Automation RestoMod
Chapter 37
Age-Old Tradition
Welcome to Automation RestoMod, a challenge where you take pre-existing car, and customize it into something unique and special!
| First ARM | | Previous ARM | | What is ARM? |
For this chapter, our client will be the Carson-Vicks Techical College, who would like this weathered 1998 Dodge Ram Van from their fleet reworked into a gymkhana-like stunt car.
Client Lore
We are Carson-Vicks Techical College, a private vocational school located in north-central Vermont who enriches roughly 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students in engineering and sciences every year.
Our traditions have always been very important to us here at CV, and one of our most prominent traditions, dating back to our 1904 founding, has been our equestrian displays. At every inauguration and graduation, as well as during major sporting events and holidays, our fine steed, Sormund, will dazzle us with a fabulous equestrian gymkhana show. Indeed, there’s nothing like the wonderful sprints and jumps that Sormund can perform! And Sormund is more than just a show horse, he is a mascot and icon of the college, whose face appears on school merch, advertisements, newsletters, and everything else CV!
He also… um… passed away, last week. Natural causes.
And this is where you find us today. See, this is obviously not the first time this has happened in the past 120 years; and to be frank, we are getting kinda tired of cyclically mourning another mascot, and establishing another replacement every 20-30 years. Kinda gets in the way of establishing tradition. And there’s the other issue of modern engineering students being, well… decreasingly familiar with the sport of horse riding, and less able to appreciate the athleticism therein.
We think it’s time for a change. We want a mascot that will last us a long, long time- and one that, if/when we do lose it, it won’t have a soul we need to hold a funeral for. We want a show that’s loud, flashy, and cool, that any 4 year old could explain to you what’s captivating and entertaining by. What we want is our new mascot to be a stunt car!
Now we would buy a purpose-built car for this but, well, the car market’s kinda fucked right now, so instead we’re gonna look into repurposing something we already have. This low-spec Dodge Ram Van has been with our groundskeeping team since 1998, and while its chassis has survived pretty impressively for a rust-belt work vehicle, its engine’s falling apart, its intake’s clogged up, and its rear suspension recently collapsed.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to turn this decomissioned Ram Van into the ultimate gymkhana showpiece, for use in both stunt displays for students, and official college promotional materials. its up to you exactly what type of stunts its biased towards- more drifting vs more jumps, tarmac vs offroad, etc -as long as it’s loud, flashy, and fast!
Judging Criteria
Aesthetics - With this car appearing everywhere from magazine covers to stadium events, it’s gotta look awesome and unique in any context. It should also clearly fit (and communicate) what the car’s supposed to do.
Prestige - Both the shows, and the car itself, are gonna be major marketing tools for the college, drawing in new students and generating school spirit (i.e. merch sales).
Performance - More fast = Better stunts. CV is paying a lot of money here, they expect to get a lot of fast. But keep in mind, I’ll be scrutinizing a lot more holistically than just “bigger number better.” You also get free reign whether you want a road-oriented or offroad-oriented vehicle
Authenticity - The college marketing department is gonna be relying heavily on its status as a former fleet vehicle to establish a sense of tradition. While you’re encouraged to go wild with the engineering and design, it should still ultimately be visually recognizable as a Dodge Ram Van.
Reliability/Service Costs/Environmental Resistance - Part of why they want this thing is that they want it to last, even despite heavy abuse. The longer they can keep it running and the less it costs them to do so, the happier they’ll be.
Safety - As long as the legal minimum for safety features is met, the client is satisfied. But they’re not gonna oppose extra protection for their hired driver; stunting is dangerous, after all.
Purchase Price - All the money for this vehicle has already been allocated, and you’re welcome to use all of it. But all else equal, of course, the cheaper car will be better, as the money could be repurposed into other things like pyrotechnics or barriers.
Emissions - No one is expecting the high-performance race car to have a green thumb. But hey, environmentalism is popular with the young of today, so it’d look good to keep our van from being more wasteful than necessary.
Not Considered
Interior Design - This is a vehicle students are meant to appreciate from the outside. The inside will be strictly reserved for a select few contracted drivers and mechanics, so the college doesn’t care how it looks.
Street Legality - This is a show car, not meant for public roads.
Requirements
- This challenge will be run on the stable version of the game (Ellisbury)
- You must clone your car completely using the Clone Everything button (shown below) before beginning any work on it.
- Set all years years on your clone (model + trim + family + variant) to 2020. It is recommended to exit the game and reopen it after cloning it and before updating the dates.
- Keep techpool at default (+5 in every category)
- No negative quality
- Race parts and V16s are allowed
- Unleaded or Ethanol Blend fuels only, max octane rating 98
- Minimum Safety: 50
- Maximum cost: $55,000
- ATS cannot be used for anything that can be accomplished with engineering. Otherwise, it is allowed in moderation.
- The general rule of ARM is to not make any stat of the car worse, only equal or better. This… doesn’t really apply here, since we’re taking a car specialized for one purpose and re specializing it for an entirely different purpose. Still, keep in mind the spirit; If you’ve managed to underperform a 20+ year old beater van in a key stat, you might wanna consider revising something.
Price Penalties:
- Chassis type or material cannot be changed
- Panel material swaps - $1500
- Engine Placement or Orientation change - $5000
- Suspension type - $1000 per axle.
- Engine Swap (including block material or family displacement changes) - $3000
- Engine Head/valve swap - $1000 (or included with Engine Swap)
- Drive type Change - $3000 (or included with placement/orientation change)
- Transmission Swap - changing to manual is free, all other transmissions are $2000
- Extreme body/3D fixture changes (such as a change in body type) - $5,000
If you’re unsure on any of the above, please ask
The deadline will be July 7 at 23:59pm UTC.
Rule deliberation will be open until June 16th
The car file:
ARM37_-YourNameHere-Dodge_Ram_Van(worn_and_beaten_from_27_years_of_use).car|attachment (92.7 KB)
Happy modding!
