1974 Mara Kavaler 4.0 SKE
Note: this is a continuation / interlude of the Mara story from the regular LHC thread between eras 3 and 4. Follow this link to the last post of era 3 in the LHC thread If you want to catch up on names, lore etc. (you can work your way up through the posts).
14 March 1974
Great Exhibition Hall, Lerance, Letara
On the morning before the beginning of the first day of the 1974 Letaran car show, Rodyn Gumprov, recently appointed as Mara’s Comrade Vice-Director of Engineering, reflects on the past couple of years as he slowly walks towards the Mara stand located in a corner of a side room of the exhibition hall.
He spots Inna Horyova, the Comrade Director of Letaran Operations, who is already there and oversees some last minute adjustments to the display of the facelift-preview Irenas (which includes the very first Letara-only special trim).
The Mara exhibition area - the Kavaler in yellow
Long lore dump and more pictures inside
The initial event that set a large number of other changes in motion at Mara was the unexpected passing of Henri Nordhov, Mara’s Comrade Executive Director, in late 1969. The-then long-term Comrade Director of Engineering, Fedor Piechov, was appointed as the new Executive Comrade Director.
One of the first things in Fedor’s tenure was to make a new clean-sheet car design project the priority for everyone in car development at Mara which had started as his pet side-project outside of the planned car model categories. Thus, for the last few years, every Mara development engineer had been working towards designing a modern comfortable large premium sedan. In the end, the resulting car was named Kavaler, but the project itself was named Helios (and almost named Phaethon after Helios’ son).
Rodyn’s colleague Yenna Bielicka from the engine department was named Fedor’s successor as the new Comrade Director of Engineering on grounds of the success of her production and racing engine projects. Another factor were the needed skills, as there was no engine development project on the horizon.
Rodyn - who also had harboured hopes to be Fedor’s successor as CDE - was instead assigned to lead Fedor’s Helios project. The resulting Kavaler car was outside of any five year plan, but on excellence alone convinced Archanan state officials nonetheless to give special permission to put the car into (limited) production, with any state official getting first dibs, if they so desired.
The Kavaler’s top Komfort Exra trim received a slightly detuned 4 litre V8 engine from the Irena interceptor, making just over 130 hp. Instead, the focus in the Helios project lay on car engineering innovations: coil instead of leaf springs in the rear, an automatic gearbox, hydraulic power steering, vented disc brakes front, a more premium interior with electric windows and the recently invented 8-track in-car entertainment system, flaked paint for the exterior and last but not least soft radial tyres, along with the necessary suspension re-tuning for maximum comfort.
In recognition of his work on the Helios project Fedor had awarded Rodyn the - largely ceremonial - title of Comrade Vice-Director of Engineering as Rodyn’s daily more hands-on duties hadn’t really changed. Among these were overseeing the substantial Irena facelift after the conclusion of the Helios project. This assignment allowed Rodyn to carry over some of the innovations and lessons learned from the Helios project to the new Irena facelift where feasible.
As the Kavaler is currently in limited production for the domestic Archanan market (and state officials can jump to the top of the waiting list based on their rank), there are no plans, however, to sell the Kavaler to the public on the Letaran market in the near future. The display on the car show is more intended as a tech and innovation showcase, and to possibly attract visitors to the Mara stand in the first place.
To be continued in the LHC main thread…
