Truck: Centurion 8300 and Jet Trailer, both by @ldub0775. Rocket above truck: ArcSpace SRT Araga Comms Demo-1 by @lotto77. Plane: Ilaris PT72 Tiger by @shibusu. On wings of plane: Canned Air and Air by @Djadania. To left of plane: Hikaru Power-Wash 100 and Hikaru-360 Mijikai by @MoteurMourmin. Under wing of plane: Superlite Alpha 15R by @Danicoptero. Fun fact: All photos in this review are unedited.
Well, isn’t this just the cutest little thing? The Superlite Alpha 15R is a simple, stripped down little kart, the ideal first foray into the world of custom track-only vehicles. A tubular frame and a sheet of metal are all you get for structure, but the frame has been laid out carefully to ensure driver safety, keeping the seat and engine in place while also offering protection against front, rear and side impacts. In fact, when you compare it to some other go-karts on the market elsewhere from the era, it’s as safe as houses. It still keeps everything as simple as possible though, allowing it to remain lightweight, reliable and easily repaired. While some other karts use fibreglass shells and all sorts of paint to stay recognisable, the Superlite sticks to a few badges and a complex enough shape to be a brand - which means they can stay in service for longer, and be repaired far easier. The fibreglass can crack, the fancy paint jobs can wear, but what do you need to repair an Alpha? Basic tools are about it really. Just chuck on a new coat of paint, redo some welds, replace some tubing and off you go really, good as new. As a result, dozens of tracks have purchased the little karts, and plenty of series have sprung up absolutely filled with them too. It really captures the spirit of karting, it’s the essence of a good, robust kart. It’ll probably increase interest in track toys and open wheelers going forward, strengthening the market Superlite competes in.
From one cute little thing to another, here we get the Mijikai… And it’s really a well-timed car. With options for utility vehicles still a bit slim, and the economy starting to point downwards, a cheap goods transporter is really well suited to the market. The Mijikai is, of course, not without its downsides. As a motorcycle, the amount of goods one can legally transport with it is limited. In addition, a low top speed bars it from travel on any of the highways, forcing it to remain within the confines of the cities. The interior is an incredibly spartan affair, with very little padding and no radio… And now we get into the difficult question of how I should handle this. See, it really competes with cars. Not cars on the market right now, not really, but cars on the market from a while ago. This competes with used cars, old beaters being replaced. But those aren’t as available, and there’s more competition for them, what with the safety scare and all that. The oldest cars on the market are about six years old, so a 20% annual depreciation sends it down to about 40% of its new value. A car that sold for 8 grand, as the cheapest cars on the market then did, now costs 3.2. That’s cheaper than the Reliant Robin’s lowest van spec, adjusted to USD of the era then adjusted for inflation to 2012 USD (which are roughly equal to AMU). It’s cheaper than the 4.7k this was submitted as too - a potentially inflated figure, sure, but you get the idea. Whatever number I give this, it’s higher than a used car and you need a few years of sitting in your uncomfortable coffin-shaped kei truck to pay it off. I’m sure that there’s kei trucks just like this in particularly impoverished parts of the world, that are cheaper than my numbers, but they’re not paying western costs involved in certification, transport and sales. Oh, there’s also the hire car market, which saw a big influx of cars they’ll probably be getting rid of due to the bathtub curve of reliability. For the small business owners who might buy this, the question is simply “why not a used sedan or hatchback”? Even a somewhat beat-up ex-hire car will almost certainly be more comfortable. Perhaps the Mijikai has reliability going for it, but it is also barred from the highways as mentioned before. Running costs are low, yes, but so is the amount of goods you can carry; low costs are offset by low margin.
I had this image in my mind of a buyer for this. A farmer or similar turning up to a small market, tray loaded with goods ready to sell. But why would that farmer buy this rather than any other vehicle? Is a tray really that useful, compared to a wagon or a hatchback? I don’t really think so. It’s a shame, I want to love this car, but this just isn’t the right market for it, and I’m sorry for that. If Araga was somewhere poorer, somewhere with less money and the overhead involved in selling it was lower, it would have done way better.
