CarX Street: Every Starter Car, Ranked

Summary

The NX5 is slow but customizable, unsuitable for drifting, lacks speed, and requires upgrades for better performance.
The HC6 is grippy, bad at drifting, and only performs well in sprint events, putting players at a disadvantage in drift events.
The DTS balances speed and drifting well, is best for drift events, accelerates quickly, lacks customization options, and is good for new players. (121 characters)

The car racing community has had their eyes set on CarX Street’s PC release for a while now. It’s been out on Android and iOS for some time, and was finally released on Steam on August 29, 2024. Now, gamers can finally see what developer CarX Technologies has been working on. Even though it’s still a work in progress, the game is quite promising. It features a unique, arcade drifting physics system that’s considerably different from the usual arcade racing games that are dominating the market.

The first car players get to drive when the game opens up is from a much higher-tiered class. They will drive it only for a while before the game takes it back, and gives players the option to pick one of the three starter cars. However, these cars are not equal in quality. Which one is the best to choose?

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3 NX5

Too Slow For Drift And Races Alike

The NX5, which is a rebranding of the Mazda MX5, best fits the description of “jack of all trades, master of none.” Unlike the RC6, the NX5 can drift well and is a good car to take into drift events. However, the one major drawback of the NX5 is its slow speed, which makes it a pain to travel from one place to another in the game's open world. Granted, a car's speed and acceleration can be upgraded later down the road, but when comparing the out-of-the-box performance of the NX5, it falls short of the other two starters.

Players who pick the NX5 should expect to fall a few places below the podium in the events. Taking longer to finish makes sense when a car is slow, but something unexpected that players should look out for with the NX5 is its poor drift performance. While it drifts better than the HC6, players will often lose so much speed after a drift with the NX5 that, coupled with its slow acceleration, chaining drifts is nothing short of a Herculean task. Unless players are ready to dump some money into upgrades right from the get-go, they should be ready to be disappointed by the stock performance of the NX5.

The only redeeming factor this car has is its appearance. The Miata has always been a looker, and the game developers are well aware of that. That's why the NX5 is the most customizable starter car in CarX Street.

2 HC6

Not Good For Drift Events

Being the only FWD car in the starting lineup of CarX Street, the HC6, a direct clone of the 1994 Honda Civic, is a decent car to begin a career in this game. Due to its FWD, it won’t perform particularly well in drift events, but that’s the only major caveat. The HC6 is grippy on the open-world roads and can turn fairly well, especially if players put on the brakes before a corner. But when the car goes into a corner that is sharper than what its grip can handle, trying to drift in such a situation will only send players crashing into the outer barrier.

However, this doesn’t mean that the HC6 can’t drift at all. At low speeds, players can put on the e-brakes and drift around a corner, something that would never be possible in a real racing sim, but is allowed in CarX Street due to its arcade physics. However, the car is terrible at maintaining a drift and chaining two drifts together, requiring constant feathering of the e-brake. Only the players who really know how to tame an unruly vehicle will be able to drift with this car.

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By Prateek Pandey

Since half of all the events players can do at the start are drift events, the HC6 puts players at a serious disadvantage. Even though it’s great at performing in the sprint events, which consist of the remaining half of the events available at the beginning, it's not enough to compensate for its terrible drift performance. In terms of speed, the HC6 falls slightly short of the DTS but is considerably better than the NX5. It’s not a bad looker either. With a good body kit and a custom paint job, players can easily stand out among the crowd, even with a common starter car.

1 DTS

Hits The Perfect Balance Between Speed And Drifting

This pickup truck is a direct rendition of the 1973 Datsun 620, under a different name. For a racing game, no one would expect a pickup truck to be the underdog and perform best, but that’s exactly what it is. The DTS is an extremely well-balanced car that’s best suited to drift events. It can chain drifts together beautifully, and hold a single drift long enough to rack up drift points. Sometimes it holds drifts way too well, which can lead to the car spinning around. With this in mind, players need to follow the age-old rule of “turn right to go left” with this car, something that cannot be said for the HC6.

The other two starter cars both have major drawbacks. Meanwhile, the DTS not only forgoes a drawback, but has two strengths instead of one. In addition to its superior drifting capabilities, the DTS comes with the most powerful engine of the lot. While this doesn’t mean players will have ridiculous top speeds, it does mean that the DTS can accelerate faster than the other two starter cars. This is extremely important when it comes to drift events, since at low speeds, players won’t be able to maintain the drift for too long, nor chain them together.

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If there is a disadvantage to the DTS, it’s how mediocre it looks. The fact that there are only a few body kit options available doesn’t help its case either. Players who like to customize their cars should steer clear of the DTS. Still, some car enthusiasts might be able to create a sleeper build out of the DTS which might look very low-key on the surface but packs a punch in a race. For new players, the DTS is a much more versatile option since it’s fast in sprint events and is a good drifter as well. If they can stomach a somewhat ugly-looking car, the DTS will serve new players better in the long run.

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