Last year, Ford of Europe turned to the sim racing community to help design a new racecar for the virtual world. Now, the resulting concept, the Team Fordzilla P1, has been transformed into an extremely elaborate sim-racing rig. The car is ready to take on the world’s virtual racetracks thanks to an HP Z4 Workstation with an Nvidia RTX A6000 48 GB graphics card, all of which is hooked up to the car’s steering wheel and pedals. Drivers can enter a real cockpit in order to race online using an HP Reverb G2 VR Headset. Ford has also hooked the system up to the car’s lighting system.
When you enter the vehicle, lights in the cabin pulse gently, awaiting your command. When you start racing, the lights become synchronized with the action, and even the exterior brake lights turn on when you hit the brake pedal. Along with the lights, there’s a bespoke sound system in the cabin to give sim racers the most immersive experience possible.
Built as a concept car, the design process took seven full weeks as Team Fordzilla sent out Twitter polls, asking its followers to decide on important facets of the design like whether or not the powertrain should be hidden. The full car was presented to the world in 2020. Now, Ford has given it a new, sim-racing-inspired livery, which is covered in up-to-date references like “BRB” and “The Cake is a Lie.”
The experience was such a good one for Ford, that the company plans on doing it again. Along with the announcement about the car’s new role, it announced that it would ask gamers to help design the latest Supervan. Part of a tradition stretching back 50 years, the Ford Supervan is a race-inspired version of one of its vans. Ford kick off the polling at Gamescom 2021 (August 25-27) where it will ask gamers if they want a track-focused or an off-road rally Supervan.
