REVIEWS PART 5.5
WORTH THE WAIT
Part One Of Standard
Front, Left to Right: Wara Irena 2.0 SSE by @AndiD , Phénix Cortège Sport 1600 by @karhgath , Tarquini Vita FA by @Danicoptero , Bazard D-Light! (DWM4) by @Edsel , Empire Elba by @Fayeding_Spray
Back, Left To Right: Wara Irena 1.3 LK by @AndiD , Renwoo Merci Snedbug and Coupe by @Mikonp7 , Empire Temujin by @Fayeding_Spray
Deja Vu, I’ve taken this photo before…
I really must apologise for the delay. I ran into the worst case of writer’s block I’ve had in a while. I simply could not find the energy to direct anywhere. This was originally going to be one great big mega post of standard cars with some sorta-blocks that lead into one another. It went from the cheap end to something a little sporty to… Well, I won’t spoil it but the structure is kinda nice.
Then my energy vanished, I hit writer’s block and just couldn’t get to it. So, I took a look and kinda guessed at where the halfway point was, and called that good enough. This is Standard Part One.
WARA YOU?
Left: Irena 2.0 SSE. Right: Irena 1.3 LK
Let’s start with the Wara Irena 1.3 LK, because it really represents the bar for other entries to try to get over. It is a reasonably cheap, ordinary, competent budget sedan. It has its drawbacks - the frame has zero rustproofing, the rear suspension has a solid axle and leaf springs, but that’s really about it. Five seats, a manual with four gears, a standard interior and a nice enough 8-Track. The engine bay contains an inline 4 that displaces 1.3L and can only really be called sufficient, getting it to 100 km/h in a perfectly acceptable 19.8 seconds. It’s a dated platform from 1962, but it’s still solidly reliable, decently economical and, well, decent. A large tank and good economy allow it to go about 3 weeks between fuel refills, about 470 km. Running costs are an acceptable 1900 per year, and it costs 7400. Stats are fine, with drivability and comfort around the upper numbers we saw last round. It is an appliance, a refrigerator, a car that gets you from here to there at a low cost with few real complaints. Yeah, it might rust a bit, but it did the job, didn’t it? Safety is basic but legal, you get what you pay for. It’s a car for people who need a car but don’t really care which. It is a perfectly serviceable, perfectly average automobile. It does not disappoint, it does not excite, it simply is. I love that niche. The world needs more products in that niche. The Wara Irena 1.3 would sell like hotcakes. Styling is generic and forgettable, but not underdone or too basic - it’s a realistic, sensible appliance of a car. That’s the Wara Irena 1.3: An unremarkable appliance for people who want unremarkable appliances.
EXILE TO ELBA
So what can you get if you don’t want to fork out 7400? What comes in below the Wara? Three cars do, let’s take a look at these two first though - the third is an oddball. So, the Elba… Oof. Let’s start in the engine bay, where we find something a little ahead of its time but plausible - an electronically injected inline 3. It’s the sort you can swap for a carb, but still, very modern. Of course, it’s a real small engine that makes the car so slow that it loses points in the ADPR. Being an inline 3 means it has awful smoothness, but it’s only got a harmonic damper rather than balance shafts. Heading under the car, we see a modern layout too - torsion beams, a galvanised monocoque, just mount the engine transverse instead of longitudinal and I’m describing a very modern design. It even includes hydraulic power steering too, and the safety equipment is better than the Wara (but the rating is about the same, due to that acceleration issue). It understeers like crazy and has the worst drivability of any regular car at just 457.8 points, so not great there. Mileage is good, range is up above 400km, let’s open the door and… Here is where we find the issue. Exposed metal, seats so bad and basic you’d hit a wrestler with one, a tinny AM radio of dubious quality that can’t play any tapes, it’s bad. The Empire Elba cuts all of its corners in the interior, and that’s where it saves a lot of its money. The rest comes from not polishing the engine at all, causing all those new, somewhat experimental systems to break all the time and leave you stranded. The end result is as uncomfortable as the most spartan of work trucks on the market - but while you get paid to be in those work trucks, you usually don’t get paid in a sedan. And the Irena is only 800 more than the Elba, remember! So all those really nice features are let down by an interior so uncomfortable as to be intolerable for a commuter sedan. The styling is a little bit more bare and basic than the Irena, but still acceptable for the price point, so at least there’s that.
