This guide aims to cover several subjects at once:
1) Building cars for each club on a budget;
2) Creation of an efficient way of farming Elite races after completing clubs;
3) Engine swaps and car tuning;
4) Avoiding variety at all costs.
Throughout this guide you will understand how the Initial M theory works to cover all of the aforementioned subjects.
Initial M
M – Miata
I – Is
A – Always
T – The
A – Answer
This theory emplies that every choice can be made right if you opt for a Miata.
Starting the game the right way
Actually, there’s only one choice, it’s the Miata.
Use it to complete the Wild Juniors club, as a reward you will get a second Miata.
Wait, NX5 and NX5C? Is there any difference?
The answer is no, it’s the same car. The only significant difference, is that NX5C is the one without the roof, and the NX5 can be transformed into fastback with bodykit upgrade.
Otherwise the performance and tuning is all the same.
Class rating and… Rating
Class rating (marked C) is simply the specific power of a vehicle.
Example: my Miata has 251 HP and weights 1262 kg. What’s the specific power of my car?
251 / 1262 = 0,1988…
And so, how is it tied to our class rating?
Well, it’s easy, it simply gets multiplied by 1000 for our convenience.
Class rating is then equal to 199 (rounded value).
With this information, we already can estimate the requirements for every class:
- C6 350+: from 0,35 hp to kg;
- C5 349: up to 0,35 hp to kg;
- C4 299: up to 0,3 hp to kg;
- C3 249: up to 0,25 hp to kg;
- C2 199: up to 0,2 hp to kg;
- C1 149: up to 0,15 hp to kg.
Overall rating
Overall rating (marked R) is simply the “coolness” of our car. The particularity of this rating, is that it gets affected both by performance and styling parts.
The biggest impact on overall rating can be seen from engine, transmission and body swaps.
Styling parts all contribute, but mostly full bodykits, neon, rims, interior parts.
Endgame parts and tuning
Let’s walk through all of the categories and see what’s essential.
Bear in mind, the information below is provided for endgame builds, not just for the start of the game.
Spacers can be chosen on your preference. Only Ultimate provide you the ability to adjust them further. Though I generally tend to make 2/1 for drift builds and 0/1 for grip builds. I could easily get away by using Street spacers on front or rear independently.
Rims should be Street tier on a Miata. I prefer using 215/45 R15 on front and 235/45 R15 on rear for all my builds.
Tires – Stretch tires are good and cheap.
One of the most important tuning sections in the game. I have all Ultimate parts on my suspensions, but with the “ideal” setup I came up with for all of my Miatas, I understand now that all of the values can be adjusted even with Racing parts.
Ultimate parts increase the range on the extremes of the sliders, but the middle section remains the same. Luckily, the majority of my “ideal” settings are closer to the middle values than to extremes.
Suspension arms – Racing tier provides you enough adjustments to make the car handle as you want. However, this is only true for grip racing. Drift builds require Ultimate suspension arms, because they need the maximum Steering angle.
Stabilizers (Anti-roll bars) – only Ultimate tier parts can be adjusted.
Brake system – only Ultimate, if available. Braking power and brake bias tuning is crucial.
Springs – can do fine with Racing, both for grip and drift.
Dampers – same as with Springs, Racing tier is enough.
Car Weight Reduction – Racing or Elite will do the trick. This is due to the fact, that most of the time you won’t make use of full reduction and sometimes you will be even forced to add the weight, to balance the car for a specific class. Some builds don’t even require this part to be bought.
Fuel tank – go with whatever you can buy, Ultimate is best though, because it gives you the most of tank volume and lowers your Class rating, allowing for more performance mods to be installed.
Front and rear aero – Racing or Elite are enough to tune your car.
Body swap – not needed.
Clutch and Gearbox – the more the better, i.e. Ultimate.
Differential – personal preference, you can even leave it stock, sacrificing Overall rating (R). Racing differential is capable of the same performance as the Ultimate.
Drive – AWD Ultimate not needed.
Transmission swap – only needed, when you swap your engine for one of these:
- RB26
- VQ37
- 2JZ
- LS
Choose between T50S (6 speed) or T70 (7 speed) for a smoother gear range and higher top speed.
