in our BMW M3 CSL review .
Another entry that could be occupied by any number of equally gorgeous models from the same manufacturer, since FH6 ’s Ferrari list is particularly voluminous. Designed for GT racing, where it dominated, the 250 GTO was built in small batches – only 33 of them in total. Scarcity like that isn’t an issue in the digital world, though, as many Forza players will attest having been overtaken in their hypercar by a perfectly tuned 250 GTO in an online race.
Imposingly elegant and still incredibly competitive against other cars in its class in Horizon , this one’s a heart and a head pick combined. Better looking than that other Ferrari , in any case.
It’s not easy trying to follow in the GT40’s footsteps, but subsequent GTs have done a spectacular job of retaining the fundamental shape and performance while cramming them full of modern tech that makes them even faster.
Enter the infinitely grippy 2017 GT, a joy to drive on each and every corner in Horizon 6 ’s Japan. Just know that this car’s being immediately dropped from the list if we see even one of them suffocating in gaudy vinyls and a massive cartoon girl design. You have been warned.
“A blood-curdling, eye-rattling earthquake of a car” is how we described the Venom F5 after spending some time behind the wheel. A bespoke model from Texan tuner John Hennessey, this one’s not short on horsepower. 1,817 of them, in actual fact. That, obviously, makes it a perfect daily driver for popping down to the 7-Eleven and picking up a strawberry cream cheese sando.
Somehow Hyundai’s attention-grabbing 2022 concept looks more at home in a videogame than on the real road. We still want one for both realms, of course, but they’re considerably easier to acquire in this setting. The hydrogen fuel cell and electric powertrain give you 670bhp to play with. As long as you don’t meet a Hennessey Venom F5 at the traffic lights that should be plenty.
Hypercars can start to feel a bit rote and homogenous in this series. Fast is fast, after all, and after a certain top speed there’s not much discerning one billionaire’s track toy from another. Unless you’re driving a Jesko.
A terrifying nightmare of carbon fibre, seething brake discs and untamed power, this is “the hypercar’s hypercar” as we note in our 10/10 review . You could drop the better part of three million quid on one, or you could drive one in Horizon 6 . Or both, we suppose.
A controversial pick, we’ll concede, but fast with a massive back catalogue of the fighting bull’s heritage, we just keep coming back to this one. A marriage of nu-school battery power and combustion engine, the Revuelto is named after a famously rebellious 19th century bull who escaped the arena and into the alleys on multiple occasions, and somehow – if you squint – that maps to this hybrid. Aesthetically it’s still in touch with the Diablo and Countach, but it’s bleeding edge enough to look at home on Shibuya crossing.
A brutalist wedge of pure performance that simply doesn’t care what you think. The heritage alone makes this a prime candidate for your garage, being the first rally car built for purpose rather than converted from an existing road model.
Plus, the Hoonigan RS200 drivers get really cross when you beat them in this.
Its name may sound like a vape flavour, but this is, in fact, “without question the best-handling EV on sale” as we point out in our 10/10 review. It debuted in FH5 , and still has an air of exoticism which, frankly, the Porsche Taycan can’t compete with.
What it comes down to is this: you’re going to want a drift car in this game about driving around Japan. And you could be contrarian about it, or you could just do what your heart wants and put a widebody kit on this gorgeous ‘90s incarnation of the RX-7. Who are you trying to kid?
To an entire generation of gamers, this is the videogame car. Always in the upper echelons of Need For Speed and Gran Turismo ’s rosters and almost never spotted in the wild, the Spec II Skyline GTR has an agricultural look and feel to it, almost as though it’s angry to have been taken away from its far more pressing work in the fields to entertain you on the road.
Don’t you dare get it in anything other than standard issue blue.
You know why.
Is there another car in FH6 ’s collection that more succinctly sums up a country and a decade than this one? We’re betting not. The post-war fins, the domed roof and more chrome than a Noughties rapper’s mouth – it’s a driveable time capsule that’s distinct from the other vintage US models in the game, which are all vying for dominance in the same very specific muscle car field.
The “fastest and most driveable 911 there’s ever been” , the Turbo S is another highly technical marriage of electric power and combustion, like the Revuelto. Also like the Revuelto, it’s stayed in close touch with its ancestors and looks just as primed for a coffee table book cover as the earliest models of 911.
Renault automotive and Williams F1 had a mad idea in 1993 - what if they worked together on the popular Clio hatchback to create a special edition that was far too scary for anyone to actually drive? And thus, the Clio Williams was born. A landmark moment in hot hatch culture, and a car that retains far more dignity than its aggressively styled descendents.
Ultra-rare – only 53 were built in total – and effortlessly gorgeous, the Cobra has been a mainstay in Forza games for years but still makes us stop and have a gawp when we see one in a multiplayer race.
Its low centre of gravity converts 425bhp to something useable, a huge number for 1965, and a number intended for the race track until it was converted to a road-legal model at the last minute.
Forza Horizon 5 went to great efforts to place the newer Supra model at centre stage of your Mexican adventure, but it’s still the ‘98 incarnation that has our hearts.
This RZ model’s powered by a three litre twin-turbocharged inline-six, and trying to wrestle it around rural Japan is one of life’s great joys. That’s all.
