Hulme Eldorado V
Hulme Automotive is more well known for ultra high performance hypercars and limited production performance improved versions of existing sports cars and supercars. In our Bespoke Vehicles division, however, we offer the opportunity to bring a vehicle and have it overhauled in what some refer to as “resto modding”. Here we improve and modernise engineering and adjust the aesthetic quality of your car to your choosing.
Aesthetics
For your Cadillac Eldorado we have adorned it with a red and white scheme as the major change, and have added classic touches such as the large winged aerial on the boot and the gold pinstripe. In addition we have fitted 20" forged aluminium wheels inside 255/40 tyres. The interior has been updated with captains chairs wrapped on beige and chocolate leather and a heads up display. Of course, all of this can be tweaked to your desires.
Engineering
Our specialty, however, is engineering, and this is where the real overhaul is. In the comfort department, we have replaced the standard coil springs with an advanced hydropneumatic system and paired it with active sway bars, and updated the rear suspension to a multilink setup, allowing maximum comfort without excessive body roll or handling compromise. A seven speed automatic gearbox has also been added so that gear changes are smooth and barely noticeable. An undertray has also been fitted to protect the underbody and reduce fuel consumption, and variable power steering and electronic stability control will provide maximum control.
In the speed department, the old and underpowered HT4100 engine has received significant improvements. For starters, the pushrod iron head has been thrown out, and in its place is an aluminium four valve DOHC head, with VVT for good measure. The carburetor has been replaced with an advanced direct injection unit, and to take full advantage of the improved fuel delivery two twin scroll turbochargers have been added to greatly improve power output. The engine has been tested at over 500bhp and 650 lb-ft of torque.
To control this power, the front wheel drive system has been replaced with an all wheel drive system with viscous limited slip differentials. We have also fitted vented disc brakes on all four wheels, with 420mm triple piston units up front and 340mm single pistons at the back, and installed an anti lock system, for when you desire not to t-bone another vehicle. We have also fitted state of the art safety measures for if you do t-bone an unsuspecting vehicle.
Your Eldorado should reach 62mph in under five seconds on its way to an electronically limited 186mph, and we at Hulme believe such performance befits calling it the Eldorado V, as Cadillac now brands its fastest vehicles.
See You Later Space Cowboy
Submissions are now closed. If my tallies are accurate, everybody who’s posted an ad has a complete submission. Bins out shortly, results out kinda shortly. Toodles!
Results: Parts 0-1
Ah, Sunday. The nicest day of the week. Will is thankful for Sunday every time, because he can both wake up late and spend the evening in peace. Contrast that to a Friday, when one would be charged both with getting up early for work and with going out to a tiresome, tedious and oh-so-fake dinner or party with his… “friends”. For all of William’s wealth and status, the peace of a Sunday is his greatest comfort; it gives him the strength to carry on.
This means that Will is in a great mood. The omelette is tasty, the sun is radiant, and the morning e-mails are… Hold the phone, I got three responses already? …And that pretty much settles it: The rest of this morning will be spent discussing these original proposals. Excited yet worried, Will wonders: How could anybody come up with complete mod projects so quickly?
The first proposal Will opens gives some clue as to why. While somewhat cool (and even clever with the Cadillac’s buttress-wings being adapted to house the vehicle’s DRLs), the design is clearly half-baked and done in a hurry, with a Habsburg-looking grill and massive, incomprehensible holes in the sides. William wouldn’t be immediately turned off by this, but a different detail seals the deal: ASW is not offering to repair and reinforce the car’s base chassis. A chill runs down William’s spine as he imagines the turquoise car in the picture snap in half, and he moves on.
(This whole car is an extremely compelling argument for ‘measure twice, cut once’. The engine is swapped, but so close to the original mill that it really should have been a head swap (only a tiny bit of family bore and quality prevent it from being such); the design has some really cool ideas but reeks of a rushed execution; and then there’s the harsh suspension and the real reason for the bin, The model year is still 1980 - whereas the rules clearly state it should have been bumped to 2020. Better luck next time.)
