[swordtart]

Some editions of the rules included a "Jump Start" section that had some basic rules (and in some cases abstracted more complex rules).

It could be argued that Mini Car Wars also fulfilled that role.

The 3rd edition pocket box rules were about as minimalist as you can get. The basic set basically covered cars and a subset of the weapons. Additional material was added in supplements (Sunday Drivers, Truckstop and the Uncle Al's Catalogues etc.) that expanded but rarely changed the basic rules-set. As new expansions were added, players discovered loopholes that were not anticipated in the original game. These were dealt with ad-hoc in ADQs (which themselves included new or revised rules) but it started to look decidedly wobbly (IMO). It appears that supplements were not necessarily cross-referenced (possibly being parallel developed) to one another and often two supplements would have contradictory rules or stats for the same thing.

The first compendium, CW Delux (B&W edition) compiled this incremental expansion into a theoretically holistic rule set. Inevitably things were missed, but if you treated it as a stand alone product it worked. The fact that it was on sale alongside the original product line and didn't contain all of the expansions (either because they were niche, or because they were published after the Deluxe rules came out) and isn't compatible with later expansions creates additional confusion. The fact that most of this stuff is now available again via digital means configuration mis-match that had effectively time expired has once again become an issue for new players.

Eventually the compendiums came out (2 and 2.5) but again there were editorial errors and again there wasn't necessarily a correlation to the various editions of the supplements (e.g. the rules for gas engines in Duel Track and the Uncle Al Catalogues are somewhat different to the ones in the compendiums).

Finally UACFH arrived to finally resolve all the config issues, but it didn't fix all of the inconsistencies, it re-introduced others that had been resolved in ADQ's or rules revisions and even added in some brand new issues.

Then 5th came out with a whole different ethos (but it was internally consistent).

So basically beginners game is Mini-Car or the pocket box 3rd edition or the Jumpstart rules from CW Delux (B&W edition) or perhaps the compendiums (but those big books might be intimidating).

The intermediate game is the third edition plus whatever supplements you feel are essential or Delux (B&W Edition) or CW Classic or 5th edition if you fancy a change. The top end of this is one of the compendiums, but if you do this try to ignore the rest of the material or you will get a headache.

The advanced game is as much as everything else published (or home brew) as you want to include. Coming up with a rule-set that is to your personal liking (and resolving the mis-matches) is a meta-game in itself.

Again YMMV.