Prodrive Announce "THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SIMULATOR IN THE WORLD"

prodrive_racing_simulator.jpg
Working together with legendary car designer Ian Callum, Prodrive announced a new high-class sim rig. You can reserve the package now for £39,000 excluding VAT, duties and shipping.

The Hardware & Software​

Stunningly, the entire rig is encased in a birch wood framing, painted black on the outside.

The Simulator will include a 12 GB VRAM Nvidia Graphics card. This means either a 2060, 3060, 3080 or 3080 Ti will be in the computer. Along that, 16 GB RAM will be available.

The included monitor will be a 49'' Dual QHD with a refresh rate of 165 Hz.

A Simucube 2 PRO powers a Precision Sim Engineering LM-PRO. The pedals are said to be electrically adjustable mechanical pedals. Presumably, those pedals would be designed by Prodrive itself.

The seat is a Cobra Nogaro Street in an upright seating position, allowing for a focus on GT and rally racing.

As an accessory, customers receive a Bowers & Wilkins PX7 headphone.

The PC will already be set up basically and include an Assetto Corsa installation.

If you decide to get one of these rigs, you are going to need a bit of space though. The entire thing is 3.3m long and 1.23m wide.

The Parties Involved​

Prodrive, the manufacturer of this beauty, is known for producing several championship-winning race cars, especially in rallies. Developing many rally cars with Subaru for names like Colin McRae or Petter Solberg, they are used to racing success.

More recently, Prodrive has been developing Dakar rally cars and GTE cars. They even won with Aston Martin Racing in 2017 and 2020 in the GTE Pro class.

Together with Ian Callum, they developed the new Prodrive Racing Simulator. Callum is known for designing cars like the Ford RS200, Aston Martin DB9 and Jaguar F-Type amongst many others.

Impressions​

Overall, the rig looks very well produced and stylish. If I had a good amount of money just lying around, I'd think about getting one myself. There is just one detail that seems off.

keyboard.jpg


The keyboard. It's meant to be in a side pocket. This means you cannot bind any of your keys to the keyboard without having to get it out every time. And given that the only push buttons assignable otherwise are 12 by number and on the wheel, some people might need to bind extra buttons.

I'd expect a nearly 40 grand rig to be at least completely functional and practical. And it just seems like "assigning extra buttons" was an afterthought of the design process. Practicality should still stay above beauty.

What are your thoughts on the Prodrive Racing Simulator? Are you planning on getting it? Let us know in the comments down below!
About author
Julian Strasser
Motorsports and Maker-stuff enthusiast. Part time jack-of-all-trades. Owner of tracc.eu, a sim racing-related service provider and its racing community.

Comments

...joking aside, their will possibly be people out there that will purchase this, people that have $100,000 worth of Audio equipment, Garages full of expensive cars, own multi-million dollar Houses...it's a target market.
Agree.

And they probably will use it two times to impress their surroundings and then it will sit unused just like all the other expensive stuff they bought for much the same reasons.
 
The ProDrive looks beautiful, however I envisage it will be hard to get in and out off unless the roof has a pivot hinge that allows it to open.

At this price range, I prefer the aesthetics (and practicalities) of Aston Martin's Curv simulator.

c4d9c7_7394fa5928e84b17b729eac3a87eb759~mv2.jpg
 
for this money i would buy an old MX-5 and pimp it to a very top class simulator, with simtag pedals and Simucube baseand rim + motion included.
This designertoy is useless
 
Have to admit, it is a funny article.
Somebody must have forgotten to set the alarm for Prodrive.
Heck!...they may have fallen asleep in that thing and just woken up believing it to be April 1st.
 
"The Simulator will include a 12 GB VRAM Nvidia Graphics card. This means either a 2060, 3060, 3080 or 3080 Ti will be in the computer. Along that, 16 GB RAM will be available."

Are you kidding me? For 39000 pounds it better includes several 4090Ti in flipping SLI configuration. Sounds like some overpriced marketing stunt to me. Better bet is to safe your money to pay your electricity and gas bills at the end of the month in this time and age.
 
for this money i would buy an old MX-5 and pimp it to a very top class simulator, with simtag pedals and Simucube baseand rim + motion included.
This designertoy is useless
Or you could buy a brand new MX5 plus a KW V3 Clubsport suspension and travel to the Nordschleife. It's still cheaper than this rig.
 
Indeed.

Most 2060s have 6GB, there are 12GB versions, however (not from Nvidia themselves but Gigabyte for example has one). I don't think those will be used, though. Since we don't know I had to include it in the list, however.

If leaks and announcements about the required electricity are to be trusted, the 30 series is preferable to the 40 series in terms of power needs. Also, the 40 series imo will be helplessly overpowered. But then again, why would people who have 40 grand for a rig care about electricity cost? :D
Yeah, not to mention that hey, you are selling this....... thing that somehow people will fit inside their homes for 40k. Why not just go all out with a 3090 ti or stuff like that? Why bother with high but not top tier if price is ignored altogether?
 
It is made of Birch, around a shell of carbon fiber, all complete with motor-steering wheel, steering wheel, pedals, PC, monitor, seat, headphones, and the Assetto Corsa program (the latter is the one that costs less in this whole inclusive), all of excellent level and quality. But in the end?! It is not even that functional, because the keyboard fits in a pocket. if you have to use it you have to extract it and there is no shelf and if I have to add some buttons why are the twelve on the steering wheel not enough? And the mouse? ....... I would say extremely expensive for a Design armchair with a monitor and a steering wheel. Apart from the aesthetics and design, nothing to say beautiful, but for the Simracing there are various errors and no possibility of expansion or customization.
 
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Basically, the main selling argument is that, with this design and the glossy black finition of a piano, your wife won't be ashamed anymore because of your big toy. She'll have a big highly designed useless furniture for 40k, with a sweeping canopy....

And you'll be ashamed of your big furniture in front of your simracers friends who have much better rigs for less than 1/4 of the price.... well you have the prodrive product and the sweeping canopy, and peace at home, isn't that great?
 
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