The second proposal William opens is from a fellow who introduces themselves as L. W. from WDesign - William concludes that The W in the tuner's name is also the W in the name of his company. The render of the car is striking, beautiful even - a low-slung retro-starfighter of sorts with oldschool cues such as a bustleback complete with spare wheel compartment and whitewall, nay, whiteout-wall tires. The proposal also promises a serious power bump via a low-pressure, quick-spooling single turbocharger. That all said, the El Dub (heh) runs slightly over budget, and only seats two, with the back of the massive coupe all being cargo space - whereas Will wants to believe he won't stay a bachelor for long. Before long, the client realizes that L. W. - who even named the car after themselves - has built a car to their own preferences. He shoots back an e-mail politely declining the offer but suggesting that L.W. source another Eldorado and make one anyways, because it looks really good.
(It pains me to bin this car, because it’s a very strong contender, being both comfortable and fast - as well as the only car to use the solid-axle opportunity and do so very, very well. However, you have made two serious violations - the competition’s only cost overrun as a result of using Treated Steel body panels, which count as a panel swap, and the absence of rear seats where a minimum of four is required. Mind you, I made a rules-compliant version of this car and it still scored very highly, so re-reading the rules would have helped a lot.)
The final proposal for the morning is another promising one… Will is impressed by the thoroughly modern design cues and the presence of a rendered interior - show, not tell, as they say. Will likes the presence and the luxury, but not quite all is well: The car in this proposal is lazier and slower than the others seen so far - despite the new dual-cam heads - and speaking of those… Holy crap. They don’t plan to update the engine auxiliaries, and as a result there will be approximately a billion vacuum hoses under the hood. Will sighs and closes his laptop; Perhaps better options will pop up later.
(While the major binnable violation here is The family year still being set to 1982, this car also had the lowest reliability out of all of them by far at an embarassing 59.5. While it is a one-star priority, this is very low even by the standards of all the luxury cars here, and is likely the direct result of the “old” engine family dragging the engine’s - and accordingly the trim’s - reliability down. One of the most pleasing cars in the contest visually, so it’s a damn shame.)
Part 1: Misfiring on all cylinders!
On any other day, William would have been disappointed by the fact that none of the proposals he viewed had fit him like a glove. But today is Sunday. Will figures that if even the early proposals had managed to be as impressive as they were, then he would have several that really fit him in no time. As it happens, William checks his e-mail at lunch and behold, two more proposals…
Wait, is that a V12!?
Pretty much ignoring the smooth but forgettable exterior pictures, Will rushes to the technical specs part of the proposal e-mail, where he is floored… By bitter, stinging, desperate disappointment. 3.8 liters? 24 valves? 192 horsepower!? What… What were they thinking? In terms of V12s, it makes Jaguars look like Cheetahs - Centuries seem like mere days! The blissful Sunday haze is gone, and William doesn’t even bother looking at the e-mail’s excuses of supreme comfort and smoothness as he sends it to the oblivion of his Trash folder.
(Yeah, no. This car has an above-90 comfort score, largely thanks to a laughable minmax in which all semblance of sportiness - and, in fact, sufficient power - is totally gone. The field of submissions here is generally underpowered, but they are at least capable of fun. This is just the definition of tedium, and it corners about as well as a Nissan Kicks. Know how Rolls-Royce cars’ acceleration is described as ‘sufficient’? Well, this is insufficient.)
The final proposal seems to be a collab between to tuning shops, and the dragster interior has Will cautiously excited again, even after the thorough disappointment that was the Aurum. However, that doesn’t last, and Will’s shoulders finally slump in quiet resignation. The Eldiablo is also a dragster on the inside… And a dragster from the 1980s, at that.