What is the legacy of the Mijikai? In all likelihood, it’s the same in Araga as in reality; a tightening of laws. In Araga, the existence of the Mijikai proved illustrative of the need for product regulation. This is why we have rules on things, can you imagine someone taking this on the highway? Just look at it! In reality, it also proves illustrative of a difficulty inherent in the judging of non-cars: “What do I do when they compete with real cars?” I think that the best solution is, well, not allow them to. The rules will be tightened up in a future round. It’s not your fault, really, it’s just that my rules were too permissive. The Mijikai won’t be allowed as a non-car, because of how it’s shopped against actual cars.
Top: Power-Wash pictured in the tray of a Bazard BTH-8. Bottom: Kenmore Washer And Dryer from the 1970s, seen here.
The Hikaru Power-Wash is rather unlike machines of the era - but machines of the era were the way they were for a reason. Take a look at the real washing machine of the era I have shown next to it. You’ll notice many differences - the edges of the real machine are rounded off, the body is covered in white enamel, and the controls use white printing on a black background. Each of these serves an important purpose:
The enamel coating is cheap and easy to apply, protecting the body. It’s also easy to clean, which is good for the inevitable messes and spills in the laundry.
The rounded edges mean that nothing will get caught, and there’s no risk of any cuts or similar.
The contrasting colours make the controls easy to read, even under low light conditions and with other issues.
This does none of those. It uses a metallic silver paint - if it’s intended as paint, it’ll be easily scuffed and damaged. If it’s intended as exposed metal, then rust and corrosion are major issues. The edges are all hard and pointed, with exposed points right on the corners. The lettering, where it exists, is merely indents raised from the rest rather than a contrasting colour.
Even without getting into how it would look with interior design trends of the time (silver appliances would not be in until far more modern times), it’s a miss for me. One of these might be excusable, but all? I’m just not feeling it. It doesn’t really feel like a design of the time.
Ah, Centurion, you’ve done it again. The company was nationalised not because of any struggles but rather due to its strategic importance. Between being an important defence contractor to having its massively successful line of trucks, Centurion was vital to Araga. The government offered to compensate the existing owners and keep them on in leadership positions, in exchange for a slice of the action and a say in the future of Centurion… And the existing owners took them up on it. With government funds and plenty of confidence, they set to work on plenty of new models - including the 8300. The 7400 was successful because it happened to fit the new ISO-sized shipping containers, and they’ve come out with a new car that fits them even better. Compared to the 7400, the 8300 adds indicator lights, new styling and a livery, and a sleeper cab - plus an aerodynamic fairing perfectly suited to ISO containers, or the new Jet Trailer. The new 8300 is far larger, far heavier, far more imposing. It’s taller, partially due to the sleeper but partially because it’s just been scaled up. The design helps instil a sense of national pride and awe. Yes, your tax dollars are going to Centurion, and look what you get in return! It sells the investment really well. Thing is, they didn’t need to do that much to sell it to the truckers themselves besides the engineering they already did. Less drag meant less fuel costs, which means more profit. A sleeper cab meant consistent sleeping conditions, lower payments to road houses and the ability to take longer routes. Larger fuel tanks meant longer routes too, plus a greater ability to buy fuel in bulk in locations where it’s cheaper. It’s pictured here in a really beautiful Bordeaux Red Metallic with silver stripes along it that work from the cab down into the trailer, and it just looks absolutely to die for. I’d love to paint a car in exactly this shade, and I may just find a similar shade for whenever my next submission is. Operators, of course, painted theirs in a variety of liveries, many advertising their own brands - and with a simple, uncomplicated shape on the Jet Trailer, they were easy to paint or plaster with whatever messages were wanted.