Be careful, when you swap your transmission all the parts you bought will be lost!
See the next section for Engine swaps.
Tires and sport fuel
If you read my tuning guide, you know that tires that you’re buying in tuning shop or gas station affect greatly the handling of your car.
For grip builds always use Racing+ tires.
For drift builds Street and Street+.
Sport tires are to be experimented with.
All the tires you buy are shared between your cars.
Example: If you buy 10 sets of Racing+ tires, you will be able to put a set on each of your 7 Miatas at the same time, leaving the general pool with 3 sets.
With the 1.03 update, stock fuel became cheap and is also lasts for a long time. However, this is not the case for sport fuel, which costs 400 Credits for 1L. Or 34 000 Credits for a full tank.
Seems like a lot, and it surely is. But by the Second phase you will understand that your main goal is more Streetcoins, not Credits. Since you will save a lot on your cars, Credits will flow into your account.
If you have enough of resources, I suggest you fuel some of your cars with Sport fuel. It will give you a slightly faster acceleration and increase your top speed by around 20 km/h.
This is just a recommendation and you surely will be fine with stock fuel.
Engine swaps for Miata
The stock BP engine is nice and allows Miata to go as high as C5 class. However it reaches it’s Class rating peak at 322 mark with all Ultimate parts, which is far from 349. Even in C4 class this Engine forces you to spend a lot of Streetcoins. The acceleration is slightly worse too.
The main advantage of Engine swaps is that they allow you to save Streetcoins and have a car that is still upgradeable if needed.
Let’s take for example a stock BP motor upgraded with Ultimate parts to be in the top of C4 (299).
The full Ultimate parts set will cost you 165 Streetcoins. This doesn’t take into account transmission swap, so you will be limited with the default 5 speed, which will struggle to go beyond 260-270 km/h. Need 6 speed? 41 Streetcoins and it’s yours, so the full setup is at 206 already.
What about VQ37 swap? 106 the engine and 41 the gearbox, 147 Streetcoins in total. For C4 class you won’t even need to touch the Engine section, except maybe for Racing Exhaust.
Pretty useless on Miata. The stock engine makes enough power to perform well in C3. In C4 class SR20 needs Ultimate ECU, Elite Big Turbo Kit 1, combined with Elite Car Weight Reduction. In the end it costs too much Streetcoins to be worth it.
Relatively cheap, 82 Streetcoins, this should be available to you easily by the end of the First phase (more on that later) of your career. It’s stock Turbo is so powerful, that Street and Racing upgrades will only downgrade it.
Thus, this Engine provides you with the ability to enter a class below or above with the right parts.
I chose this Engine for one of my C4 Miatas. All Engine parts are Racing tier and Turbo is left stock. Elite Turbo will get it to C5, while Ultimate will get it to the top of C6, albeit this will require you to spend Streetcoins. Car Weight Reduction is only Elite tier and the reduction itself is not even adjusted.
This Engine works well with T50S 6 speed Transmission.
A monster of an Engine. If I had to choose only one Engine to swap for all my Miatas, this would be my ultimate choice.
You might wonder, why choose an Engine without Turbo, if there’s RB26, that is cheaper?
Well, the answer is simple: It’s as powerful naturally aspirated, as RB26 with its turbo. Now imagine what will happen, if we just add a Sport tier Turbo to VQ37?
Top of the C5 class! And that’s with added body weight through Elite Car Weight Reduction and without added Turbo pressure. Racing Turbo and weight tuning will give you top of the C6 class.
With this Engine you don’t need Ultimate Engine parts at all! But what you need is the same good 6 speed. Or you can also experiment with 7 speed, they’re almost the same price.
The principle is the same as with RB26, a huge Turbo that’s so good, you need at least Elite Turbo upgrade, to increase its rating. Racing Engine parts are enough. I used this Engine for C5, it can easily go to the top of C6 and beyond. Maybe C7? Who knows.
This Engine also needs a Transmission swap to give you its all.
