Do the cars in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit have different levels of health and strength?

Question

There is already a somewhat similar and broader question, but I'm wondering if there is specifically a difference within each series of cars of the health and strength levels of each car. Are there some cars that can take more damage in a Hot Pursuit race or give out more damage when crashing into cars than others? Is there any evidence that any cars can take more hits (from other cars, spike strips, emps, etc.), or give out more damage than others?

An example I'm wondering about would be a car like the Ford Shelby GT500, by the looks of it would be able to give out and take more damage than the Porsche 911 GT3 RS (I think they are in the same series) just due to it's sheer size and bulk. But, seeing that the game really balances things out for the most part, I'm wondering if they don't have any difference in health or strength levels.

Answer 1

From what I've observed, this actually at least appears to be the case (and at least two other people agree). I haven't found a way to determine this definitively though, but I'll see what I can do in the way of testing.

Lack of hard figures aside, based on what I've seen in various single player events, larger cars seem to be able to hold their ground much better. I feel like this is particularly noticeable when comparing the Gauntlet event featuring the McLaren F1 against the one featuring the Bentley Continental, as the F1 tends to fish tail fairly dramatically and start falling apart when rammed by police cruisers, while in the same situation the Bentley barely budges (also causing plenty of damage when on the offensive).

The game does seem to imply that there's a benefit to choosing a particular type of car for Hot Pursuit events, as seen in this (poorly captured) picture I took of one of the loading Tips before answering this question:

As you can see, it states that "the fastest exotics are not always the best cars for hot pu[rsuit]." This would suggest that the exotics are not always up to the task of dealing with the pursuiing officer units due to lack of durability/power, though it doesn't state that explicity.

Note that these observations are related to collision damage only. Based on some very quick runs with the GT500 and the 911 Targa, damage received from weapons such as spike strips took the same chunk out of the damage meter on each vehicle. I'll confirm this is the case across the board sometime later, but I think that makes sense.