That shouldnāt beā¦ I am sure that I could get an engine with at least 1400hp in that bay, probably more.
I come back from my day job to find a rather strange detour on my thread.
Stepping into character, itās like walking into the Gryphon Gear company warehouse (located in a largely uninhabited undeveloped area near an abandoned former RAAF airfield a couple dozen kilometers West of Melbourne and North of Geelong), to find my buddies pondering over a completely random car belonging to a total stranger. Sitting in the workshop normally designated for my prototypes.
You may wonder what my reaction might be. It is as follows:
Like the others are saying, you should be capable of cranking out a whole lot more power from the maximum sized engine in that bay (which is a pretty big one at that). We can show you how, on the condition that you please be mindful of where youāre posting in future, as these company threads are user-specific threads and posting your cars on somebody elseās thread for no specific reason is technically off-topic posting and therefore not polite.
Besides, we do pride ourselves on being able to make your car do whatever you wantā¦ 'round here, we do that and make it go fast. If you want a bit of a 'G Tune, or a Smolensk Tune, or whatever, just ask.
After another quiet stint around the traps, Iām just back to remind everybody about that little design contest for the Ascension Mephisto I had going, though it fell off the page rather quickly.
Deadline is in 24 hours! If thereās any last minute entries donāt hesitate to send them in!
After that we will unveil the new design, as well as release a update on the new happenings.
Iāve submitted my entry, though I liked the original to start with 
.
The recent informal contest in which I challenged people to come up with an alternative design for the face of the Ascension Mephisto attracted three entries, which I shall display shortly. The idea was to look at other takes on the design to see if I should change it. On offer was the chance to have the name of your own tuning house monogrammed into the carbon fiber bodywork of the new model.
The entries submitted displayed a range of varied approaches, given the advisory limitation not to touch the main front grille too much. In order of submission, then:
[size=150]TheTom[/size]
TheTom relishes in the detailing of lights and complex, interwoven grille layouts. Of particular note is his great fondness for LED arrays (for a recent example see the Mantis Series from AMW). Here, he has created new lines radiating from the front of the car, dividing the large grille into many sections, and extended those lines with detail on the lights.
[size=150]VroomVroom[/size]
As the one who initially raised the possible criticism of the original front end, VroomVroom felt obliged to send in their own interpretation of a supercar. In so doing an entirely new vision emerged. The grille went, replaced by something narrower that accentuated the flaring side skirts. Gone, too, were the Viper-like headlights, replaced with slanted slits. This version went full muscle, expressing a different kind of blocky rawness.
[size=150]Pleb[/size]
Pleb already professed to liking the original front, but this doesnāt have to stop anybody! This time, the approach was to subtlely make more of a āraceā car out of the front. The headlights were extended, a fog light array was installed, and a new addition to the grilles which to me feels very reminiscient of a BMW touring race car, but perhaps also a little bit of Camaro. The end result is something that you wouldnāt just see on a track, but surrounded by pit crew, decked out in racing livery.
[size=150]Discussion[/size]
When I first started using the design tools, it was the likes of users such as TheTom that initially alerted me to the true extent of the versatility of the tool. Of particular interest to me was the seemingly unorthodox methods in suggesting shape and creating detail through combining vent and light fixture. This discover has been very important to me in expressing my own design ideals, which often lean strongly towards sweeping organic lines, where synergy is the trend, and contrast is a device used occasionally to draw attention. For this reason, I believe TheTom and I actually take very different approaches to design, despite certain similarities.
When I saw VroomVroomās headlight array I immediately wanted to adapt it, to alter the face to some angry four eyed demon. The headlights would have slanted more, perhaps, and I would have used 4, not 6, but the principle really caught my eye. Its final manifestation was rather interesting in that it may no longer be apparent, but this was the source for the inspiration. That said, the front as a whole no longer carried the same design principles as the rest of the car, such that it looked like it belonged on an entirely different car! In realising this, I was able to move the design in a different direction.
As Pleb stated, he was disinclined to making massive alterations, opting for a slight facelift that nonetheless greatly altered the carās character. By this time, however, I was already looking into making some fairly significant alterations to the layout. Once again, I was drawn to the slope of the headlight array, and wanted to use a similar angle, as it coincidentally worked the best for how I approached the flares of the bonnet.
