DAF 55 Marathon and 555 for GT Legends by Team21 & altbierbude.de
(08.01.2019)
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This car is for our dear friend and co-worker Deep Strike and his family.
We will miss you and never forget. Thank you for all your fantastic mods and your friendship. R.I.P. Carsten!
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Physic: Deep Strike

Sound: PrinzTT and Wolferl

3D Model, textures und templates: CY-33

Beta Tests: MichaW and Manfred Haupenthal

Thanks to: www.rallydaf.nl and www.racehistorie.nl

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ALTBIERBUDEN VERSION: YOU NEED THE ABB CARCLASSES TO RUN THIS MOD
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The 55 is a small family car produced by the Dutch company DAF from December
1967 to September 1972. All 55s featured the unique Variomatic belt-driven
continuously variable transmission, with no manual transmission available. This
feature of all DAF cars was very unusual for its class at the time. The 55 was
available as a 2-door saloon, a 3-door estate and a 2-door coupe. In August 1969
the Marathon package was introduced in the dealerships, allowing to upgrade
generic cars. In 1971 the factory version of this package was introduced,
simply called the 55 Marathon.

The DAF factory was very involved in motorsport, to show the world that the
Variomatic transmission was reliable as well as sporty. Group 2 Race and Rally
cars featured tuned versions of the 1108 and 1148cc BR110 Renault Motor - in
combination with the the low weight of the car and the Variomatics' function as
a limited slip differential a powerful combination. The factory offered a
variety of tuning parts for the 55, by this also private teams could easily
convert cars out of the production line into useful racers. 55 Marathons were
successful especially at endurance competitions like the Marathon de la Route
on the Nordschleife, the Targa Florio and the Ronde Cevenole.

But the DAF Factory Team in Eindhoven also had higher aims: to build a
sportcoupe with more power to also compete in race and rally classes above
1100cc. The result was a hybrid from a 55 Marathon Coupe and the Formula 3 race
car. Only four cars where build as Prototypes to start in FIAs' group 6. As a
power source DAF intended to buy tuned 1300 and 1440cc Renault Alpine engines
and fit them with the F3 Variomatic. Unfortunately Renault had a change of heart
and allowed DAF only to use the engines in competitions their own popular Alpine
did not compete in. This left DAF not much room. Lucky for DAF, a collaboration
with Bernard Collombs tuning garage from Nice led to a fruitful collaboration,
since their version of the Renault Block proved very strong as well.
With first 3 cars in 1970 Daf went rallying in the first place, but also the
cars where successfully used for Hillclimbs and Road races like the Targa
Florio, Ronde Cevenole, Tour de Belgique, Limburgse Heuvelklim and the Coupes
Benelux. Although there where experiments with bigger engines from Renault and
Ford, the 555s in our mod are equipped with the 1400cc engine. With the fast
evolution of Rally and Race cars in the early 70s, DAF soon found their
experiment had to end, since more power was impossible in the base the 55
offered. Also the factory sold
their passenger car line to Volvo. The four existing cars where gradually turned
into Rally Cross cars and later sold to private teams like de Rooy. The
regulations here offered more room and equipped with 1600cc Ford BDA engines the
555 was finally the winner, if was intended to be in the beginning, and when if
was fitted with a 4x4 it was more fun than a barrel of monkeys. The remains of
one of the cars (70-78-MF) were found a dumpster on the DAF truck factory area in
Eindhoven in 1999.
After restoring it in great detail, it now stands in the factory Museum in
Eindhoven. Also 70-76-MF and 70-77-MF still exist somewhere in the Netherlands
with an active registration. The complete story can be found at www.rallydaf.nl and www.racehistorie.nl

Our mod features the two cars, 55 Marathon and 555. It unfortunately GT-Legends
is not made to simulate a Variomatic drive, which is very unfortunate, because
that’s what made the DAFs unique and also gave them their advantage on track!
The mod now has a manual gearbox, but shifts very fast in compensation.

The liveries we picked for the mod have a clear focus on racing and road racing,
we intentionally left out the many many rally cars, since GTL is a racing game.
You are welcome to fill this gap by painting and releasing your own cars -
templates will be released soon!

I hope you have a lot of fun with our mod!
Best wishes,
Deep Strike and CY-33

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For Installation extract the DAF_55M.rar file in your GT-legends mainfolder
and answer questions to overwrite with "yes" - no original Files will be
overwriten.

If maunal Installation is required drag the folders out of the *.rar file to
the following paths:

Folder DAF 55M to /GTL/GameData/Teams/TC-76
Folder XXX to /GTL/GameData/Sounds
Folder Talent to /GTL/GameData