MERCI, MADEMOISELLE
The Merci Coupe, meanwhile, costs almost a full thousand less than the Irena… And it has an issue I need to address. I have a sort of pet peeve about engineering not matching fixtures, but it’s not a written rule. So when I see a car with three seats fixtured in the rear but only two engineered, I get a little uneasy. When I see that this body family has a model that’s very close to your roof but is an actual convertible, I get more uneasy. I’m not going to punish it too hard, but it’ll make me change the rules next round. Because of a Renwoo. Again.
It doesn’t matter that much. The seats are already uncomfortable, being reduced-size in the rear. The interior volume you lose for being a convertible doesn’t hurt you that much, actually, and some stats even get improved. Ironically, the additional weight over the rear means additional rear grip and hence no more terminal oversteer. A car with terminal oversteer and only basic safety should probably be on the borderline of legality, but it’s not - partially because of a monocoque, but still, system will be changed next round. Because of a Renwoo. Again. Comfort is compromised by being so small, but at least there’s enough padding and features to match the Irena. I just wish I understood what was happening with the engine. Why does it cost so much to service? Is it just a too-narrow bay? Maybe. Why is it so unreliable? Well, there is absolutely no balancing at all - Renwoo stripped out all the counterweights, and didn’t use a damper of any sort. It also has a relatively low degree of polish, including almost nothing spent on the bottom end, but at least it puts something into the exhaust and fuel system. The Elba’s engine has no polish anywhere but is still a bit more reliable than the Merci - which is a mixture of actually having balancing features and deboring the engine. Trust me, this will be relevant later. I guess a cramped interior and unreliable engine is a better way to save money than the austere interior and unreliable engine of the Elba, but it’s not great. At least it looks good. Or should that be great? I already went into how much I love the cute styling of the van version, but the Coupe is even better. The shape is way cuter than the van, the way it curves like this. Pulling the top down and standing up may not be safe, but it would be pretty fun.
UN PETITE INSECTE
By your powers combined, I am Snedbug! What do you get when you combine the ultra basic interior of the Elba with the unreliable engine and small size of the Merci Coupe? You get the Merci Snedbug. It is unbelievably uncomfortable, at a truly loathsome 4.96. That’s atrocious, that’s horrific, that’s awful. At least the seats are correct and it’s actually a convertible this time.
Believe it or not, that comfort value isn’t because of the meme of “Automation hates convertibles”. Passenger volume only takes a little hit, and the flat 10% penalty is there, but that’s it. No, the Snedbug has a barebones interior, with exposed metal abound. Add in that convertible penalty and the diminutive size, and you get a comfort solidly below the Elba. It’s theoretically the second best option for offroad, and I’m left reminded of a real world vehicle… The VW Type 181, aka the VW Thing. The, uh… thing about the Thing is that it wasn’t too successful as a vehicle sold to consumers in developed economies who were used to more features; it was quickly dropped in Britain, dropped after safety standards changed in the US and so on. In Mexico, of course, it sold plenty, but Araga is not Mexico in terms of finances. Is the civilian market desperate enough for the Snedbug? I don’t think so, because Automation won’t let it be as cheap as it should be. The base price is just too high. The Type 181 was a parts bin special, many of the fixed costs such as engineering and tooling had already been amortised. The calculations in Automation assume that those costs still need to be paid off, and set the price accordingly. Still, the Type 181 didn’t solely have civilian buyers, and neither will the Snedbug…
AND IRENA SO SORRY
Okay, so what if we want to fork out more money? Well, Wara has an option. For an extra few hundred bucks, they’ll sell you a 2-door version with a nicer interior, a bigger engine and sportier tyres. While the Irena 1.3 was a boring uninspiring appliance, the 2.0 is actually pretty sporty for a cheap 5-seat sedan, beating out the VME Tourline Optijector from last round in both drivability and sportiness. Comfort is a little down thanks to stiffer springs and those sportier tyres, but not by too much - and it’s a fair price to pay. It’s the same with fuel consumption, that’s 50% higher but it’s the price you pay for having almost double the power.
The Irena 2.0 SSE ultimately occupies a similar spot for sports cars as the regular one did for, uh, regular cars. It’s the bar, a solid benchmark which the others have to clear. At just 8100 AMU, it’s relatively cheap for a sports car. Running costs are average among cars with some power. 60 Drivability and 15 Sportiness is an acceptable package - not a “true” sports car, but good enough for here. You’re not taking it offroad, and it’s not the most comfortable option, but it’s pretty good.
