The car selections range from fictional, to real modern sports cars, to classic vintage cars from the 60's and 70's. Their statistics are accessible in the menu screens before the racing begins, and include such attributes as top speed, horsepower, torque, grip, etc. The best way to evaluate their performances is, of course, on the race track. I personally just like to grab the one with the best combination of acceleration and speed possible and use that, though. I'd be more inclined to play with different vehicles if they actually felt like the real thing, but as I'll discuss later, this game really fails to achieve any degree of realism and is definitely for pure arcade fans only.
Tracks vary from circuits to one long race course split into stages or checkpoints.
As is the trend with the Test Drive series, all of the tracks are based in real-life settings like city streets or country roads. Additionally, practically all of the tracks are set in cities that actually exist around the world, including San Francisco, Moscow, Edinburgh, Sidney. One important thing to note is that several of the tracks from Test Drive 4 have been ported over to this sequel, so owners of that game may not feel there's enough new on offer. Some of the tracks definitely stand out as more fun than others. The San Francisco track is also one of my favorites as it features one of the city's most famous characteristics the unfeasible steep hills.