Street Rod

The career Street Corsa was made for. Los Angeles, 1970: you start with a little money and a tired old car off a lot. Pull it apart, build its engine on the stand part by part, buy from the dealers, the speed shops and the paper, and race the diners’ regulars on Main Street for cash and pink slips, until the King of the streets will race you.

Take it apart

Press Parts and the car turns see-through: wheels, brakes, springs, the axle, the gearbox, the engine. Click a part and take it off, and it goes on your parts shelf. Things come off in order, like on a real car: the radiator before the engine, the wheels before the brakes, and the game tells you what’s in the way. Put the car up on the lift to get underneath.

The engine on the stand

Pull the engine and it goes onto the stand. Strip it: air cleaner, carb, intake, distributor, valve covers, exhaust manifolds, heads, down to the bare block. Turn it over to get at the bottom end. Every part you take off lands on the shelf with its wear on it, and every part you put back changes the power and the torque on the engine sheet.

Then build it your way:

• Swap parts: a bigger carb, an aluminium intake, ram’s horn manifolds. The speed shops sell them, the paper has them cheap, the junkyard has them cheaper.
• Rebuild them: worn parts make the car slower. Rebuild a part with a kit, or swap it at the counter.
• Send it to the machine shop: bore the block, grind the crank, port the heads. Leave the part, it comes back days later.
• Crate engines and kits come in a box: assemble them on the stand or straight into the car.

With an engine pack any block fits any car with an empty engine bay: a big block in a Bel Air, a 283 in a Falcon.

Buy, sell, haggle

Car lots across town, private sellers in the Newspaper, parts dealers and the junkyard. With the AI on, salesmen and sellers talk to you and you haggle in your own words; without it the game plays the same, only nobody talks back.

Main Street

Press Go race! and drive to a diner. Each has its regulars and a horsepower class, and the fast ones won’t race a slow car: pick a racer, a race and a bet. Or cruise the streets, wait at the curb, and somebody pulls up. Drag races, road races and time attacks, for cash or for pink slips, and the cops come out at night. Work your way up to the King.

Get it

Install it first: it’s the default setting. Its places are mods of their own since 0.4.0, and its download brings them all: the garage, the gas station, the shops and Main Street. The engine packs give its cars their real engines to build. New to it? Start with the Street Rod tutorials.