Licensed Cars in CSR2: Which Ones Are Actually Fast
Back to the Future and Hoonigan cars dominate the top of CSR Racing 2. The 58 Fast and Furious cars mostly do not. We measured all 98 licensed cars.
CSR Racing 2 is full of cars that exist because of something outside the game — a film, a YouTube channel, a personality. They cost more attention than ordinary cars and players assume that means they are better. The record sheet says it depends enormously on which licence you are talking about.
We tagged 98 cars on the sheet as licensed or special, split into four groups, and the spread between them is far wider than the spread between manufacturers.
Four of the ten fastest cars are licensed
Start with the headline. Of the ten quickest recorded times in the game, four belong to this group — and of the top twenty-five, six do. From 98 cars out of 1,251 ranked, that is heavy over-representation at the very top.
But it is concentrated in two licences, and almost absent from the largest one:
| Hoonigan / Ken Block (8 cars) | 5 of 8 | |
|---|---|---|
| Back to the Future (3 cars) | 3 of 3 | |
| Named-owner cars (88) | 3 of 88 | |
| Fast & Furious (58 cars) | 1 of 58 |
Every Back to the Future car is in the top 100. One in 58 Fast and Furious cars is.
Back to the Future: three cars, three in the top 100
A perfect record. The BTTF Part III Time Machine holds the outright record at 6.505. The Part II Time Machine sits eighth on 6.576. The median of the three is 6.576.
The Part III car is also the most extreme example in the game of a car that does not need a driver. It beats its dyno prediction by 0.029 seconds, against a sheet median of 0.115. It was built to a ceiling and it runs at it.
If you own one, you own one of the three best-performing licensed cars in CSR2 and the fastest car in the game. There is no nuance to add.
Hoonigan: five of eight
The strongest group by hit rate after BTTF. Eight cars, five in the global top hundred, median 6.789.
The standout is the Honda Hoonigan Indy Truck, second in the entire game on 6.511 — six thousandths behind the Time Machine. It is also the most driver-rewarding car anywhere near the top: it finds 0.336 seconds over its dyno, eleven times what the Time Machine finds and the largest margin in the top ten by a wide distance.
That makes the two cars at the top of CSR2 near-opposites. The Time Machine is faster and asks nothing of you. The truck is a fraction slower on the sheet and hands back a third of a second to anyone who launches and shifts properly. In good hands the truck is arguably the better car; in average hands it is not.
The Audi S1 Hoonitron is the other one worth knowing — 6.709 and 48th overall, and electric, which puts it in the quickest group in the game twice over.
Fast and Furious: 58 cars, one in the top 100
This is the result that will annoy people, and it is not close.
There are 58 Fast and Furious cars on the sheet, the largest licensed group by far. Their median recorded time is 7.803 seconds, against 7.618 for the sheet as a whole — so the typical FnF car is slightly slower than the typical car in the game.
Exactly one makes the global top hundred: Roman's Pontiac Fiero at 6.738, sixtieth overall. Every other car in the set is outside.
This is a collection built around recognisable cars from a film series, not around performance, and the sheet reflects that honestly. Buy them because you want them. Do not buy them expecting a competitive advantage, because on average you are getting slightly less than a random car.
Named-owner cars are the weakest group
88 cars on the sheet carry somebody's name — Kurtz's, Tej's, Sneak's, Victor's and so on. They are the second-largest group and the one that performs worst relative to its size.
| Group | Cars | Median time | In top 100 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Back to the Future | 3 | 6.576 | 3 (100%) |
| Hoonigan / Ken Block | 8 | 6.789 | 5 (63%) |
| Fast & Furious | 58 | 7.803 | 1 (2%) |
| Named-owner cars | 88 | 7.857 | 3 (3%) |
| Whole sheet | 1,251 | 7.618 | 100 (8%) |
A median of 7.857 against the sheet's 7.618, and a 3% hit rate against a baseline of 8%. Named-owner cars are, as a group, below average.
They also contain the single worst entry on the sheet. Kurtz's Ford Mustang HPE750 records 16.012 seconds — 3.565 seconds slower than the next slowest car in the entire game, and the only car on the sheet above 13 seconds.
The exception is Classic Car Studio's Dodge Charger R/T, sixth overall on 6.548, which is genuinely elite. But one car in 88 does not move the group.
It is worth saying that none of this measures how enjoyable these cars are to own, only how quickly they go. A collection car that you actually wanted is not a bad purchase because it sits mid-table.
The pattern underneath
Group size predicts quality almost perfectly here, and inversely. The two tiny licences — three BTTF cars and eight Hoonigan cars — are outstanding. The two large ones, 58 and 88 cars, are average to poor.
That is what you would expect if the small sets were designed as halo cars and the large ones as collections. A film tie-in with sixty entries has to include ordinary cars because the film included ordinary cars. A three-car set does not.
So the practical rule is not about licences at all. It is that a licence tells you nothing on its own, and the size of the set it belongs to tells you more than the badge does.
Every car named here is searchable in the record database with its tune, dyno figure and global rank.