Overall, I felt a strong pull towards emphasising the supercar inspirations for the Mephisto. The problem was that most supercars these days are MR, but the Mephisto is an FR, so it would have been impossible to create the sloping fronts with the massive venting like in the modern supercars. Instead, I decided to focus on the carās natural attributes, while hinting at the curved front that tapers to a big front grille, like on the Jaguar C-X75. Thus I took a completely unique approach to using the vents, in an attempt to create the illusion of a greater taper than the original frame had. The result looked a bit like it had taken on the properties of a fighter jet:
As you can see, the front grille is now narrower, and since it doesnāt extend as far around the sides, it gains a squarish, more protruberant stance. The vents flanking it create the lines that swoop around and back, emphasising the shape of the flared sides of the bonnet, reminiscent of the sports cars of old. As a result, I had to readjust the light array to be congruent with the vents and complete the rounded shape while also hinting at the tapering that leads to the front grille. In addition, the lower vents were reshaped to complete the bottom line of the side flare.
Finally, while this was not part of the design contest, I also did modify the rear, mainly to update it in line with the tapered upsloping look found on many supercars, though of course, splitters are not part of the design tool:
If you were to ask me to pick a winner from this design contest, insofar as how I said Iād be judging itā¦ Iād have to apologise profusely and say I couldnāt pick one, sorry 
The reason for this is because each design helped push me in a certain direction with individual elements, but it was a direction rather different from the overall directions of each entry! Should this be unsatisfactory, of course I would be happy to offer something in return for your efforts (besides Iām sure we can think of something better than a ghost monogram on the carbon fiber thread).
In the next post, Iāll go on to detail the new technical specifications of the Mephisto, that went along with its reworking.
I feel honored 
Thanks strop, i really like experimenting with all the tools/fixtures that the game has to offer. What i love about it is the fact that with a bit of imagination you can do almost anything. Well, thereās no MR cars yet and the bodyshells we have right now donāt really look like 2014, some look like early-mid 2000s, some look older obviously. That said, i think with a bit of creativity you can make a not-so-modern-looking bodyshell into something that looks very modern. The coupe shell with the long wheelbase is a great example for how many different looks you can make with just one basic platform. By elongating the back window and the rear end, as well as adding some simple round headlights and a big grille, you can make something that looks like a 60ās or 70ās muscle car. But if you add modern-looking headlights, maybe even some LEDs, and a few vents in addition to the grille, and you have a car that could be produced today!
If nothing else, iām happy to have helped you. I love giving some inspiration to other people. Iām not saying iām the greatest designer, iām not. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all. What i do is try out new things, display them in my thread and if someone likes the idea, they can try and use it for their own cars. I like that thereās so many approaches to designing a car. But as with pretty much everything in life, thereās some people who inspire others and thereās people who search for inspiration. Iād love to be in the first category, but i would be lying if i said i didnāt check the forums for more ideas. Credits go to people like NyanCatx3, Sansa93, Molotov, Razyx, gt1cooper and others but i also try and combine things i havenāt done before with things iām used to. Thatās my way of doing it and thatās what iām trying to inspire others to do.
Greets,
Tom
I think all in all, if we can continue to inspire each other that can only be a good thing!
After considerable thought, the staff at Gryphon Gear decided that the excitement of the Mephisto was simply too much not to prepare a ready-for-production proof-of-concept. After all, I think itās worth reiterating that while there are people around here who build >2000hp engines, and there are people around here who build great sports cars, the number of people who would put a >2000hp engine in a sports car areā¦ somewhat fewer.
Now that the design had been nailed down, we set to work tweaking everything else, maintaining, above all else, the most important parameters: that it attain a top speed of at least 437km/h, accelerate from 0-100km/h in 2.7s, and lap Nordschleife in less than 7 minutes.