Perhaps the oddest thing about the Irena as a sports car is the leaf-sprung solid rear axle. If you were to design a sedan to be sporty, you would not use this. Picking independent suspension would make the car sportier… But I can see why Wara did it, it’s for the lore. This is not a modern sport sedan. This is a refinement of a design that’s probably a couple of decades old, that started life as a plain old sedan made on a budget - which is why I didn’t mention it in the 1.3. Of course that old design used leafs, and of course those leafs were too hard to change away from. It makes perfect sense. The same sort of approach is taken aesthetically, the changes from the base model limited to some decals, a painted roof and a more complex grille, plus a different body style. Sensible similarities. Thinking about that context with regards to the regular Irena, it feels even more sensible for it to be generic and just a touch on the lighter side, like so many Warsaw Pact cars of the era. Of course, we don’t quite have the Warsaw Pact here, and I do have some worldbuilding questions for AndiD specifically, but those can come later.
PHENIX FROM THE ASHES
Of course, the Irena SSE isn’t the only sporty sedan on the market. Let’s start with a look at the previous round’s king of the sports cars, the maker of the ultimate hero car - Phénix. The Phénix Helios and Helios Turbo RX are obviously unsellable during a war, and Phénix sold their engines… But they still wanted to sell some cars, what brand wouldn’t? Well, there’s the Phénix Cortège Sport 1600. It costs more money, its 9600 AMU tag being about 1500 more than the Wara SSE. So, what does it give you that the Wara doesn’t?
Well, let’s actually start with what the Phénix doesn’t give you. It doesn’t give you five seats, the rear only offering two seats - comfortable, moulded full-sized ones, but just two. Its ADPR is also tied (widely) with the worst on the market, with bog-standard safety features and a ladder chassis tying it with other, similar trucks and the terminally-oversteering offering Coupe from Renwoo. Aside from that, though, it’s solidly better than the Wara. It feels a lot more responsive in the handling department and the engine reacts quicker too, giving it a better feeling in terms of quickly responding to things coming up or rapidly changing direction when pushing. Speaking of pushing, it’s got FWD rather than the RWD seen elsewhere - that’s a little bit of a killjoy for some, but it’s still plenty of fun and the tendency towards understeer will save more than a few novices. It’s also a bit more comfortable and not just for the rear seat configuration, but it goes from “the lower end of what’s decent” to “solidly mid” - but hey, that’s what sports tyres and stiffer suspension will give you, right? It also makes the switch to E70 unlike the E10-fuelled Wara, and it also brings the fuel consumption down a little too, keeping running costs down. You get a galvanised chassis too, and reliability is as good as the Wara. Visuals are a lot sharper and more substantial than the Wara SSE too - I’m jumping ahead a little, but the regular version lacks the red trim on the grille, the matching wheels and the hood scoop, and it adds a decidedly un-sporty tow ball at the back and merges the headlights for a far less sporty look. The changes are more extensive here, but not unrealistic.
For practicality, it also gives you five doors along with a hatch in the back, and that honestly makes this challenge parallel reality rather well. See, in reality, the hot hatch segment had some early predecessors throughout the 1970s, but it was a pair released in mid 1976 that really filled out and defined the segment - the Renault 5 Turbo and the Volkswagen Golf GTI. Make the engine more powerful, make the car handle better, make it look better and there you go. I’ll address the visuals later, but for now, let’s look at the Renault 5 Turbo to Phénix’s Golf GTI… Or should that be 5 Turbos? Or Fives Turbo?
There’s, uh, there’s no real reason to call one of these cars the Golf and one of them the Turbo. It’s just a fun pairing and I got to make a joke. The GTI and the Turbo both have 3 doors, so neither is really a good comparison. Similarly, they all use natural aspiration, turbochargers being too expensive for any entry to utilise during the war. But let’s look at the options we have, there are indeed two of them… Sorta. Maybe the Wara was the Renault. See, I can come up with a fun comparison here between the Wara and the Phénix. The Wara is a bit cheaper, it scores higher on safety, it adds a seat. The Phénix gives more sportiness, more comfort, more economical and such, plus it looks the part a lot more. You can find good reasons to pick one or the other.