Would I recommend it? Not sure, for the price of 130 Streetcoins, I see no real benefits compared to VQ37 swap.
154 Streetcoins, that’s the price of naturally aspirated 495 HP in a Miata.
The principle is the same as with VQ37. Big NA Engine, that will give even more power, once you put a Turbo on it.
Would I recommend LS swapping a Miata? Not at this stage of the game, when going beyond C6 class is useless. This would make more sense with C7-C8 class.
The LS price alone is worth VQ and Transmission swaps.
Universal tuning setups
You want to build your own setup but you’re not sure where to start?
Check out my guide on tuning below:
About clubs
In order to access clubs, your car needs to comply to the Class rating (C) and overall rating (R).
3 drift clubs also require you to have an RWD car: Savage C3, Drift United C4 and 21 Tribe C5.
Western Sierra C2 club is a unique club to have a level 19 requirement.
Every club has it’s unique set of races.
After completing the club, you will get Credits, Streetcoins, XP rewards and access to Elite races. Some clubs also provide cars as reward.
Elite races are essentialy the races from the club’s rotation, with the same AI cars, that you can replay. The allow you to gain Credits, Streetcoins and XP endlessly.
Elite club races have a cooldown of 15 minutes of real time and require you to have at least one car assigned to a club in order to participate in them.
Club strategy
As you already know, the timer on Elite races is 15 minutes. So every time you complete an Elite race, you can go and watch YouTube… just kidding, of course.
As we have 14 clubs, then one may think it’s a good idea to have all 14 clubs filled with cars. But that’s a lot of investment and is impossible to make use of.
If you split all your 15 minutes of cooldown between 14 clubs, you will be left with 1min 4s of time to complete each Elite race on map. Sounds crazy. Especially since on average you will spend more than 2 minutes on a typical race. This also includes loading screens, opening the map, starting new race.
The ideal approach would be to have 7 cars in the top-7 clubs, that pay best. That way you will be able to cycle through Elite races without cooldown.
Unfortunately, you can’t just start the game and enter top-7 clubs.
The 2 phases approach is very simple. Beat the lowest 7/14 clubs and leave one car in every club. This will allow to build up the amount of currency and level up to unlock parts and engine swaps (more on that later).
First phase
Start by beating the clubs in the following order:
As you can see, you will already have 2 free Miatas by the end of the first club. Every time you’re about to start a new club, just buy a Miata.
This phase doesn’t require you to swap components, only to upgrade some of them, depending on required class.
As described in Class rating section, your class rating depends only on power to weight ratio. Visit the nearest Tuning shop, to change parts.
- Power can be increased in Engine section.
- Weight can be reduced in Body section.
- Weight can be further reduced in Weight Reduction tuning.
C1 cars are very easy to modify, since you only need a couple of Class rating points to max out their rating limit.
C2 require more modifications. You will need Racing (red) Engine parts, except for the Turbo, leave it stock. To achieve Class rating of 199, complete your build with Sport (green) Turbo Kit 1 or any Car Weight Reduction.
C3 class will force you to install all Racing Engine parts, including Turbo Kit 2 to achieve 249 Class rating. Still, this option is very accessible.
Before proceeding to Second phase, make sure to keep one Miata in C2 class, you will need it for the next 7 clubs!
Second phase
Continue to beat the clubs from the list below:
Second phase of career is the preparation for endgame. Here, you are building the foundation of your farming.
The previous 7 acquired Miatas need to be setup for levels C4, C5 and C6. The exception being one Miata in C2 that you should leave for Western Sierra club. Western Sierra Elite races are quite easy and pay more than those from C3 clubs.
You will get enough Streetcoins for Engine swaps from leveling up and beating the clubs one by one. If you ever get stuck for the next swap, simply take time to level up and complete Elite races from the First phase.
Personally, I almost didn’t have to farm Streetcoins at all. Which is surprising, considering I made many useless puchases and made Engine swaps that were more expensive than VQ37.
Once all 7 clubs are completed, you can enjoy farming Elite races without cooldowns!
This will allow you to buy even more Miatas!
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Additional information
Additional information will be published here, when the guide gets updated.