(The Eldiablo is, indeed, not what the client was looking for, but that isn’t the problem - I encouraged people to go a little bit wild. The problem is that it’s just a poor effort overall, trailing the field in basically every regard save for performance and reliability. Yes, it’s $20,000 cheaper than the rest of the field, but that’s not enough to offset a comfort value in the 20s. and brake fade so bad it scrubs off half its sportiness. So, in a way, the total opposite of the Aurum.)
Well, at least it’s still Sunday - so Will can still think clearly and positively. Judging by those last two proposals, especially the one that managed to make his Cadillac so much worse, maybe the car as it stands now isn’t even that bad.
His contemplation is interrupted by a text from his new secretary… And not a work-related one, either. Perhaps he shouldn’t spend the rest of Sunday alone, after all.
I knew forgetting to change the wheel size would bite me in the ass. Expected the bonk from price and comfort, but 
damn wheels.
Thanks for the challenge, I definitely had fun transforming. The bumpers were no joke, especially the rear ones.
I was able to try out new techniques (to me) on this car, on some of the lights and that was interesting.
Lots of dope cars entered tho, best of luck 
The risk I took was calculated, and I certainly accept the accusations of minmax. I did indeed drop all sportiness and power in exchange for comfort. I had hoped you’d allow it but rip.
Part 2: A Not-So-Cold Start
Close to a week has gone by, and life has changed a fair bit for Will. 'The secretary' he went out with last sunday, Mary Warner, proved to be the first person who Will was actually interested in in a long time - better yet, she felt the same way. The week flew by instead of dragging on, and William elected to forego his socially-mandated Friday night on the town for another date. Who knew things could be so easy if you just stopped giving a damn?
One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is Will’s search for a Cadillac makeover. Will might be much less concerned with other people’s opinions now, but Mary has encouraged him to go ahead with his plan “because it’d be wicked cool if you did”. Right.
And that’s where we find Will now - digging through nine more proposals on a Saturday morning while the love of his, uh, past week is asleep in his bed. That way I don’t actually have to write dialogue this part. Bring it.
The first proposal William opens is a sleek azure coupe with handsome flying buttresses and a bold beak. A full interior rendering showing a luxuriously appointed 5-seat iterior was also provided. Will appreciates the inclusion of a modern 380-horsepower engine and a proper differential and a sporty suspension setup: this would likely be one of the more fun outcomes for his car. On the other hand, the active suspension setup promises more than adequate ride quality. Seeing it as the worthiest entry so far even in spite of minor teething issues, Will saves the proposal to his starred folder.
(One of two cars to get a perfect exterior styling score. Very dynamic and sporty; Only real complaint is that the suspension and the engine are tuned must more aggressively than is appropriate (the suspension induces oversteer at high speeds; the engine’s power pear is too close to the redline, leaving power gaps in the gearign graph.)
Apart from the funky name, William has one huge problem with the French proposal. That problem is the Avion build. The Avion car beats the Ledorado in just about every regard; while the LFR-Works makeover promises a bit more power, it comes at the expense of having an extremely peaky tune of the old HT4100 with a late-spooling turbo. It doesn’t seem to be as comfortable, either, and is worse in the corners. Most importantly, it lacks the handsomeness of the other car - thus, Will says no to the Ledorado.
(I didn’t really like the design, the headlight stuff is weird. Moreover, the 4.1T has a 6000-rpm fuel cutoff, 100 rpm above the power peak - while it is possible to effortlessly reach 7000 rpm with absolutely no internal mods.)
