The late 70’s; Minex during the war
The lore
Minex was riding high going into the late 70’s, the Dragonar was sitting comprtably up at the top end of the market, relatively unmatched, and ArcSpace was enjoying Araga’s space launch market all to themselves.
Pretty obviously, that wouldn’t last with 1977’s war with Windon. All of a sudden new luxury cars were right out, and with the aging Dragonar being Minex’s best seller, what could they possibly do in such a situation? Well…
Minex already had a solid offering down the ladder from their premium Dragonar, but it was badly neglected, being largely quite old Planar models rebadged for Minex. So they naturally had a homegrown replacement in the works, but the war forced a rapid and radical rethink.
Gone was the bespoke chassis (which would’ve been Minex’s first homegrown effort), and instead they used the tried-and-true method from the rest of the Planar Group; rework the Paceman’s chassis.
Unfortunately for Minex, this wasn’t done for further refinement of a good chassis like the Genoace, rather an effort in extreme manufacturing cost cutting. The chassis was largely the same, but had the subframes swapped end to end and modified, so instead of being a rear-engined economy car, it was a possibly just as strange longitudinal FWD economy car.
The interior was spartan, cheap comfort was the name of the game from the start, even without the hastily modified 1955 chassis. But the Paceman reuse had an upside, it was easier on development costs to reuse the complex but effective separated systems for hot/cold air, freeing up resources for its numerous wartime specific features.
Internally, the cabin was well sealed, with vents in the rear that could be opened for throughflow, while a switch on the top of the steering column could dim all the interior lights bar the speedo. The external features were the most noticeable, however, with the CAT (Cabin Air Treatment) filter system having a prominent scoop on the bonnet, and the spring-loaded headlight shutters (shown deployed on the 20LE and retracted on the W20LE), which were intended for use during air raid blackouts, but instead saw use mainly as a style device by owners.
The W20LE wagon did as it said on the badge, and was essentially just a wagon version of the Daimos. Its most notable features were a relatively high load floor thanks to the old Paceman chassis, and the impressive parts reuse from the sedan Daimos (the rear lights and the vent intakes, which were known for not fitting well on the wagon).
The Enhanced SRT (known as the SRT-E) was just that, an SRT rocket enhanced for payloads that the base rocket couldn’t take.
The modifications over the original were a redesigned wider fairing, extra fins on the fairing for added stability, and the ability to add boosters (up to four, two shown on this model).
In late 1977, HAMs in Araga were surprised by a sudden SSTV broadcast over an open frequency, and while it was recorded, good decoding wasn’t widely available, and for years people were trying to puzzle out who sent this image of Araga’s coast, and why.
Shortly afterwards, ArcSpace would end the rampant speculation with a simple press release attached to an image: it was all a systems test according to them, but for what?
It was only many year later that the project was declassified; it was the Araga Reconnaissance Satellite Experiment.
The ARSE was a highly complicated reconnaissance satellite, with two different large format film cameras feeding huge amounts of film into the two Film Atmospheric Re-entry Capsules (FARCs, for short), and a third SSTV camera for either backup, aiming, or post-film exhaustion activities.
It was a surprisingly high tech project for ArcSpace, who until then had been known for their simple solid fuelled rockets, but as David Minet, Minex’s CEO, said in the release where the ARSE was detailed;
“It was felt by me and the board that letting the young minds either under us or in the school system get sent off to war simply because they were fit enough to be soldiers was an extreme waste, so we purposefully embarked on programs beyond our then current capability like the ARSE, or bolstered production of the Daimos, to ensure that they were safely employed and away from the front lines.”