[Magesmiley]

Hi, and welcome to the forums!

Car Wars beckons back to the days of simulation games, and it does a pretty good job of that (most consider it the gold standard for car simulations).

One of the game's weaker points is the lack of a good introduction. This isn't helped by most of the stock cars being slower.

I run a tournament for the game at a couple of conventions in the Seattle area (OrcaCon and Dragonflight), and here are some bits of advice:

1. Use the same car initially without dropped weapons. It gives everyone an even start and not using dropped weapons allows you to skip over some rules initially. Here is the car that I used at OrcaCon for the qualifier games:

2068 OrcaCon Avenger -- Compact, Heavy chassis, Heavy suspension, Large power plant, 4 Solid Radial tires, Driver w/TC and BA and PFE, Light Laser in Turret, Recoilless Rifle Front w/10 shots HEAT, Plastic Armor: F22, L17, R17, B17, T16, U4, Gear Allocation: [72 lbs. @ Accel 5/Top Speed 117.5], Acceleration 10, Top Speed 120, HC 4, 3998 lbs., $16834

The only item here not in the Classic set (it's from the Compendium/UACFH) is HEAT ammo which does an extra 2 points of damage in a recoilless rifle (total of 2d+2).

I've been tweaking this design for several years and it works pretty well for intro games.

2. Make moves simultaneously. Per the rules, only one person takes a move at a time. This is only really important if the cars are close together. 90% of the time you can move simultaneously and save a lot of time.

3. Use a higher starting speed. At conventions I set starting speeds of all vehicles (before the 1st turn) to 40 mph. This gets the vehicles into contact with one another much quicker. Standing starts are kind of a sucky player experience unless you know what you're doing (typically because you've traded speed for something else).

4. Hitting stuff. This is one that you get better with the more experienced you are. There's an art to lining up shots in the game effectively.
The speed targeting penalties are kind of muddled. Hopefully you were able to understand how they work (and didn't just apply the penalty based only on the target's speed). If you didn't, I can post a link to a better reference.
Sustained fire is a help. Keep in mind that the way the bonus is worded is a bit wonky as to what a target is. The most common interpretation (which is how it was originally worded in the earlier edition of the rules) is that it means the same vehicle/pedestrian/building/etc. and not the specific side of a vehicle.
If everyone is still having trouble, give the cars a targeting computer to give them a more accurate shot.

5. Reference charts. Get the pdf version of the Classic rules and print out a blown up copy of the movement chart and the control table. You only really need the chart up to about 150 mph (and most games won't even get up to 100). This will save some time.

6. A pro tip to keep things moving: use some sort of marker (index cards work well) to keep track of whether or not you have changed speed and used firing actions (use two cards per player, write firing on one and speed change on the other). When you use perform the action, discard the card. At the end of the turn, pick the cards back up after you recover your handling. If you don't have a card of the right type in hand, you can't do that action.

6. Ties and whatnot. Yeah. Ties can happen. They're a bit rare, but they do happen. Unconscious characters are effectively out of the battle (it takes quite awhile to wake up). It's actually pretty rare to end up with two unconscious characters at the end of the game (everyone dead happens more often when the last two players collide).

Feel free to keep asking questions here - there's a lot of knowledgeable players willing to offer help.