William opens the Mons Customs proposal with some trepidation. After all, Mons is a legendary name in the customizing business, and he’s flattered that they even bothered to draw anything up for him. The first impression is one of shock: This is a very aggressively-styled car, finished in matte black and fitted with large side pipes and hood gills. The interior is an understated but luxurious place to be with all the latest bells and whistles included. The problems start as William spies his old engine through the semi-transparent hood bulge: The car is slow. Not desperately or unacceptably slow, but enough to make the exterior much more irritating than intimidating, like a bowl of riiiiiiice with no meat in it. The same old engine with no capacity increase paired to a gear-deficient autobox and what looks like a Haldex coupling to claim the title of ‘AWD’. The Blackout is a fake black suit just like most of the people in William’s life - the same one he’s sicks and tired of and trying to escape - and that’s more than enough for him to dislike the Mons proposal, even if its luxury appointments are impressive.
(This car was going to be in the finals, but it just didn’t sit right with me. I was constantly reminded of the bill this car writes with its looks but can’t cash with its specifications. A good design in isolation and a good engineering effort in isolation, but put together they get this competition’s only penalty for lack of cohesion. Truly unfortunate.)
William opens the weirdly-named company’s prompt. He sees a 4-door version of his Eldorado. He closes the prompt.
(Technically didn’t break rules and didn’t fail any of the stats cutoffs (though getting close to the performance one) - but I could have just as well put this car into Part 1 as a ‘design bin’. There is no design, no flair, no originality, and the somewhat okay stats do nothing to fix the issue.)
When Will opens the MTL proposal, he has to pinch himself. What a machine! A villainous front clip with round headlights, like the head of a skeleton, heads off a generally stunning design with exposed exhaust piping, a stylized white faux-hardtop, and unique slanted rear wheel covers. It’s a majestic, unapologetic monster. A rendering of the interior is also attached, and it’s just as stunning: a modern 2-tone design with a comprehensive dashboard featuring physical HUD, digital gauge cluster, and lots of real buttons that Will already feels excited to learn by touch. The specs reveal that while the car isn’t the fastest around, it’s a good deal better than the Mons, with an OHC 32-valve head swap, modern 9-speed gearbox, and excellent, sporty suspension tuning. One disappointing downside, though, is a thorough lack of good driver assists, with the old-fashioned MTL people refusing to even put traction control in.
(You guessed it, going to the finals without a doubt. Truly an impressive piece of design - and a somewhat ‘minmaxy’ one since great care was taken to keep all mods save for the pipes external. A bit more and you might have been handed a cost overrun bin for significant chassis changes. More care could have been applied to the driveability situation, though - a sub-60 value on an automatic FWD car isn’t good.)
When William gets around to checking the rest of the proposals - with the MTL taking some time to calm down from - the LMJ is the first to be reviewed. Another handsome black-over-white car, it has a sporty, perhaps even boy-racer-ish appearance, and comes with a turbo slapped onto the HT engine. 380 hp isn’t half bad, and the blacked out taillights look nice, but there’s a catch: The front axle is all but stock. A car with next to 400 hp and 500 pounds of twist, but no LSD or anything - just a jummpy, overactive traction control to limit the fun. The Eldolution is less sure on its feet than even the all-natural-traction MTL, and slower and less comfortable to boot - like the Ledorado, a clear case of being beaten outright by another proposal. This one’s journey ends here.
(While not as egregious a case of looking better than it drives as the Mons, the Eldolution suffers from a lack of good old-fashioned optimization. It could’ve probably competed if it were just better sorted, but everything from the laggy twin-VGT setup to the open diff suggests that it wasn’t.)
Then there’s the FST proposal. If the LMJ car is a boy-racer wannabe, the FST-tuned Eldorado is an actual man-racer. Bespoke V10, wide tires, full-time viscous AWD reminiscent of a Lamborghini - this is a serious piece. So serious, in fact, that it looks more like a Buick GNX than a Cadillac, and therein lies the issue. William is not a fan of the overly sleek, slab-sided, camera-mirror design, which does away with any and all Cadillac design hallmarks - not that it’s flat out a bad design, it just lacks distinctiveness. Having seen that he has better options, William lets the FST machine and its glorious V10 go.