With a chassis that was lightened by about 3kg (at the cost of a little body rigidity), and a retuned suspension, we were able to install much improved safety measures, and even air conditioning (running on a separate power cycle from the drivetrain). The interior trim even got a little work so while spartan, it resembles more climbing into a supercar instead of the cabin of a Baja 1000 trophy truck. But think more likeā¦ F40 like trim, where the paint (where applied) is so thin in parts you can still see the fiber weave beneath it!
Without further ado, hereās the updated set of concept sketches:
I left some extra lines in the main sketch on the top left, to demonstrate the shapes I was working with. The back, as you can see, has been detailed further, with the outside frame losing a little of its bulk and wrapping more tightly around the rear light array (so moving away from Shelby, and more towards a Pagani and McLaren style).
What Iād like to spend a little more time talking about here though, is the cabin. Most of it is bare to the point that you can clearly see the carbon fiber crossweave underneath the lacquer. In fact, you may appreciate that ease of access isnāt exactly a priority (doesnāt it bring back the mad 90s supercar nostalgia!), given you have to wriggle yourself over the lower struts of the rollcage before lowering yourself into a bucket seat so ridiculously deep that it pretty much sucks your butt into it. In fact, this is precisely the idea, because with up to 1.5g of longitudinal acceleration and 1.34g of lateral acceleration, you really donāt want to be flying all over the cabin while trying to steer this thing. That said, youāll probably still need the four point harness to actually keep you in the seat because it also pulls up to 2.8g of deceleration. And surprisingly, in addition to the rather visible rollcage, well hidden away is a complete driver, passenger and curtain airbag system, because the carās chassis has fantastical rigidity, and we donāt want you getting whiplash should you plow it into a barrier (but please, weād rather nobody plow it into a barrier because that would make us cry, which is why we have the absolute worldās best traction control and stability system in this car. That said, even that doesnāt stop the car from laying a big fat pair of 11s in firstā¦)
With only a measly 42kg allocated to the interior fixtures (less than the brake system, which weighs a hefty 60kg!), there was little left over after the seats (already superlight bucket seats with marginally reduced foam), the essential driving fixtures, the air conditioning unit, and the power windows (because well, having those ridiculous windup handles would have beenā¦ well, ridiculous). As with the modern āraceā bred supercars, the steering wheel itself has most of the driver-operated cockpit controls on it (buttons for indicator, wipers and headlights plus, not visible, offset push ignition). The places we felt paramount to use solid materials were in the pedals, the steering wheel, and the gear shift, which, as you can see, is a short throw lever mounted high on the console right next to the steering wheel for quick access. Too many times I have read that an aspiring sports car which gets its identity confused has a lackluster feel in the shifter, which can really ruin the whole experience especially if you want to bang it around a track, and given just how much torque this beast has to cope with (2394Nm @ 6400rpm), the heft and feel of the shifter absolutely has to match the gravitas of what itās dealing with. On that note, you may notice that the central driveshaft housing is kind ofā¦ large. To put things into perspective, the transmission, an original wet dual-clutch six speed manual gearbox developed by our own staff as even the toughest preexisting DSG on the market (used in the Veyron Supersport), can only cope with half of what this car demands. The result is a drivetrain so ultra-heavy-duty it weighs as much as the engine plus chassis combined. Understandably, this made fitting an actual console like you might find on most road cars for the air-conditioning and entertainment ystem and all that jazz, somewhat impractical, so the dials for the aircon are set on a single raised strip along with the dial to navigate the carās central computer UI.
You may have noticed, in a very conspicuous location, a certain dial that appears to be covered by a plastic case and surrounded by a black and yellow striped warning border, like the missile launch switch on a fighter jet. This is the stability control dial.
On any other car, this may look tacky and trying too hard, but in this case, we thought about it very carefully. First, we didnāt want to annoy buyers by hiding the dial in some godforsaken cranny beyond the edges of the trim (like my daily drive), as if we ever thought you werenāt going to want to turn at least the traction control off. So we placed it right at the edge of your fingertips if you were to rest your arm on the central column. That said, you have to be absolutely positive you actually do want the traction control turned off, before you turn that dial, because if [size=85]and when[/size] you do, it should not and can not ever be an accident, and we cannot accept any responsibility if you do actually do this and then have an accident. But we suspect if youāre even buying this car in the first place, you knew that already 
See why I named this car after Mephistopheles?
