CSR2 Elite Customs: How Much Faster Each Level Makes a Car

Most CSR2 players judge a car by its PP. It's the number the game shows everywhere, and for most upgrades it moves when the car gets faster. Elite Customs is the exception. On our records it can take more than a second off a car's best time while the PP stays exactly where it was.

That makes it one of the easiest things in the game to overlook, and one of the most expensive to get wrong when you're comparing cars. So we went through our CSR2 world records sheet and measured it.

What we mean by Elite Customs

Elite Customs is a separate progression that some CSR2 cars have, shown as a level from 0 up to 50. On the records sheet, it appears in the car's name: “Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Coupé (E.C. Level 50)” is the 300 SL built to the maximum level, and “(E.C. Level 0)” is the same car without it.

When Zynga launched the feature, it described Elite Customs as adding extra fusion slots and better-fitted parts, and taking a car all the way to Level 50 takes a lot of Elite parts. Beyond that, we're going to stick to what the record times show. The times are what decide races, and they tell a very clear story.

What we compared

The sheet has 146 timed entries with an Elite Customs level, at levels 0, 35, 36, 39, 40 and 50. Most cars appear at a single level. But 38 cars are recorded at two different levels in the same tier, with the same star rating, which lets us compare like with like: same car, same race, different level.

One caveat before the numbers. Each record is the best run by a real player, and some versions of a car get raced much more than others. So a single comparison can be nudged by who happened to set the record. Across 38 cars, though, the pattern is far too consistent to be luck.

The result

Tier	Cars compared	Typical gain	Largest gain
Tier 1	1	0.81s	0.81s
Tier 2	4	0.59s	1.08s
Tier 3	9	0.56s	0.76s
Tier 4	13	0.68s	1.52s
Tier 5	10	0.49s	2.04s

Gain is the record at the lower level minus the record at the higher level. “Typical” is the median. Figures from our sheet at the time of writing.

The higher level was faster in 37 of the 38 cars. The typical gain is 0.56 seconds, which works out at about 6.6% of the car's time. The smallest real gain is about 3%, the biggest over 20%.

For a sense of scale: the typical gap between a purple-star and gold-star version of the same car is 0.05 seconds. Elite Customs is worth roughly ten times that. We covered the star comparison in detail in purple star vs gold star.

The PP never moved

This is the finding that matters most. In all 38 comparisons, the car shows exactly the same PP at both levels. The Bugatti EB110 SS is 713 PP at Level 0 and 713 PP at Level 50, and the Level 50 record is two seconds faster.

If you only look at PP, an Elite Customs car at Level 50 and the same car at Level 0 look identical. They aren't, and it's not the only thing PP hides: our guide to CSR2 PP shows cars at the same PP running seconds apart. When you compare cars, read the level as well as the number, and when you copy a tune from the records sheet, make sure it was set at the same level as your car. Our tuning guide explains why a tune from a different build rarely transfers cleanly.

The cars that gain the most

Car	Tier	Lower level	Higher level	Gain
Bugatti EB110 SS	5	L0: 9.823	L50: 7.786	2.04s
Dodge Viper GTS	4	L0: 12.213	L50: 10.692	1.52s
Porsche Carrera GT	5	L0: 9.049	L50: 7.562	1.49s
Ford 1966 GT40 Mk2	4	L0: 11.769	L35: 10.359	1.41s
BMW 2016 VARIS M4 GTS	4	L0: 11.725	L50: 10.341	1.38s
Porsche 911 R	5	L0: 8.983	L50: 7.877	1.11s
Ford F-150 SVT Raptor	2	L0: 9.921	L50: 8.839	1.08s

Notice what most of these have in common. They're classics and older performance cars: an EB110, a Carrera GT, a GT40, a Viper. At Level 0 several of them are well off the pace for their tier. At the top level they become genuinely competitive. If you own one of these at a low level, you're not driving the car the records are talking about.

The smaller gains are still worth having. The McLaren F1 in Tier 5 is 0.29s faster at Level 50, and the Ferrari 250 GTO and Mercedes-Benz 300 SL in Tier 2 gain around a quarter to three tenths. In a tier where the top five are separated by a quarter of a second, that's the race.

Where Elite Customs matters most

Tier	Elite Customs entries in the top 20	Elite Customs entries in the tier
Tier 1	2 of 16	2
Tier 2	8 of 20	10
Tier 3	3 of 20	20
Tier 4	3 of 20	34
Tier 5	1 of 20	84

Tier 2 stands out. Eight of its twenty fastest records are Elite Customs cars, out of only ten in the whole tier. If you race Tier 2 seriously, a high-level Elite Customs car is close to essential. The Tier 1 record holder, the Ford Mustang Boss 302, is an Elite Customs Level 50 build too, 0.81s faster than at Level 0.

Tier 5 looks like the opposite, with only one Elite Customs car in the top twenty. But that one is the Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 at Level 36, which sits fourth in the whole tier, and 34 purple-star Elite Customs cars at levels 35 to 40 hold records between about 6.5 and 7.9 seconds, comfortably in the faster part of a tier whose times stretch past twelve. In Tier 5, Elite Customs is how an older car gets into the conversation at all.

What to do with this

• Check the level before comparing cars. Same model and same PP can still mean a second's difference.
• Before buying an Elite Customs car, ask what level it comes at. A Level 0 car and a Level 50 car are, for racing purposes, different cars.
• Match the level when you copy a tune. Look the car up on the records sheet and use the entry with your level.
• If you race Tier 2, look at the Elite Customs cars first. That's where the top of the tier is.
• If you own an older classic that feels slow, check its level before writing it off. The car the records describe may be a second quicker than yours.

If you're building a garage around these cars, our breakdown of the best CSR2 cars by tier shows where each one sits, and the upgrade order guide covers the rest of the build. When you'd rather not wait on it, cars in our car collection can be delivered fully maxed. For an Elite Customs car, ask in chat which level is available before you order.