Power gear

Some cars in stunts have the ability to reach a so-called power gear or 6th gear ^[1], or simply PG. This usually happens while driving in the last official gear with a high RPM, and doing a jump. Some cars can reach it from any speed, when driving on a loop, and shifting to the last gear.

6th gear allows cars to go a lot faster than the given maximum speed and more importantly not even slow down on grass, when driving in 6th gear. These are: Porsche March INDY, Ferrari GTO, Corvette ZR1 and Acura NSX. There are some important differences between Power Gear behaviour of those cars:

• The INDY, Ferrari and Corvette go 245 mph in 6th gear, while the Acura only goes 203 mph.
• The INDY and the Acura can reach power gear from any speed using a loop, shifting up to 5th gear before reaching halfway through it.
• Also, INDY and Acura can reach Power Gear on a jump before getting airborne, or while driving around a left/right corkscrew.
• Unlike the other mentioned cars, the Acura is unable to do slide turns on grass or road while in Power Gear - attempting to do so will get the car out of Power Gear. (see, however, Helicopter trick)

In general, power gear cars can be grouped in two categories: rigid power gear cars, which attain power gear exclusively by reaching speeds higher than ~225mph, and flexible power gear cars, which can reach power gear as they are driven through surface changes (such as jumps and loops), the minimum speed for that to happen being dependant on both car and surface characteristics (and generally much lower than 225mph). Ferrari and Corvette have rigid power gear, while Indy and Acura have flexible ones.

For all four cars, power gear also allows the Fence Sliding trick on water.

As power gear allows for sustaining very high speeds for extended periods of time as well as much more radical grass shortcuts, finding the 6th gear spots on a competition track is usually the key to victory with PG cars.

6th gear was officially confirmed by Stunts lead programmer Kevin Pickell as a programming bug, even if its pervasiveness led some to speculate otherwise. The nature of the bug (which is related to car mass) as well as the means for controlling its effects from a car tuner perspective are discussed in the companion Power gear bug article.

Notes

1. ^back Note that the term "6th gear" is a bit of a misnomer, as the Corvette ZR1 has six regular gears, and, naturally, its powergear would be a seventh one.