Finally, the place where whatās happening gets shown, the LCD display. We decided against any fancy tricks, and opted for the simplest way to convey the important information, fast. And in this car, thatād be the tacho, the speedo, the gear selection, and whether you need to shift. As for format, we elected to follow the format that most modern race modified cars use, as itās effective. The layout of the dials on the right can be customised via the UI to either show boost, temp or fuel, or all three at the same time, and of course, we recommend that you only do so while the car is stationary, though in reality, if you have a spare moment on the straight, we do have a separate button on the right hand column that allows you to switch instantly between modes. Otherwise, if thereās any information that you actually need to know, the display will tell you.
Needless to say, thereās no actual entertainment system, because between the organ-mashing acceleration, the roar of the 6.8L V8 and the whine of the bi-turbo, you already have all the entertainment you need. Weāve crafted a pure bred road legal racing machine that (in theory) you could drive hard in and not boil to a crisp, and we happen to think thatās a bloody good thing.
SPECIFICATIONS:
Drivetrain:
6.8L Quad Cam DI 40v Turbo V8 (Boost: 2.84bar @ 5600rpm)
98RON minimum
1727.5kw @ 7400rpm
2394Nm @ 6400rpm
Power/ton: 1187.6kw/1592.9hp
6 spd double clutch manual w/ short throw quick shifter
Chassis:
Layout: AWD
Seats: 2 superlight racing bucket
Body/frame: Carbon fiber monocoque chassis and skin
Steering: 2WS rack & pinion, variable electric assist (can be disabled)
Tires: sport compound road 245/30R18, 335/20R18
Suspension: Double wishbone, front and rear
Brakes: Front: 375mm slotted rotors, ceramic pads, 4 pistons, Rear: 325mm slotted rotors, ceramic pads, 1 piston
Dimensions:
Ride height: 173mm
Wheelbase: 2706mm
Track Width: 1555mm
Curb Weight: 1454.6kg
Weight Distribution: 55.1F/44.9R
Safety:
ABS, TCS, DSC (can be disabled)
4 point harness
Full rollcage
Fuel cell
Driver, passenger, curtain airbags
Performance:
0-100km/h: 2.7s
0-200km/h: 4.7s
0-300km/h: 7.6s
Qtr Mile: 8.6s @ 323km/h
0-400km/h: 14.2s
1000m: 14.3s
Full mile: 19.6s
0-437km/h: ~22s (with DRS on)
100-0km/h: 29.4m
Cornering: 1.34g @ 92.1km/h
THINGS THIS CAR HAS BECAUSE YOU WILL NEED IT:
Air conditioning [size=85]because pure race cars get past 50 degrees Celcius inside and not everybody is that hardcore.[/size]
Power windows [size=85]because having to install those big manual windy things completely ruins the carbon fiber trim.[/size]
GPS with waypoint marker, telemetry and lap timer [size=85]because this is a track car, duh.[/size]
Its own indemnity and insurance policy [size=85]enough said.[/size]
THINGS THIS CAR DOES NOT AND WILL NOT HAVE:
A trunk [size=85]because youāre not driving this car to the golf course, thatās for sure.[/size]
A stereo [size=85]because the Turbo V8 is all the sweet music youāll need.[/size]
Bluetooth [size=85]because if youāre going to be talking to somebody outside the car, itāll be during a race, and youāll be wearing a helmet fitted with comlink.[/size]
Cup holders [size=85]because seriously?[/size]
Vanity mirrors in sunguards [size=85]because as if youāre going to have time to look at yourself, besides, mirrors are unnecessary weight.[/size]
Cruise control [size=85]because you are NOT driving this car on a highway cruise, unless that highway is the Autobahn and you want to try cracking 400, in which case why did you need cruise control againā¦?[/size]
Like responsible people, weāve been very clear as to the risks of driving, let alone purchasing this completely bonkers hellspawn of automotive engineering. But then again, we completely irresponsibly brought it into existence and unleashed it upon the world. And we canāt say weāre sorry for that.
