I’ve been fortunate enough to discover and acquire a variety of interesting cars, mysterious, obscure cars that I can’t for the life of me find out much about. In fact, I couldn’t even name the make of the majority of them. There’s no branding of any sort to be found on quite a few of the machines. I keep them all right here, in this garage, and I’d like to show them to you if you’d care to take a look.
Perhaps not quite as exciting, but still interesting nonetheless, is my collection of cars built by well-known, established brands in the Automation world that I’ve modified. You may know many of these cars, and for all I know you could own one yourself, maybe even one that you have customized as well, but I think their story is worth sharing as well.
(This thread is where I will be sharing my designs, none of which are unified under a particular brand. I’d also like to show off some modified versions of your cars if you’d like to let me get my hands on one )
For our first peek into my garage I’d like to introduce you to Carmen. Yes, I named her, mostly because I had to. I couldn’t find a brand or even a model name anywhere on this car. I’m not even quite sure what year she was completed in, but if I had to take a guess I’d say she’s a 60s machine, likely from the first half of the decade. She’s rear-engined, rear wheel drive, her engine puts out about 100 horsepower, and she weighs in at under 1900 pounds. With no power steering, a 4 speed manual, and plenty of old school charm, Carmen is quite the car despite her humble performance figures.
The thing about classic cars like Carmen is that even some modern economy cars are more than capable of outrunning them, but they make up for that with a much more raw, sensory experience. Cars like Carmen are perfect for having plenty of fun without breaking the speed limit, and she bucks the widowmaker stereotype associated with many rear-engined cars of this era by being quite reasonable to drive, arguably more controllable than some front-engined cars of the time period. That being said, she’ll still swing her tail around if desired, and without any driver assists to speak of you’d better show her the respect she deserves if you don’t want to get hurt. On top of being an excellent back road weapon, Carmen sports leather seats and some solid gas mileage for her day. Her radio was probably quite nice back in the 60s as well, making her a decent tourer. All in all, she’s a wonderful car. Maybe I’m just biased, considering I own her, but I think I’ve made a fair assessment of her. It’s a shame she was likely a one-off or a concept of some sort.
What a great idea, given that most of us (I assume) spend a lot of time deciding on names and backstories for our cars, and here you are with a lovely tale of your pride and joy!
I really like the quaint looks. Did you base off any car in particular (that isn’t a 911)?
There’s a lot of 911 in there, for sure. I had the Karmann Ghia in mind as well, as someone mentioned above. I wanted to go for the somewhat “mouthless” look of many rear-engine cars from the era. It’s interesting designing a car when you are trying to avoid slapping a big grill on the front of it. Things ended up turning out pretty simple as you can see, but I wasn’t satisfied with any of the more complicated ideas I had for the car.
My company (OAM) may be rather small, but hey, you can use any cars in my current lineup, unless of course if its broken.
Also, nice car, better than any I’ve designed really.
N.B. This also includes my budget car lineup (BdMW) if you really want
I’d like to say that you can use Zavir cars as well if you send me a PM, but… I don’t really have anything but Luna to offer 6 cars from 40s are outdated designs, which in addition got accidentally deleted, and 90s Squalo is unfinished… But if you want to modify Luna, feel free to send me a PM
It’s time for another look into my garage, and the car we’re discussing today has a name just like Carmen does. His name is Rex. Rex is kind of like Carmen’s younger brother, they are both relatively cozy, lightweight, quite agile, and they are both packing some fairly small engines situated behind the driver, but Rex is a little bigger, a little heavier, and his engine is mounted sideways directly behind the cabin rather than over the rear axle. Speaking of his engine, Rex is equipped with a 2 liter dual overhead cam V6, all aluminum, cranking out somewhere around 160-170 horsepower. He’s faster than Carmen for sure, and he handles a bit better. He drives about as easily as she does, too. When I’m looking for something old school, but I want something with more kick than what Carmen has to offer I reach for Rex.
Everything I said about Carmen applies to Rex as well. What he lacks in speed compared to newer cars he makes up by being all the things regulations won’t let cars be anymore, and there’s nothing quite like revving up his little V6, it sounds great. He looks pretty sharp as well. I’ve definitely seen more intricate design, even from this era, but sometimes simple just works, you know? Especially with lines and curves like these. A body shell like this doesn’t need much to look good. Of course, I’m sure there are folks out there who disagree. Anyways, I really wish I knew more about him, but just like Carmen there wasn’t any sort of identification on his chassis and I haven’t been able to find anything on him through research. Oh well, can’t complain too much when he runs quite well and drives even better.
They’re a mod called “Sealed Beam Headlights” or something like that in the Steam Workshop. They work quite nicely for bodies like this with a very curvy front end. The vanilla headlights you would typically use for this era tend to look odd without a flat surface to place them on.
Today’s car is quite special, for a number of reasons. First off, I actually know who made it, when it was made, and what the model’s real name is. This car is a '66, made by a company called Cavalcante. Cavalcante was a pretty small name, and they didn’t make very many cars. The few they did make were mostly compact executive cars with a larger car here and there. They started up shop in the 50s and unfortunately didn’t survive the fuel crisis in the 70s. This particular Cavalcante is known as the Alrosa, and it’s a fairly interesting example. This Alrosa is an SC, which stands for Semi Competition. It’s a stripped down, high performance variant of the Alrosa that Calvacante put out for homologation purposes.
There’s no radio, and the inside is a fair bit down in the coziness department when compared to other Alrosa trims, but it’s still a very well crafted, good looking interior. Under the hood we have an all alloy twin cam 4 cylinder displacing a mere 1200 ccs, but still managing to crank out about 100 horsepower. Those 100 horses are only pushing around about 1500 pounds or so. This thing picks up speed, gets stopped, and gets turned remarkably well for a car of its time. I suppose I should also mention that it’s quite loud. Cavalcante deleted a muffler for this variant of the Alrosa, and it doesn’t sound half bad. It’s a pretty fun little slice of the old school, only problem is, as you can probably tell, I have quite a few fun little slices of the old school, which brings me to another reason why this Alrosa SC is quite special. I’m putting it up for auction. So if you’re interested please come down and place a bid. Don’t get me wrong, this is a great car, but I need to make room for a bit more variety in my garage, and I’d prefer to keep the more practical cars from this era that I own. This thing just isn’t very well suited to the longer trips I like to take these sort of cars on, so would you kindly take this thing off my hands? I promise you’ll love it. It would make a great autocross car if nothing else. Just be careful with it. It’s surprisingly prone to oversteer.