For YMMV tropes relating to the Test Drive Unlimited games, click here.
- Broken Base: The Pitbull Syndicate era. Some like it, but others see it as Sequelitis.
- Character Tiers: Most games had an official class system for their cars.
- Eve of Destruction has four classes: Compact cars are on the cheap side in Career and, barring a few outliers, are rather frail and slow; Midsize cars are fairly average, both in performance and price; Muscle cars are an assortment of fragile speedsters, mighty glaciers, and lightning bruisers, and are the most expensive; Special cars are an "Other" catagory exclusive to Action Mode, and consist of cars used for certain events (the Bus for the School Bus Race and Detention, and the Hearse for the Gauntlet), joke vehicles (the Postal and the Ambulance), and themed reskins of normal cars (the Copcar and the Taxi).
- Test Drive Unlimited 2 had three distinct groups for Asphalt 7-1, Off-Road (B, which could stand for Baja) 4-2 and Classic 4-1 with lowering numbers denoting their performance. The bikes have their own Motorbike Asphalt groups or MA 2-1. Specific secret or DLC cars have a class for them that Solar Crown doesn't cover such as the aforementioned MA 2 and 1 bike classes. B2 is reserved for the V8 Buggy and Lancia Stratos Group 4 (there's no B1). C2 has the Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, AC Cobra 427, and Ferrari 250 GTO while the only car in C1 is the Ferrari F40. Both the Unofficial Patches and other mods like the AutoPack add additional cars and bikes to the underused classes.
- Test Drive 6 also did this, but it had only four-car classes, with Class 1 being the slowest, and Class 4 being the fastest. Class 2 even has cars that didn't even make it into production (Dodge Concept Car aka the Dodge Copperhead for instance), or for export to Europe and America, such as the Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec (R34).
- Critical Dissonance: Eve of Destruction received mixed-to-positive critical reviews. On the other hand, user reviews on Metacritic have been nothing but positive, and the game is generally held by its players in high regard, in spite of Test Drive's rocky history prior to Unlimited.
- Harsher in Hindsight: Pitbull Syndicate's logo as seen on the PS1 games in the series would later be co-opted
by white supremacist hate groups. - Hilarious in Hindsight: TD Overdrive was going to be released as Test Drive Underground in North America before it was decided to release it as just Test Drive. One year later, the series' main rival picked up the name and went with it, defeating them at their own game.
- Moral Event Horizon: In Overdrive, Donald seemed to be moving away from Dennis, and eventually races him after Vasily was down. He did vowed revenge by telling someone to steal his car back. How could he be so bad?
- Nightmare Fuel: Overdrive's Darker and Edgier atmosphere. You have been warned.
- Obvious Beta: Test Drive 5 and its PlayStation version is known to be one of those games in the series that was rushed for the holiday season, with unfinished car models and features to boot, such as the surround sound option, which breaks some of the sound effects, and causes the game to play low-quality music tracks from the point to point tracks if you're in a circuit race. Luckily, the PC version was a bit more polished.
- Polished Port: The Dreamcast version of Test Drive: Le Mans was a massive upgrade over the PlayStation original, to the point that it almost counts as a new game under the same name. In fact, the European release, as well as the Windows and PlayStation 2 ports, are titled Le Mans 24 Hours, without the Test Drive brand, to make the distinction clearer.
- Porting Disaster:
- Test Drive 6 and its North American Dreamcast version. It was blamed for having poor sound, even worse car modeling than the PlayStation version, long loading times, and being released at the wrong time.
- The PC version of Test Drive 2 only supported EGA graphics and PC Speaker audio despite the fact that sound cards had been available for two years, as was VGA.note And still on the topic of Test Drive 2, the Macintosh version of the game, while having superior audio to the PC version, only supported black and white graphics despite the first color Macintosh, the Machintosh II, hitting the market the year prior, in 1988.
- Sequelitis: The Pitbull Syndicate entries and Eve of Destruction failed to woo back the fans of older Test Drive games, to the point Unlimited rebooted the franchise from the ground up for the new audiences.
- So Okay, It's Average: 5 and Overdrive faced this by the critics, including the console-exclusive Test Drive Off-Road: Wide Open.
- Suspiciously Similar Song: The theme song that plays at the start of the original Test Drive sounds very similar to the The Beatles song "Drive My Car" (especially on the Amiga version, where the audio is more detailed). Considering what the game is about, this is justified.
- That One Level: For Test Drive 6, Lake Tahoe Circuit, being the game's equivalent of the Slippy-Slidey Ice World, which, being a racing game, spells certain doom already. The awkwardness of the track's design (including very poorly thought-out bottleneck corners that have guaranteed traffic/cop spawns) makes the situation that much worse.