Awesome to hear itās gonna be put into production 
With an engine like that, i think it might understeer, because of all that weight on the front axle. That, combined with what happens when you hit the throttle halfway through a corner, will probably make for a letās say unique driving experience but then, this car is called the Mephisto so i guess the name says it all.
Awesome job! These cars are so pretty with some fantastic engines! I would love to see more of Gryphon Gear in the future. 
While offset mostly by my usual relatively firm rear suspension setup, the car does indeed exhibit a touch of understeer at the high end of its cornering, which I found to be preferable (you really donāt want a car like this to characteristically oversteer). Interestingly enough the weight distribution is somewhat better than in the Nightfury, and it shows, but of course I kept the downforce in this model to about 440kg @ 200km/h (though with its current aero setup it can easily be adjusted to 1000kg, though the top speed would then drop to about 370km/hā¦ it would go around tracks about 5-10% faster though!).
An AWD car with this much power can be a fickle beasts to drive hard, because theyāre prone to lift-off oversteer (countless videos of noobs crashing Gallardos will attest to this), and normally the way to counter this is to straighten the nose up by applying a small amount of throttle. In this case thatās mostly mitigated by the fact this car is FR, which also makes it actually a little easier to deal with under heavy braking (if you prefer a bit of frontward bias on your brakes, that isā¦ which is my personal preference as Iām not a big fan of getting sideways heading towards bends at 300km/h thank you). Ideally, the torque distribution unit in the Mephisto would balance this characteristic as much as possible by applying the power in an approximately 75R:25F distributionā¦ which has me thinking, right now we only have the standard āopenā differential available to us, but what if we could use newer formats, like a Torsen differential, maybe I wouldnāt have to resort to such measuresā¦
Either way, having seen how the car behaves in a simulation, as well as my limited experience with other simulations of cars with more kilowatts than kilograms, letās just say that in any tight corner, the principles of race driving apply: you really donāt want to apply significant throttle until you pass the apex, else you probably will shoot straight off the road!!! And if youāre in a long bend, if the car is in the powerband, you should never apply more than 10-15% of the throttle until the curve starts to straighten!
[size=200]
[/size]
In 1983, the all time record for the 20,832m long version of Nordschleife was set. Legendary race driver, the late Stephen Bellof, driving the legendary Group C Porsche 956, set a legendary time of 6:11.13. This is the time that has stood since, aside from some controversy in 2007 when BMW Sauber had Nick Heidfeld run an exhibition lap in an F1 car. Since he was restricted in several parts and ran the long course that includes most of the GP circuit, comparison to the old circuit was impossible, so estimates of times for the Green Hell ranged from sub 6 minutes, to an āestimated 6:12ā in respect to Bellofās time.
Thus the typically Gryphon Gear challenge was set: To shift any of these poky front-engined road car shells around the Green Hell in under 6:11.13. And just to make it that little bit harder, I had to do it from a standing start, as in Der Bayerās excellent Green Hell track. I had read that Killrob figured the track times to be perhaps 10% slower (EDIT: this is no longer true, the track had been edited and now the times are on parity.) But Iām only satisfied with hard numbers.
I wasnāt about to reinvent the wheel. I already knew that I had what some might call āthe fastest (track) car of Automationā in the Nightfury. Thing is, the original Nightfuryās official time around Nordschleife is 6:15. Which is not faster than 6:11, in case that wasnāt obvious enough already. Previous attempts to create massive power with turbo engines was stymied, but after phase 1 and 2 development of the Ascension Mephisto was complete (yes, there is a phase 3 to come), I realised that I now knew much more about how to tune a car to handle big roaring unrestricted turbos. And because the average speed of the Nordschleife with these kinds of times is high (i.e. around 200km/h), chances were, itād favour the higher power outputs of the turbo and penalise the altered profile less.
So I threw the Mephistoās biturbo V8 into the Nightfury.
