“Good morning, sunshine!”
The personification of groggy and disheveled opened one crusted-over eye at Farra, shutting immediately with a wince upon ingesting far too much sunlight. Blinoor stumbled across the kitchen, arms in front to avoid colliding with anything on the arduous journey towards the fridge.
“Morning, really?”
“Well, no, it’s nearly 2pm. But considering the hour you came home last night… er, this morning… the gods of timekeeping have decided to accommodate you. Judging by that, and the trail of items you left on your way to the kitchen and then into the study - and come now, I appreciate the consideration, but you know I don’t mind you crawling into bed in the wee hours - you not only had a fun night, but made some progress in figuring out our car build?”
Blinoor paused between swigs of a large milk jug. “…Huh.”
Forensic evidence would have to substitute for actual memory of what happened after encountering the one classic car club on the island outside the better of two bars. Farra, with a bemused expression, gestured to a pile of drawings, renderings, spec sheets, and scribbled-on napkins detailing five proposals for restoring the '59 Sharriallat they had towed to their driveway a few days ago.
“Once you’ve got your eyes open and something in your stomach other than alcohol, let’s take a look, shall we?”
1. Tungsten Modifications
by @TwistedUmbreon
“Judging by the overall appearance, looks like someone took your mention of welcoming real off-road ability and ran with it. Judging by the specs, however… um, how do I put this politely? Was this from someone you know?”
"No, and I’ll finish your thought: this is hot garbage. I’m too hung over to be polite, and anyway my politeness was expended when some yokel at the bar overheard my conversation, bought me a drink, and made me listen to his old-fart farmer’s wisdom of how he restored stuff ‘back in his day’. A few minutes into that spiel, I politely declined any and all of his advice, and thought I’d thrown away the sketches but I guess they snuck back in.
For starters, the suspension lift is just that: a raised suspension. The proposal was to source a good used stock engine and gearbox, jack up the control arms, throw on some truck tires - not off-road or all-terrain or even bigger ones, mind you - and call it a day. No locking diff, no armor, no transfer case and front driveline. What’s worse, all the weight distribution optimization was completely removed, devil knows why, and with no other tuning done, the hitherto finely-balanced footwork now oversteers at 65kph!"
“What’s the point of the lift, then?”
“Well, it does have trivially more off-road ability than stock - 5.8 vs. 3.3. And the tires do help with fuel consumption, taking it from pretty bad to medium-bad - 13.2 L/100km vs. 14.4… Are those pictures of the interior? I couldn’t remember what he said about that, except…”
“There’s now a back seat?! With no legroom? For a car meant for two people? Jammed in there willy-nilly and not even styled to match?”
“‘Styled’ would be a bit of an overstatement anyway. It looks like we’ve got large unadorned slabs of bluish-grey leather on the front seats. Rather Brutalist in architectural terms. That leather appears nowhere else except… the floor.” The two exchanged worried glances.
“Meanwhile, the upper door cards and some of the wood trim use a lovely, if subtle, stitched diamond cloth pattern, while the dashboard has the vinyl that matches the color but not the texture, and there’s a random chunk of wood on the passenger side.”
“None of this makes any sense, as a whole. What’s going on in the middle of the doors?”
“I have no idea, but it sure looks weird. And with bright red… ashtrays, I’m guessing… stuck in the middle.”
“Shall we move on to the outside, or just move on altogether?”
“Let’s not leave the stoning half-dead, hm? What do you think?”
“I’ve seen worse, but this doesn’t work. The rims are from some other DCMW and look ok as such, but neither modern nor an upgrade over the originals. Some inexplicable and hideous orange reflectors on the rear sides, and even more questionably, on the back. They’re tucked inside and partially obscured by the huge and very reflective original tailfins, further underscoring the question ‘WHY?!’. The side trim curve is now gold, which might’ve been ok had it matched something else, but it doesn’t. The spinal trim piece is missing altogether, which would require expensive new compound-curve glass for the roof and rear window. And in the front… what on earth?” Farra’s eyebrows were getting quite a workout as Blinoor eyed the drawing and started to crack up.
“What is that, a Hitachi Magic Wand on the driver’s side fender?”
Once their laughter had subsided, frowns and eyebrows returned upon seeing the grill. “Despite all the metal trim on our car very much intact, it’s somehow deemed fitting to take out two of the grill’s slats. On top of sticking some foreign license plate right in the middle of its face. The plate… I don’t know what to say to that. But the grill…”
“Now looks like missing teeth.”
“Huh, that’s funny. Not that I like it - at all - but there’s this: the entire build is slapdash and misbegotten. All major stats are significantly worse for almost no gain anywhere. Visually, it’s a disjointed disaster, as ugly as it is incohesive. Yet… ironically… those missing teeth make it cohesive in the end, because they sum up the overall theme so perfectly.”