(Pretty good job. In fact, it would have been a finalist with a better exterior design. However, apart from the design, this car also had the second-lowest comfort aside from bins and only a medium drivability.)
“Superfly” is right for this design. The stylish convertible with a literal pearly white paintjob catches William’s eye immediately, and in a very good way. There’s gold on the wheels and grill, but it comes across as tasteful and soft instead of blingy. Save for the questionable headlight setup, the design is damn near perfect, and the mechanics of the car are set up well, too - though the end result’s performance is on the lazier side. The interior is luxurious and pretty, dominated by soft red-dyed leather. In Will’s eyes, the Superfly Special is a sweet deal indeed, and it goes into the starred folder.
(Bravo. Just 4 ARM’s ago, in the Mustang round, you placed last due to poor optimization - a problem totally absent from this very well put together build. And so damn pretty, too!)
The last proposal William has to go through is a funny-looking one, seeming at first to just be an Eldorado with a soft red paintjob and a chrome halo on the back. Will has liked his other 3 starred cars’ designs, and this doesn’t seem to fit the bill… And yet, the Hulme proposal insists upon itself. Why? 550 horsepower, that’s why. Twin turbos, quad cams, viscous all-wheel-drive, and various other tomfoolery makes this car by far the mightiest of the lot. A hydropneumatic suspension and a cushy (if bland-looking) interior make it among the more comfortable entries, as well. It all looks very impressive - but William is afraid of how over 1 bar of boost is being ran through the original block of his car, even if it is reinforced. Extreme body roll numbers don’t help, either - it looks as if this low-slung cruiser’s suspension is so soft that it wallow more than an Escalade. Nonetheless, Will has to consider this car due to just how dominant it is in all other regards. Hey, maybe the modern stability control and the full-time AWD can tame the murderous tendencies of the engine.
(This one was tough to judge. Generally, it seems that cars with “meh design, powerhouse engineering and a couple of weird downsides” are - now I know what it’s like to judge my stuff. This one’s going to the finals - if only because it would have killed me if I hadn’t let it through.)
@alen.alic1983 , @karhgath , @Maverick74 and @SheikhMansour advance to the finals. See y’all soon.
Yeah, I just couldn’t figure a proper front-end, I’ve redone it 5 or 6 times, and time flies… And yeah, the engine… I completely forgot about it, obsessed with the design. I’ll try to do better next time. Anyways, there are some gorgeous pieces of art in this challenge. Nicely done !
I have no regrets. Go drive my car in Beam and tell me its not awesome. LOL. Good run, everyone.
To paraphrase King Leonidas here, this is Automation. Good effort still lol
Oh no I know what you mean, I’m just saying I always build cars that perform well in Beam. That way they are actually fun to drive, rather than just exercises in fixture placement and stuff. The real win for me is what you think of it in the simulator, on or off the boards.
In retrospect, I probably should’ve asked Will what he would’ve felt about keeping the old looks, rather than just charging head-first into that style. |:
Still, even if I’d done something more, I don’t think I could’ve beat the competition here; The submissions in this challenge are insane, and I’m excited to see which one wins!
I can agree that I am not very skilled in tuning turbos. The open diff is there because it didn’t hurt stats as much as I could gain with other stuff that I was able to fit when I removed the LSD - not a complaint, just an explanation. With all the cool stuff entering this challenge I didn’t count with making it anyway. 
Send it my way. I’ll drive the doors off it 
Part 3: Open Road
Sunday
Will had resolved the day before to make his final tuning choice on his own, mostly so that he could surprise Mary with it. While sticking to this decision, he finds his usual Sunday routine has been ruined: While usually he would have been content to spend the day alone, shedding the weight of his social responsibilities, now he just feels lonely. It’s a feeling that hadn’t bothered him for years, as having no meaningful realitionships used to be the norm back then.
Will thus resolves to occupy himself with choosing the mod job his Cadillac is going to go through. With only 4 proposals still under his consideration, he can afford to deliberate.
