Project Motor Racing gets loud with a nine-car V8 Power Pack
Straight4 Studios has released the V8 Power Pack for Project Motor Racing, adding nine rear-wheel-drive V8 racers across three classes and setting them loose at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
Project Motor Racing has just got a lot louder. Straight4 Studios released the V8 Power Pack on 15 September for PC and consoles, adding nine V8 race cars across three classes and sending every one of them to the same piece of asphalt: Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. On Steam the pack costs $14.99, with the base game at $39.99.
Three classes of very loud machinery
The pack splits its nine cars into three groups. V8 Evo brings Australian touring-car muscle with the 2023 Chevrolet Camaro AU and 2023 Ford Mustang AU. The modern USV8 class fields the 2022 Chevrolet Camaro, 2022 Dodge Challenger and 2022 Ford Mustang, built to a cost-controlled formula of tube-frame chassis, approved constructors and tightly managed performance, with all three running the same naturally aspirated 6.2-litre V8 restricted to around 500bhp and 657lb-ft of torque.
Then there is Historic USV8, for anyone who thinks modern racing has become a little too tidy: the 1971 AMC Javelin, 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302, 1970 Plymouth Barracuda and the 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28. That last one is the descendant of the car Roger Penske and Mark Donohue made the benchmark of American road racing, after Donohue's ten wins in 1968.
Across all three classes the pitch is identical: big V8 power, rear-wheel drive, and no traction control, ABS or electronic aids of any kind. Straight4 says the appeal is putting the driver at the centre of the experience, which in the historic cars mostly means mechanical grip, throttle steering, body roll and a live rear axle doing its best to kill you.
Road Atlanta, two layouts
Road Atlanta ties the pack together, and it uses two layouts of the circuit best known as the home of Petit Le Mans: fast esses, heavy braking zones, blind crests and kerbs that will happily judge your suspension and your nerve. Version 2.2.1.0, released on 11 September, delivered the content needed for the pack ahead of launch, so the update is already sitting in your install.
Our opinion
Sim racing downloadable content usually sells you one hero car and a pile of filler, so nine cars across three genuinely different disciplines for $14.99 is a fair deal. The choices are the point: Australian V8s and 1970s American road-racing machinery are both underserved by the genre, and Historic USV8 is a class built on the premise that a homologation special should be a slightly dishonest car. The risk is that three flavours of V8 muscle start tasting the same after a few hours, and one track will not disguise that forever. But a pack that explicitly refuses traction control, ABS and electronic aids in 2026 is making an argument about what sim racing should be, and it is an argument worth hearing at volume.