ARM23 Automation RestoMod Chapter 23: "Rice and Shine" [FINISHED]

[ARM] Automation RestoMod Chapter 23 "Rice and Shine"

What is ARM: ARM Automation RestoMod - General Rules and Guidelines
Last ARM: ARM 22: Setting a personal Rekord
First ARM: ARM1 - The Re-Hatching


Automation RestoMod Chapter 23: "Rice and Shine"

THE CLIENT

Meet Matt Preston, British enthusiast car collector and Youtuber, his Youtube channel has become very succesful in the last couple of yers. His channels content evolves mostly around his core collection of five sportscars in various states of repair.

To give you a good idea what cars Matt likes and what he thinks is interesting, here is a list of his five “keeper” cars collection.

His most rare car is an all original Red 1998 Jösse Car Indigo 3000, one of 40 built between 1995 and 2000.

His most customized car is a Dark blue 1996 Nissan 300ZX restomod with a wide body kit and a twin turbo engine at around 550 hp.

The oldest car in the collection is a 1968 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible, this is his ”big project” car with fully restored body and plans on fitting a newer V8 of some sort. Still unpainted but the plans goes towards yellow.

The newest car is a White 2018 Jaguar F-Type R AWD Coupe with a 5l V8, well known on his channel for all the electrical problems it has.

The daily driver is a Black 1992 Vauxhall Lotus Carlton (Opel Lotus Omega outside UK)

Besides the core collection Matt also buys other cars as small projects, or to test on the channel and sell on, On the very rare occasion if Matt realy likes one of these temporary cars, he can make it a keeper, so far this has only happened once, about a tear ago and that was the 300ZX in the list above.

Now this spring of 2023 he bought a new project car for the channel, but this time he got the “brilliant” idea to outsource the restauration to someone else. So the simple question is, can you make this car a ”keeper” in Matts collection?


"The Project car" (Download)

This is the car, a tired 1992 MX5 and it really needs some taking care of.

ARM23_-YourNameHere-PleaseClone-_ARM23-_MX5.car|attachment (46.3 KB)

The car is using some mods, the game schould tell you whats missing, otherwise let me know.


PREPARATION

Clone both the imported model and engine family before you start modding. Nowadays this can all be done with one button of the Car Designer tab in Automation - the one circled red in the photo below. It is highly recommended to exit the game and reopen it after cloning it and before updating any trim/model dates.

d7699b61330feb144b7a169933c6839d39787a6f


GENERAL RULES

• Maximum Budget (as shown in the Testing tab, Detail Stats section) is $40,000

• Steering wheel on the right side (because UK) if you make an interior.

• Set all car model/trim and engine family/variant dates to 2020.

• All tech-pool must be kept at 5.

• Quality sliders must not be set above +4 or below -4.

• Chassis type & chassis material cannot be changed.

• Chassis quality and body quality must be set to 0.

• No V16s or race parts, this is a road car. (race intake, race tubular exhaust, semi-slicks).

• You must post an ad with at least 1 picture of your car on this thread.

• Interiors aren’t mandatory if you leave the soft top up, but there has to be somekind of interior if you make a convertible.

• You get 3 questions to in terms of Matt’s likes and prefer


ADVANCED TRIM SETTINGS

• Wheel concavity, rim centre offset, lip thickness can be changed freely.

• Tyre tread width, wall curve and thread curve allowed in moderation (OK for small adjustments).

• A +/-5 ride height adjustment, wheel offset to max 45 and chassis track width to max 5 is allowed.

• Chassis tunnel size and firewall position can be changed freely.

• Exhaust and intake sportiness can be altered freely.

• Engine X, Y, Z coordinates & rotation can be altered to make the engine fit better.

• Everything else needs to be set to 0


BODY MODIFICATIONS

• NOTE! Some morphs can cause unexpected issues & mess up the front and rear fixtures. You have been warned…

• A-Pillar, B-Pillar, C-Pillar morphs should stay untouched. Other morphs allowed.

• Using 3D/Patch/morphs (the legal ones) to make the car look like something it is not is allowed, however, but will incur the same price penalty as other extensive body mods.

• The car is made on the convertible variant, to make it convertible change the roof colour to transparent and mask rear and side windows with something of your choice with colour set to transparent.


CAR REQUIREMENTS

• The general rule of ARM is to not make a car worse. A small drop (up to 10% maximum) in one single stat if it really bumps up the others will not disqualify your entry, however if you have multiple stats that are worse, then I’ll reserve the right to instabin.

• The suspension on this 30 year old car is completly worn out and needs a restauration and retuning, (just retuning if you keep the original suspension)

• 3 way cat (any kind) is required.

• Unleaded fuel is required. (95 RON is the most common fuel in UK)

• The car should still appear street legal and have all the major equipment needed for that.

• I won’t judge colour usage unless it’s completely terrible.


EXTENSIVE MODIFICATIONS AND COST PENALTIES

• Suspension type swap will give a $1000 penalty per axle.

• A cylinder head change (keeping same bore/stroke) will give a $1000 penalty.

• Panel material swap will give a $1500 penalty.

• Changing engine orientation will give a $2000 penalty.

• Patch/3D/Morphs that radically is altering the looks of the car will give a $2500 penalty.

• A gearbox only swap will give a $1500 penalty.

• A complete engine/gearbox swap will give a $3000 penalty.

