Forza Horizon 6 Best Starter Car: Silvia, Celica, or Jimmy?
Which of the three Forza Horizon 6 starter cars to pick first, what each one is good at, and the cheap early cars worth buying right after.
The pick that doesn’t actually lock you in
The first thing the game does is sit you in front of three cars and ask you to choose one. It feels like a big decision. It isn’t. You unlock all three regardless of which one you drive in the opening race, so picking “wrong” costs you nothing. The only thing that changes is which car you spend the tutorial in.
That said, the first race that kicks off the moment you choose is a road race through Tokyo City. So if you want the smoothest first ten minutes, pick the car that handles pavement well. That’s the Silvia.
Here are your three options and what each one is actually for.
1994 Toyota Celica GT-Four ST205 — the all-rounder
This is the one I’d tell most people to drive. It’s all-wheel drive, it has the highest top speed of the three, and it has the best handling of the group. On paper it’s worth around 27,000 CR, which makes it the most valuable starter by a wide margin.
The Celica was built for dirt. Japan’s map is loaded with rally stages, gravel sprints, and mixed-surface routes, and an AWD car eats that terrain for breakfast. But the GT-Four doesn’t fall apart on tarmac either. It’s the closest thing to a do-everything starter, which is exactly what you want when you’re still figuring out which event types you enjoy.
Its one weak spot is braking, which it shares with the Jimmy. You’ll learn to brake a little earlier into tight corners. Past that, this car carries you comfortably through the first few hours.
If you only read one line of this guide: drive the Celica.
1989 Nissan Silvia K’s — the road and drift pick
The Silvia is the lightweight, rear-wheel-drive option, and it’s the natural fit for that opening road race. It turns in sharp, it rotates willingly, and it rewards smooth throttle control. On the touge mountain passes that the game leans into, a nimble RWD car like this one feels great.
It’s also your drift starter. Rear-wheel drive plus a light body is the recipe for sliding, and the Silvia is one of the better entry points into FH6’s drift zones without spending a credit. If you came to this game to go sideways, start here.
The trade-off is grip on loose surfaces. Take the Silvia onto gravel and it gets twitchy in a way the Celica never does. For pure street and drift, though, it’s the most fun of the three to throw around early.
1970 GMC Jimmy — the off-road tank
The Jimmy looks completely out of place parked next to two Japanese sports cars, and that’s the point. It’s a chunky off-road truck with rally tires fitted from the start and an off-road rating that buries the other two. Anywhere there’s no pavement, this thing rules.
It also has the strongest acceleration of the three off the line. The catch is the same braking weakness as the Celica, plus it’s slow and clumsy on tarmac. Take it into a city road race and you’ll lose.
Pick the Jimmy if you know you want to spend your early hours bashing through Hokubu’s snowy backroads and Sotoyama’s countryside trails. For most players, it’s the situational choice rather than the default.
So which should you actually pick first?
- Want one car that does everything? Celica GT-Four ST205.
- Want the smoothest opening road race and a drift toy? Silvia K’s.
- Want to go straight off-road and never look back? GMC Jimmy.
Since you get all three anyway, I’d start in the Celica for the early credit value and the AWD safety net, then jump into the Silvia once you want to mess around in drift zones.
What to buy right after the starters
The starters get you through the opening, but you’ll want to upgrade your garage within the first hour or two. Early credits are tight, so spend them on cheap cars that punch above their price. A few directions worth taking:
- A cheap B-class road racer. Most of your early seasonal events sit in the B and C range, and a focused grip car here wins races and earns Festival Points fast. Hot hatches and light JDM coupes from the Autoshow do the job for very little money.
- A dedicated dirt or rally car. The Celica covers you for a while, but a purpose-built rally machine pulls ahead once the dirt events get longer. Subaru and Mitsubishi options on the Autoshow are affordable and competitive early.
- Hold off on hypercars. It’s tempting to save up for something exotic, but a 400,000 CR supercar that only fits S-class events is dead weight when most of your early calendar is lower classes. Build a spread of cheap, class-appropriate cars first.
Your real goal in the opening hours is climbing the Wristband tiers. That means earning Festival Points, and you earn those by finishing events across every discipline. A garage with one solid car per surface beats a single expensive toy every time.
Buy broad, buy cheap, and let the starters do their job while you figure out what kind of driver you want to be.
Car names, values, and starter details reflect early meta right after the game launched on May 19. Specific figures point to what shows in-game, and the lineup will shift as patches land.