The booming economy of the 90s has filled the pockets of the American automotive industry with cash and all the big manufacturers are looking to ride the upwards trend all the way to the other side of the Atlantic.
What they need is a car to marry the American and European design language for what an executive car is supposed to be.
Your challenge is to design a mid 00s Family Premium/Executive sedan or wagon to compete with the more nimble road worthy machines of the German luxury firms.
That sounds like a risky business expansion? Why, its not like there’s gonna be a recession any time soon…
Rules:
-Period for car and engine (2003-2007)
-Wheelbase has to be >=2.7m
-Displacement <3000cc
-Safety Standard Hetvesia 2001 (45)
-Emissions standard WES 9 2001
-Has to be Fuel injected
-Loudness <35
-Techpool availability ±5 (can’t go bellow or above)
-All mods allowed
-Only open beta
I will be judging your submittions on four different criteria: Aesthetics I won’t focus on whether your car is objectively beutiful but how well made and detailed it is (ugly cars deserve some love too)
Performance How quickly your car laps the Automation test track (we’re competing with Mercedes and BMW here, don’t make a boat)
Target Demographic Allignment How closely alligned to the Family Premium Demographic is your design
Pricing What are your Aproximate Costs
Scores will be given in a ranking hierarchy (I will rank the cars best to worst on each category and give points accordingly)
This applies to model, family, trim, and variant years if I’m not mistaken.
Increasing this to 3,600cc or less would make more sense considering that the American Big Three all had six-cylinder engines of around this size within your specified timeframe.
Both inspiration vehicles are smaller than 5m long, is the idea here that we are making something akin to an Mercedes S-Class or BMW 7 Series? But engine must be no larger than 3 liter?
Indeed. 5m+ is Audi A8 levels of length. I’d get rid of the lenght requirement entirely. During the early 00s Europe was big on compact executive cars, such as the Volvo S40.
I’m also suggesting this because I have a car ready to go and it is quite a bit shorter
I dont understand why there is such need to change the rules. You’re not making a replica of a car nor something to the precise demands of GM. The ask is for a 5m minimum with an engine smaller than 3 liters. I gave some examples of cars that had the goal of expanding the market to Europe. I could have used an H2 Hummer for all you know but the demand is still for a car within the limits above
it’s that a 5m length doesn’t make sense for what you’re asking us to make, that puts the challenge square into F-segment vehicles rather than E-segment or slightly smaller which seems more in line with what the rest of the brief is asking for.
this is your first challenge so as someone who’s hosted a lot over the years, here’s a piece of advice - people will make suggestions for the rules and point out potential issues because they’re trying to help. taking it personally and being so resistant to change is an easy way to turn people off of entering your challenges in the future.
Just a heads-up, your price mechanic is totally, completely broken.
When you click that button, the game reads the target demographic of the car, and then reads the budget for that target demographic in Gasmea. It ignores every single piece of engineering about the car and just sets the price based on the target demographic. Rules as written, you can make a car with massive costs, point it at the City Budget demographic, take a massive loss and pump your stats to the moon.
The better stat to use for challenges is “approximate cost”, found in the “statistics” pane of the “summary” tab. This stat isn’t perfect, but it does a reasonable job of applying the costs to the car.
Also, are people judged on Demographic Match (which actually measures how aligned you are with a given demographic) or on Normalised Desirability (which measures how attractive your car is to that demographic)?
DCMW’s present-day diversity wasn’t always the case. While the company in its early days dabbled in all manner of odd side projects, special purpose bespoke vehicles, and miscellaneous one-offs, its bread and butter were two four-door model series: the larger and more comfort-oriented Marqaba, and the smaller, more athletic Al Sayaadim. The latter, at times more properly considered a four-door coupe, eventually evolved into what we nowadays call a Sports Sedan.
The c.1968-1980 series began as a conventional FR layout, though later models were fitted with DCMW’s then-new all-wheel-drive system featuring a boxer engine mounted just behind the front axle, the crankcase integrated with the front differential housing.
The c.1980-1995 was the first generation specifically designed around this system, which effectively made it an FM4 layout. Better known by its embargo-bypassing rebadge, the NorĂ°wagen Valkyrja, this generation was lauded for its formidable athletic prowess, with motorsports victories to back that up, but was often considered too cramped and compromised to be a luxury car.
Redesigned from the ground up in 1995, the next generation intended to restore luxury credentials while losing nothing in the way of performance. A minor facelift in 2000 brought a handful of new technologies to the mix.
The new Premier is an interpretation of the American car that fits in our time. The well known benefits like spacious interior, good comfort, easy driving… in a shape that fits in our time with lower consumption, even better handling and modern technology. Do you really need the Primus next to it for a kidney and a mortgage? Or isn´t it more the Globus that is a sufficient daily with safety and comfort?
The design quotes five decades of American sedan history - the chrome waterfall grille like the 50s, the retro dash in style of the 1960s, and multispoke alloy rims, looking like from our 70s cars.
The StarFort had briefly entered the European market in the early 80s, and disappeared just as soon as it had arrived, 16 Years later, it returned in 1998 and continued to sell just enough to make financial sense to adapt the Next [Final] generation of StarFort for the EU.
With a State of the art, Satellite Navigation system and a 2.6 V6, it seemed a foregone conclusion the StarFort would succeed.. But, Europe wasn’t America, they didn’t fancy a vehicle like the StarFort, which only ever occupied a small niche of the Small-Luxury car market, an already small market in of itself in all markets it was sold in. No matter how good the StarFort may have been, It wasn’t, and would never be “European”, and that’s what buyers wanted.
Sales of the StarFort in Europe concluded in July 2006 after just 2 years and 1837 cars sold, When the EU factory, where it was produced, was sold back to Renzo. Followed by all StarFort production in November of the same year when the LaFeyette factory was also shut down, having produced the StarFort continously since the model’s inception in 1960.
