Here’s the problem: you never even mentioned that realism or theme-appropriateness was going to be considered. In fact, the rules seemed to suggest the opposite. For example, When you defined the challenge in the first post, all you really said was “…it’s about building an affordable sports car that looks good and performs well.” before describing the specific rules. On it’s own, that almost directly means “As fast and good looking as possible within the budget” And that’s why most of us (including many people like me who you did accept) jumped headfirst into Camp B.
Even just a simple, vague statement to the effect of “cars that are too unrealistic or stray too far from the theme will be binned” would have helped loads. That kind of statement isn’t perfect, but at least it would leave people expecting realism to be considered, and trying to fit your theme. I mean, you’re style grading is similarly vague, and that works pretty well. And if there’s confusion, people will usually ask.
TCup also made some good suggestions on how to add further specificity, which would help even more (especially regulating power-to-weight, which is something real life race series do). But even if you don’t want to make the rules too restrictive, a specific definition or clarification of what the theme is, and what that means for a practical sense would also have helped. There’s a reason most forum competitions start with very long briefs; it’s all about communicating everything up front.
Here's an example of how the original post could have been changed to be more specific:
Let’s try expanding that initial statement slightly.
“…it’s about building an affordable sports car that looks good and performs well, while still being realistic to its era.”
That, alone, helps re-frame the competition into what you want. But for a bit more clarity, let’s add a second paragraph, either right below it or in “inspirations”:
“Budget sports cars are usually designed to be as fast as they reasonably can, but they aren’t full track cars; they’re still road-going cars which might even expect to be someone’s daily driver, and still have to be at least mildly comfortable, drivable, and sensible. Budget sports cars in this era usually did not exceed 200hp, and stayed away from excessive cam profiles and valve types; they still tried to have respectable fuel economy and not be deafeningly loud.”
And then we’d have to add to the rules: “Cars that are too unrealistic or race focused, or don’t appear to be factory spec, will be binned.”
And now, everyone is on the same page at least. They know which end of the field to shoot for, even if they don’t exactly know where the goalposts are. And they can ask for more detail if they feel its not specific enough.
Another thing that could also help is, if you do see someone post something here that looks like it might not fit your needs, warn them- on the public forum. Even if you’re no re-submissions rule doesn’t let them fix it, it could save someone else from making the same mistake. And it starts discussions like these earlier, when people are less likely to get fired up and its much easier to correct or adjust things.
TDLR: If something is going to be important, or even might be relevant, make sure it is explicitly said from the beginning. It doesn’t have to be super detailed, it just has to be there in the first place.