I FEEL A LITTLE BIT GENGHIS KHAN
Let’s take the Empire Temujin as the first hot hatch to challenge the Phénix. When pushed, it’s just as good as the Wara but when it’s for regular driving, it’s not really as impressive, falling to the bottom of the pack. The biggest issue comes under the hood, though, where the engine in the Temujin is the least reliable on the market. Remember back when I mentioned the Elba being a bit more reliable than the Merci but still not great? The Temujin is worse, and it genuinely took me a while to work it out - but I did. There’s not many changes between the two, the same lack of quality applied everywhere, the same electronic injection. So, I actually called out the harmonic dampers in the Elba, was that a harmless throwaway? No, I’m bringing it up again, of course not. This one, the V6 engine, this is the one that gets balance shafts. Is this why it’s less reliable? No, it’s not where it loses 6 points of reliability, it’s more like 0.6. I was pulling my hair out, almost, then I found it. Remember how I called out the Elba being debored, how the variant’s bore is lower than the family bore? Yeah, that was for this section. That was for this review… Because the Temujin does the opposite. The Temujin bores it out all the way. There’s the change, there’s what it does, there we go. The engine in the Temujin has narrow walls between the adjacent cylinders, and that’s why it’s so unreliable. It took me a lot of time to work it out, but it wouldn’t take people in reality time to work it out. Damage to the cylinder walls, massive overheating, that’s what would happen. Great, your car has plenty of power, the highest power to weight ratio you can get now, but at the cost of awful reliability.
And from one mystery to another… What is control? In determining drivability, there’s three stats that form the base. Footprint is simple enough, evasion makes a bit of sense, but… What is control? Well, the Temujin has less control than everything else, but why? It’s not the steering graphs - the 92.6% drivability displayed there corresponds nicely with the -7.4% Circle Test result. Same goes for the percentage shown in gearing. It’s not the forces which can be sustained on the skidpad, those are on par with everything else. It’s not acceleration either, or weight, or throttle response, or brake pads. I was about ready to call it quits when I found it.
The game’s tooltips are just straight-up lying to you.
If you look at the tooltips, there is no difference in drivability between the four options we have at the moment - manual/hydraulic ball/rack. This is not true, and there is even a column labelled steering in the detailed stats for drivability. Different options give a different percentage here… But they also change that control value too. The Temujin uses the very worst option for control - hydraulic ball suspension. It makes sense, I guess, but it’s just so opaque. Add in that lacklustre circle test result and the result is less drivable than the other sports cars. 53 isn’t awful, it’s just low here. That steering saps the Temujin of its sportiness, making it merely on par with the Wara. Why does a car weighing just a little over 1 tonne need power steering in this era? It doesn’t. That’s actually a large part of why the Elba has such low drivability - not the acceleration or top speed or lack of power, the game considers those mostly fine and only docks 0.4% for the low top speed!
Oh, and it only has two reduced-size rear seats and an incredibly uncomfortable suspension that only gives 3.7 degrees of body roll, making its comfort on par with the Wara - which was only that uncomfortable thanks to, y’know, the worst rear suspension option. Purchase price is high too, at 9600. The engine gives you some bragging rights with 79 kW, but it’s not particularly faster than the Wara or Phénix on the drag strip - and that engine uses E70, so the running costs are higher than anything else outside of utility cars. The other ray of light is a nice slate of safety features which give an ADPR of 80, but there’s just not enough.
If it wasn’t for the poor reception I gave the Elba, I’d call the looks of the Temujin a slight misstep. See, part of the reason for making a hot hatch is to sell the cold version. The Golf GTI sells the normal golf too, people see the cool version and want one, but end up picking the more sensible, less sporty, more economical option because it suits them better. For this, you want them to look similar, like the pair of Phénixes do… But the Temujin shares very little, having a silhouette that’s perhaps closer to a coupe than the hatchback the game calls it - unlike the very pedestrian Elba. The bumpers, rear lights and door handles are shared, but the headlights, grille, side indicators and even the mirrors are completely different between the two. The Temujin looks sporty, for sure, with that shape and styling evoking American muscle in a compact form factor. It won’t sell many Elbas, but the Elba won’t prevent many sales of the Temujin.
