My Auto Racer

What is it, in your words?

A daily guessing game for people who argue about cars. Three matchups a day, the same three for everybody: you're shown two cars, you call which one wins a standing quarter mile, then you watch them run it and find out. Score out of three, a streak if you keep coming back, and a result you can share that doesn't spoil it for anyone. Free, no sign-up, plays in a browser.

How it plays

Look at the two cars, back your hunch, watch the lights go green. The race isn't a cutscene. It's a physics simulation off each car's real weight, power and gearing, so you see the 60 ft, the trap speed and exactly how many car lengths were in it at the line. Every car runs in full 3D, and over 1,600 of them race in their own real model rather than a generic shape. The hook is how often you're wrong: the heavy estate with the big turbo, the EV that looks dull and isn't. Three races takes about two minutes, then it's gone until tomorrow.

Behind the game is the simulator it's built on, 14,999 cars across 191 makes, 1936 to 2026. When a matchup annoys you, you can go and race those two yourself, or anything else.

Why I made it

This came out of a conversation with my brother about car data: how badly it's usually presented, and how to make it actually useful. We'd always talked in 0 to 60 times, because that's the number everyone quotes, but it isn't the full story. It says nothing about what happens after 60, how long a car takes to put its power down, or what a quarter mile between two of them actually looks like. The simulation shows the whole run instead of one number, and the game is what turned that into something worth coming back to.

What's next

More real 3D models. Over 1,600 cars have one now and I'm adding them in batches. Otherwise it's upkeep: new cars as they're announced, and fixing what people write in about.