The ArcSpace SRC Araga Comms Demo-1 is a pilot program, a forerunner of future projects set to take to the sky. In our world, the rocketry programs of the Americans and Soviets were driven on by the needs of nuclear warfare first, delivering untold kilotons of destructive power in small packages. The Juno II rocket used for the Pioneer 4 lunar probe was a development of the nuclear-armed PGM-19 Jupiter, while the PGM-17 Thor spawned the Delta family of rockets - a family whose descendents were launched as recently as 2022. The existing launch systems, then, exist in relation to nuclear warheads. The ability to launch satellites is an incidental fringe benefit, something gained off to the side. What do rockets look like in a non-nuclear world? What do they look like without the need to launch nuclear ordinance? They still look like they do in real life.
See, it’s easy to imagine that we started with the nuclear warheads and designed the rockets to fit, but that’s only partially true. Nuclear warheads do see diminishing utility once they grow sufficiently large, as the concentration of damage eventually outweighs the concentration of military targets… But that was only true in the fifties and sixties. The seventies brought with it the Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle, the MIRV. Now, a missile could be launched and target a dozen valuable targets. All of a sudden, there was a major benefit to be had in making larger missiles carrying more warheads… But neither major power did. The MIRV-equipped Peacekeeper and Minuteman III both utilised similar sizes to their predecessors. Missiles didn’t grow larger, because of how rocketry works.
See, in real life, we are used to economies of scale. We use trucks and heavy trains to move goods, because the amount of fuel needed to move cargo from A to B increases slower than the amount of cargo we move. We use busses because putting twenty people on a vehicle does not use twenty times the fuel. If rockets were stopped and held back by drag, maybe that would be the case, but it isn’t. No, the challenge of a rocket is the amount of energy you need to give your payload, and the amount of fuel you need to carry part of the way, and… You get the idea. Double the weight of the payload and you double the fuel required.
So, what is the ArcSpace? It’s a conventional rocket capable of delivering a satellite-sized payload up to orbit, that’s what. It’s a similar size to that Juno or Delta I mentioned before, perhaps a little larger. It has a large volume at the top, perfect for a nice large payload. It’s wide enough to carry a substantial payload, and to carry that payload up into a variety of orbits, providing a flexible and diverse array of launches. It is, in other words, a perfectly realistic and plausible rocket for the technology of the time. It even looks era accurate too! Now, how much will Araga use the capacities of the ArcSpace? Wait and see for the war, but it’s very effective and very well crafted, realistic and sensible.
The Ilaris PT72 Tiger is a casualty of standard automation jank, the sort of thing that easily catches you out and is hard to resolve. In reality, plane manufacturers take painstaking measures to smooth the surface of their cars as much as possible, to the point that even the paint is carefully chosen and maintained, an integral part of the overall package. The Ilaris PT72 Tiger, meanwhile, is constructed from a large number of small rounded segments. This leaves it with bumps and rough surfaces, the sort that would play havoc with the airflow and massively increase drag. The issue, of course, is that there’s really no alternative. What else were you going to do? So, I have to just ignore those parts, step away and look at the overall general shape and the details you could control.
Let’s start with a look at the overall shape. It’s a short T-Tailed propeller plane, and the short length renders it less vulnerable to one of the biggest flaws of that design. When an airplane stalls, turbulent air begins washing off the rear wings at an upwards angle… Right into the path of the horizontal stabilisers of said tail. Those horizontal stabilisers are vital for your ability to pitch up and down, so said ability is massively diminished. How do you get out of a stall like that? You pitch down. A classic catch-22. The issue is that you need to have the air actually wash out to the tail. With how short this is and how steep it is, that’d need your angle of attack to be over 20 degrees by my measurements. By that point, you’re well into territory you shouldn’t be. It’s conceivable to get there - the Tiger is actually manoeuvrable enough to get there with its layout, because of physics and how the tail acts as a lever and all that. So Ilaris introduced a computer to specifically prevent this, which is a sensible choice. Fly by wire is good, because humans are fallible. Like the ArcSpace Comms Demo, the Tiger is a really realistic plane using actual sensible fundamentals, it would have been achievable with the technology at the time.