• Changing from RWD to FWD/AWD/4x4 will give a $3500 penalty.


JUDGING

Priorities:

:star::star::star::star::star:

Exterior Aesthetics

:star::star::star::star:

Drivability, Sportiness, Prestige, (Offroad, only if your car is an offroader)

:star::star::star:

Comfort, Reliability, Running costs

:star::star:

Practicality, Safety

:star:

Utility, Offroad

Small Bonus Points: Interior Aesthetics, only on convertibles.


Inspiration pictures

And a big no no…


SUBMISSIONS

Base car file:
ARM23_-YourNameHere-PleaseClone-_ARM23-_MX5.car|attachment (46.3 KB)

MAKE SURE YOU’VE CLONED THE MODEL AND FAMILY PROPERLY.

Set Car Model and Engine Family names to “ARM23 - [Your Forum Username Here]”.

Set Car Trim and Engine Variant names to whatever you wish.

Post the advert for your restomod proposal in this thread, remembering that there must be at least one picture of your car included.

While it won’t affect judging scores, feel free to add more photos and any relevant bit of lore too.

Send me a direct message in this forum with your .car file attached.


TIMEFRAME / DEADLINES

• ARM23 open for discussion, rules deliberation, and feedback from Wednesnday May 17 (GMT). Please give me any suggestions you might have in terms of rules refinement and clarification.

• Rules finalisation by Wednesnday May 24 23:59 (GMT)

• Submissions open on Sunday May 28, 00:00 (GMT)

• Submissions close on Friday June 23, 23:59 (GMT)


Notes

Hey, I am not a very good writer like many of you guys are, and english is not my native language so there wiil be errors and mistakes in the text.

This is my first challenge here and I will try my best to make it work.

And thanks to Machalel for borrowing his ruleset from ARM21.


5 Likes

To that end, here they are:

  • What are Matt’s favorite exterior colors?
  • What is his favorite engine configuration?
  • Does replacing the stock transmission with one of a different type and/or with a different number of gears incur any additional cost(s)?

A while ago I thought that in over 2 years, we haven’t had a japanese car in ARM. “Not even a Miata, I bet one will come sooner or later”, I thought. Seems like I was looking into the future then. :rofl:

Like most guys Matt doesn’t like pink cars and thinks silver/gray are a bit boring. but unlike most guys he really likes yellow/orange.

He likes all engines, but the he thinks an engine schould “feel right” for the car in question. ex. no I4 in the Camaro.

Good question, I added a 1500 penalty for gearbox only swap, but it is included in the 3000 engine/gearbox swap.

I already had one made, why not use it :wink:

miat

defo entering this one if i have the time

Just so you both know, the 3 questions have traditionally been meant to be kept private and asked in DMs. This is to simulate a typical correspondence between a restomod company and the client and give each competitor a slightly unique bit of information about the client that could give a small advantage if used right. Looks like a cool brief and good car choice, should be a cool round!

2 Likes

Oh, also was the bit about not judging color choice left in the brief intentionally? I know Machalel’s round included that because he was colorblind. There’s nothing wrong with keeping that rule ofc if you’d rather it be that way, but seeing your response to ABG about opinions on colors leaves me wondering.

2 Likes

I mean i will just question a color choice if it is way out there… but it wont lead to any bins.

3 Likes

So, just to be clear, will there be an advantage to choosing a color Matt prefers? I presume this is a no?

Yes that is a no :wink:

2 Likes

The base car comes with huge snap oversteer, due to how the game calculates weight distribution for convertibles (mostly)
Do you want us to “correct” this or keep it tail-happy?

Edit: turns out the front aero works a little too well on this body, balancing it with rear downforce helps a lot.

Yes, the suspension on this old thing is completly worn out and needs a restauration and retuning, or a custom rebuild.

1 Like

A quick inspection of the donor car revealed that it had a front spoiler, but no aero fixtures on the rear to compensate. That’s why I swapped out the spoiler for a front lip on my test mule, and added a rear wing and lip (the latter taking the form of a diffuser) for good measure, providing a more rear-heavy aero balance.

A rules question: Which grade of unleaded fuel be used? 91, 95, 98, 100? Is there a specific grade we should use?

Edit: Following up, can you provide a list of the forbidden morphs by name? You say that “A-Pillar, B-Pillar, C-Pillar, sill and overhang morphs should stay untouched”… But this car has no C-pillar, has multiple morphs impacting the A-pillar (“A_Pillar”, “A_Adjustment”) and has a similar situation for the B pillar.

Taking the client’s country of origin into account, I’m recommending 95 RON premium unleaded at the very least, with a maximum grade of 98 RON super unleaded.

1 Like

Added some Inspiration pictures.

95 RON (E10) is the most common fuel in the UK, only option is 98 RON, the same goes for the rest of europe aswell.

2 Likes

So uh… Rules as written, it’s impossible to avoid a panel swap.

The base car is presented with a 92 Model Year, +5 techpool everywhere for an effective tech year of 1997. This means that Treated Steel (which has an unlock year of 1994) can be used - and it has been.

We need to set the techpool to 0 everywhere and keep the 1992 model year for an effective tech year on the chassis of 1992. This means that Treated Steel can no longer be used, and a different year must be used.

Please advise on how this is meant to be handled.

4 Likes

I feel like the car should be set up with the 0 techpool from the factory. (It’d be sad if i had to redo my whole car though… I’m really proud of it.)