Well, it wasnāt that simple. The Mephistoās engine bay is much larger than the Nightfuryās. While the Nightfury could fit a 10.9L NA V8 that put out about 1575hp, the turbos presented quite a different challenge, so I ended up putting in a slightly downsized version of the Mephistoās 6.8L biturbo V8, with a displacement of 6.2L instead. Whilst the Mephistoās engine, tuned for maximum power, put out a whopping 2371hp (this version of the engine was subsequently removed from the car when I realised it wasnāt in line with my rather diverse aims for the car), I had to settle for 2215hp here.
It was about this time that I noticed that when the car is an AWD that pulls 2.04 lateral G, the presence or absence of driving aids made absolutely no difference to the performance of the car. The only thing it did change was the sportiness and tameness. Thatās when I decided upon my secondary goal:
[size=200]
[/size]
The original Nightfury had a sportiness rating of 185. The change to a turbo engine boosted this to about 197, and gave a time of 6:13, leaving me to find 3 points as well as about 2 more seconds to wipe off the clock. Fortuitously, it so turned out that with the altered dynamics of the car, it needed further tuning. The brake pads were upgraded further, the aero altered ever so slightly, and the suspension tweaked to bring the car to the limits of the game (again). Then I shortened the low gears for better low end acceleration, with the side effect that the car now apparently leaves even longer swathes of rubber behind when taking off (a wheelspin tameness penalty of 6.6%? Ouch.)
The end result was indeed what I call a āgrand successā: A car with tameness of 0.0, and sportiness of over 200:
Whereās your tameness:sportiness ratio now???
I honestly donāt know where in any of this car a safety rating of 21.1 is warranted. It has NO safety. I stripped out every little skerrick of pretty much whatever wasnāt related to conveying power from the engine to the wheels (or the opposite, since something that goes fast has to stop fast too). You should watch the g-force sensors on the live feed when this thing goes around the track. Accelerating, it touches 2.0g (after all that wheelspin stops holding the car back). Braking, it stops so damn hard the bar goes right past the -2 mark and then way into the throttle indicator, leaving me to estimate braking force at between -3.5 to -4.0g. And then thereās the lateral g things car can pull on a banked cornerā¦
All that said, the fruits of my labours where very sweet indeed. With such a ridiculous fuel consumption, this car was only ever going to be a record breaking car (i.e. one flying lap and you need to fill up again), as opposed to a car youād even remotely consider owning and racing. But it was with a deep sense of satisfaction that I confirmed that yes, this car would break the record at Nordschleife, from a standing start.
Read it and weep, people. Iām just going to sit here and laugh at my own madness.
Hats off to you, strop! I knew you would set the new record one day
I said it already some weeks ago: This is outdated and not true. It only depends on how good the track is replicated. I increased the cornering grip by 5% on the Nordschleife to calibrate it to real world times. So it is by no means 10% slower than reality. The only thing which makes it slower on purpose is the standing start.
Great effort nevertheless! 
Is there any limit as to what you are capable strop? Surely there has to be some sort of feat that even your madness canāt overcome?
Iāve never tried going for some insane track times in Automation, and I donāt think I want to. I would rather leave that to the right sort of person!
The techniques used by him (and a few others) will be nullified in the next update. I canāt wait for that!
I missed that! Thanks for bringing me up to speed, Iām very happy to know this.
Neither can I! Not only will it be something new to figure out all over again, but it should hopefully level the playing field.
For a change of pace, Iād like to take this opportunity to highlight a little piece of history in the bubbly successful 60s car, Mancheās Pampero Mk. 1, brought to you by Uruguayan manufacturer FMU.
While the commercial sedan was no pocket rocket, its compact and well balanced platform made it a fine candidate for rallying. In this poster, I hoped to capture the essence of the Art Deco aesthetic of the day, combined with a touch of the naturalistic joy of rally. Andale!
[size=85]Please note I donāt generally take art requests as I donāt like breaking promises, but it often takes me a long time to get around to fulfilling them.[/size]
Your skill as an artist never ceases to impress meā¦
Thats amazing! Good job, once again!
Your illustrations are very good, congratulations!
But, how do you do them?
Do you sketch them by hand at first, then apply the colours in the computer or it is all digital?
I really like drawing, but I take the old-school pen and paper approach, thus theyāre all black and white. I wish I knew an easier way of colouring them.