VIVA LA VITA
Okay, so, there’s Ghengis Khan slain, let’s look at the Tarquini Vita FA, the last sporty hatchback. The Tarquini is the economy option. It’s just 300 bucks less than the SSE - 7800 isn’t particularly cheap, but it’s cheap for a sports car. It’s got the best fuel economy of any legal car in the round though - and it’s not even using the more lenient WLTP test cycles, it’s in cycle 3 like everyone else. That economy comes from using a really tiny flat-4, just a little under 800cc. Is it a perfect hot hatch, is it the embodiment of that idea? No. That i4 makes just 28.3 kW, it has solidly mid power to weight, which leads to a solidly mid 0-100 km/h and a similarly ordinary 148.2 km/h top speed. Economy car numbers. It’s doing this on E70, so it’s the cheapest for annual costs.
It’s lucky that acceleration isn’t counted in drivability that much. While columns exist for power/weight, top speed and acceleration in detailed stats, these are just minimum thresholds which need to be cleared, and the Vita clears them. I think it might be counted in evasion a little - why else would the nimble Vita be a little lower there? - but the Vita is nimble enough in its handling to match the Phénix in leading the way for drivability. Sadly, the same cannot be said with sportiness, as the game counts acceleration in the base and has large modifiers for top speed and power. The Vita loses a lot of sportiness here, as it sorta should… But if you can look past the engine or perhaps swap it for something bigger, you will end up with a really nimble little thing. If you’re not in the cramped rear bench and can ignore the massive lack of features, it’s pretty comfortable too, a point behind the Phénix thanks to the few details having a decent amount of attention paid to them, plus some comfortable suspension.
I can’t find many differences to the other version, so I’ll address the Vita here and this’ll cover both: It’s cute. The other cars we’ve looked at for sports all look, uh, serious. They’re serious cars made by serious brands and they should be taken seriously. The Vita is lovable, the round lights being set on their own make it feel cute. There are some cars that just look happy to see you, and this is one of them. “Come on,” it says, “let’s find a hill with some tight corners and just have fun speeding down it! It’ll be fun, let’s go!” And that’s exactly what a fun slow car should be, really.
I WILL LOOK UP WITH SOME D-LIGHT
From hatches to wagons, but trust me - this makes a decent amount of sense. I was going down the list and trying to pick the sportiest entries, I got the Wara, the Phénix, the Empire and the Tarquini, then I came to the Bazard D-Light. It’s just 1 point below the Tarquini, but we only have 11 left now. So, a bit borderline, kinda close to sporty but not quite. It’s a lot like a less extreme version of the Tarquini, picking up some smaller penalties for having a low power/weight which keeps the acceleration down too, but also lacking that quick, nimble handling thanks to being a full-sized wagon rather than a tiny hatchback. There’s less you have to overlook, but you get less when you do.
Within this sort of mini-segment, it’s a little behind in sportiness but a little ahead in comfort. It’s nothing revolutionary - five seats, standard features, reasonable suspension - but that puts it ahead here. It doesn’t make it fantastic in the broader market, merely good. It’s at the top of the tree in terms of price too, so not great there. For visuals, well, it’s a step above the Irena but not on the same level as the other sports cars. It doesn’t scream sports, it’s just a well-done, serious sedan. It’s a commuter car that its owner would love, those little creases and bits of trim giving plenty of definition when you’ve spent months or years with it… But you won’t be falling in love when you walk past it. Where the D-Light wins is, well, what you’d buy a normal Bazard for - offroad, cargo space, carrying capacity and such. An offroad skidtray and AWD makes it good in the dirt, or on broken roads. The safety testers also gave it the highest rating of any car made during the war, praising the fact that the seatbelts, reinforcement and padding work just a little better than other cars with similar features. It’s a reasonably sporty, reasonably comfortable way to take five people and some cargo wherever you need to. It’s solid enough overall, really, it’s a market that exists and it’s sold well… But how does it do outside that niche? What other wagons can you get, if you don’t want sportiness?
SCISSOR SISTERS
And here is where I’m ending this post - forcing myself to, really. This post was originally written as one block. That question at the end of the Bazard review was going to lead into more wagons, but… I wanted to have the entire challenge done over a week ago. I still haven’t looked at the military entries, or Partisan Rally. The remaining reviews have a lot of stuff marked down as “look at this later” and still need visuals done. Truthfully, I just want to get something out so… Cliffhanger time, I guess? I’m not putting a date or time on the rest of it. It’ll come when it comes, hopefully soon.
