v5.4.0 — Open Paddock

The paddock opens. The Gazette now reads from outside the garage — every dispatch is public and shareable with its own card art, and all 179 back issues were re-edited by hand so the archive speaks in one voice, first line to last. A brand-new collector gets a first lap instead of an empty room: the floor walks you from your first photo to your first carded finish, one stage at a time. The Radio went live — calls land the moment they happen, no refresh, a LIVE lamp on the mast — and the whole feed was rebuilt as a proper pit-wall transcript: timestamped transmissions, day breaks, the week's chatter folded into readable calls. Trades found their voice too: talk inside the deal now, with read markers that know exactly what you've seen, and every unread count in the garage stays current on its own, riding calls you were already making. The Collector of the Week gets a crowning at the Paddock — once a week, the rail paints in and the lights find the crowned garage. While the ID bay works a new arrival, its build sheet fills in live, stage by stage — witness, research, pricing — so you watch the car become itself. The trophy shelf got the full restoration: every achievement re-struck as a hard-enamel pit pin and hung on the Medal Wall, ten wings deep; the whole catalog re-tiered on honest numbers (nothing you earned was taken back); the impossible ones reworked into hard-but-earnable; and the top of every family now wears commissioned badge art. The Parts Counter opens on a front-of-house wall — three poster bays where the week's stock hangs at full size. In the Studio, the fitting room lets you wear a finish before you spend a single Chrome on it. And your garage rides with you now: photos cached to your device, so the collection stays on the wall even when the signal doesn't.