As expected, it’s not an easy choice to make: Each car still under consideration is the best at something, and all are very good… The Hulme car offers perhaps the closest approximation of the modern luxury experience, with superior bragging rights from its statistics, uncompromising comfort and ironclad safety; the MTL cruiser is the best-looking and is very competitive in terms of comfort and prestige as well; The similarly gorgeous Sparky T droptop is the most reliable and totally authentic with the mission of an Eldorado (even evoking its 1960s predecessors more than the malaise-era imitations); and the azure Avion build is without dispute built to be the best at actually driving, be it in a relaxed or sporty mode.
The Eldorado V sticks out like a sore thumb among the group of four. It's the one offering the most dazzling performance figures by far, and also the only one with a design that William doesn't really like. He sees the rear halo and he wants to knock it off himself. It's also the only car left standing that sends any power to the rear wheels. Naturally, with such a large separation between the Hulme build and the three others, it could either be the first or the last - and to Will, it's the latter. The sacrifices in reliability and suspension confidence, clearly made to achieve the Hulme's bewildering blend of speed and luxury, combine with the comparatively lackluster design to ground the car that outwardly seems like the best value for money.
And because it doesn’t tickle his fancy that much, Will doesn’t regret seeing it go from his list that badly.
By contrast, the Avion car is hard to let go. It’s so pretty and well-proportioned, and it’s refreshingly modern - not to mention so lively and cool that it puts the much more powerful and complex Hulme to shame in terms of sportiness. It’s brimming with character and originality - but all that said, it just doesn’t have the equipment and the luxury to match the other cars. A huge outlier in terms of comfort and prestige, the Avion build ends its admirable run here. Will thinks that the car is so good, that it’s a miracle that the Superfly and Eight-Ball designs do indeed surpass it.
Between the Superfly and the Eight-Ball, the latter is clearly the more striking and arguably beautiful car. The interior is better appointed, the car is more powerful and handles better on balance. The issue? A thoroughly outdated driver assistance suite. The steering is hydraulic, the traction aids are limited to strictly ABS, and the differential - only minimally uprated. This contributes to certainly the worst drivability of the final group, and among the worse ones William has checked out overall. The engine is very well tuned and all, but when powering just the front wheels, more robustness is necessary than what the Eight-Ball offers. This might be a very good car for somebody more overtly macho than William, but for the hero of our story…
…He’s more of a ‘stupidly luxurious, rock-solid, single-finger-drivable convertible’ type. The Superfly Special wins because where the other cars’ pitfalls were in very serious areas - Looks/Reliability, Prestige/Comfort and Drivability respectively - this car’s major weakness is being slightly slower. But unlike some cars on this list, the Superfly still wafts above highway speeds easily, corners confidently and doesn’t pretend it’s a Hellcat.
And what does WIll get if he allows the slightly slower setup? He gets everything else the competitors offer, the best reliability of all finalists and almost the whole pack, a wonderful paintjob, and a drop top. He also gets a real Eldorado in a way that no other tuner company was able to offer: A huge two-door expression of the American Dream, with everything to offer and nothing to prove.
Will is satisfied with his reasoning and writes in approval to the people at Sparky T’s; It’ll be another week before they collect his car and his money, and several weeks until his show-stopping convertible is ready. And by the looks of it, he’ll have actual enjoyable company to fill the passenger’s seat.
Rankings
- Maverick74
- karhgath
- alen.alic1983
- SheikhMansour
- cake_ape
- Lanson
- Knugcab
- Edsel
- Bbestdu28
This concludes ARM15. Sorry that getting out the final results took so long. Looking forward to whatever ARM16 brings.
Good job
Oh wow, was not expecting this. This ARM had some of the best cars entered to date, to win is quite an honor. Thank you for hosting Texaslav!
With that being said, I will be turning down hosting ARM16. Afraid I don’t have the time. So the decision is up to @karhgath