So what do I see on the outside? Plenty of really nice things! There’s position lights, there’s deicing boots, there’s all the standard markings you expect to see, there’s pitot tubes and pull tabs and tons of goodies. The interior, meanwhile, is what you expect from a six seater. There’s no luxuries, no wide isles or drinks service to be had here, because there simply can’t be. It needs to be narrow in order to be fast, or you would use even more excessive amounts of fuel.
So, who is the target market? To put it simply, not airlines. No airline would assign two pilots to carry four passengers. Charter and airtour companies? They would likely purchase the non-turbo variants, with lower fuel costs and a more comfortable passenger experience thanks to the reduced noise. The well to do traveller who hires someone to be a pilot, like Frank Sinatra? Again, probably not, that traveller probably really wants that drinks service and wide aisle, there’s a reason Sinatra flew on Learjets and Gulfstreams. This is the Helios Turbo RX of the air. Yes, there’s limos you can pay someone to drive and be more comfortable in, but that’s not the point. The point is that you, the rich air enthusiast, can purchase this and have a ball flying it. That high speed and all that manoeuvrability makes it amazing for the pilot who cares about having fun, the pilot who has a choice in what they fly. And for that pilot? The compromises to provide the speed and overall performance are worth it. Nobody complains that a sports car is loud, because hearing the engine is part of the fun. Nobody complains too much about the small interior, because it’s all in pursuit of performance. And just like here, it works.
Is it a rousing success, in this configuration? No. Will it be one of the most successful planes of all time? Also no. Will it make back all its costs and provide a suitable platform to expand from, or technologies to apply and use elsewhere? Absolutely, definitely, very much yes.
Here, alongside the “BetterDeals Air”, you can see all the fucks I have to give about this. I mean, what did you expect? It’s a troll, sure, but… Where’s the selling point as a product? (In the photo). Where do you expect the consumer interest in this car to be? (In the photo). Where do you expect additional writing to be? (In the photo).
Okay, well, I’ve been saving this one. I suppose this is a potential novelty gag gift as some have pointed out - apparently it exists IRL, somewhere, so what do I know? I’ll still always see Spaceballs, but still, I can somewhat forgive that.
What I can’t forgive is the fact that this is just a bad can. See, in reality, the humbled can is a marvel of invisible industrial engineering. The top of the can is designed to fit into the bottom, so you can stack them on a shelf. The characteristic rimmed edges exist for ease of manufacturing and also distribute impacts from edge-on impacts. Material use is minimised, with labels relying on simple printed sheets or directly dying the material without changing the shape. In short, the modern can is the way it is for a massive number of reasons.
This can doesn’t follow the conventional form of a can, and it doesn’t have any good reasons besides, I suppose, convenience of production. The bottom is perfectly flat, preventing any attempts to stack the cans. The top protrudes substantially above the edges - which, lacking any rims, would be very difficult to matter. Lastly, there is the label, where additional material has been used to create a squared-off, protruding mass which would make these cans difficult to arrange horizontally in addition to vertically.
Perhaps, if you had taken the time to more accurately model a can, I’d be more positive. Some sort of shape on the bottom rather than just having it be perfectly flat. Using custom textures or similar to apply an actual label rather than whatever this is… The can has seventeen fixtures, of which ten are text; this review has seventeen sentences, of which six are waxing lyrical about IRL cans. I ate the bait, didn’t I?
(tied with the Kyros Nike). And while the car was plenty easy to drive at its natural city speeds, it felt washy and uncertain, and was getting to be too underpowered for the highway with a 16s 0-100. Safe to say, when it came out a year later, the Squirrel proved to be the clear superior offering overall, and conquered Capable’s market.