“Well, when we hear of another one for sale, bring it down to the bar and if your buddy there wants to turn it into… this… more power to them.”
“Are you kidding me? I will do no such thing! Poor car…”
VERDICT: Rejected.
2. ZRD
by @Riley
“WOW!”
“Yeah, no kidding. My memory’s coming back now… this one is courtesy of some young bloke who’d just come from a race event on the mainland. Apparently a race driver and head of some outfit called ZRD. Still wore his race suit at the bar for some reason. His fashion sense belies the keen eye for esthetics that went into this.”
“I’ll say! This is a visual bombshell, a world-class parade of loud and proud hotrod from start to finish… where do we even begin?” Farra flipped through the pictures slowly, while collecting her jaw from her lap. “There’s a lot going on here, almost all of it simply excellent, but I’ll start with my single favorite element. The two-tone paint not only looks brilliant as such, but the way the tailfins’ profile is repeated in the transition from red to black… de-LICIOUS!”
“Classy, innit? And check out those taillights. I think the blackout is the perfect modern equivalent to the statement the originals made in 1959.”
“That’s not quite blackout, my dear; your eyes just haven’t yet adjusted to the Day Star. They’re dark, yes, but there are subtle red bits that look to be LEDs… oh, and here’s a rendering of them on. Your assessment is spot-on: these are a worthy modern equivalent of the flavor and quality the original had when it was new. A-level work, this. Apart from the one nit to pick in the back: the spoiler. Not sure how I feel about it visually, but the large and very practical hatch appears to be disabled by it. That’s really the only complaint here. Otherwise, moving forward, there are very well-executed fender flares covering… hm… what’s going on with the wheels?”
“The huge blocks of chrome aren’t quite to my liking either, but they do fit the rest of the build visually, and are a reasonable size as far as function goes. That is, until we talk about the power, more on which later. I think this chap was under an impression of a tighter budget than we have, and furthermore wasn’t aware that the staggered tire cost penalty doesn’t apply to us. The 205-width rubber looks frankly odd in the back, but given those assumptions, miscommunicating which was my fault anyway, understandable. The car should be able to stuff 245 in the back, all else held constant, which would look a lot better.”
“Moving forward… it’s nice to see a lot of stock features retained but subtly adjusted to fit - the gill vents, the big swoopy trim piece, the original glass, the pierced-circle details… The mirrors are another success story; they look modern yet not out of place. Let’s take a detour to the interior. What do you think?”
“Same as the wheels: all that white is not quite my taste, but more importantly, the cohesion is very much there, and I appreciate how it confidently complements rather than merely mimics the exterior colors. It helps that the trim matches the red, and it looks good enough that I almost wouldn’t miss wood. Elsewhere, it’s a very nice blend of old and new - original dashboard, small screen in the middle; original switchgear, modern steering wheel that somehow just works. The seats are modern luxury-grade buckets. They probably don’t fold flat like the stock ones, but you know what? They look so good, visually as well as what I presume they feel like, that I won’t miss that feature. The center console is a comparably useful feature anyway… hm, that’s odd…”
“What, that the floor appears to be the same leather as the dash trim, just like Golden McToothless before?”
“Huh, that’s weird too, for sure - I think we were nearing the bottom of our second pitcher by the time we got to interior materials - but no, what I’m puzzled about is why there’s an automatic shifter but manual pedals.”
“Pitcher of what, absinthe?”
“Damned if I remember…”
“And now we come around to the front… and my word, it’s no less of a visual triumph than the back. The chrome bumper is gone, though they kept the… uh…”
“I don’t know what they’re called, either.”
“Alright, ‘tits’ it is. They work, and the missing bumper accentuates the sharp-toothed maw that announces this car for what it is. Below that, we’ve got a big aero lip that makes the front look like a locomotive, in a good way, and a couple of new vents for some reason?”
“Those are for brake cooling, and they sure have reasons, alright - ‘loco-motive’ is an aptly chosen term, my dear; I don’t remember the details, which are printed out somewhere in this pile of papers, but the proposed powertrain indeed provides a loco amount of motive power… ah, here it is! Take a look.”
“Holy hell…”
Blinoor’s mood had been much lifted by the tour around the eye candy shop, and even more so by the spec sheet for the supercharged V12 that ZRD had proposed, especially by the prospect of hearing twelve cylinders, twelve throttle bodies, and the wail of a blower on top of that… Her smile, however, began to waver just as Farra thought to ask, “Wait… how much does this behemoth drink?”
“Oof… Being modern doesn’t make up for being huge, and for being transmitted by a complex and relatively lossy drivetrain. We’re looking at 15.7L/100km, which, alas…”
“…Is significantly past what we’d a priori decided was a hard limit. Glorious though it may be to look at and listen to - and to drive; economy aside, the specs are quite impressive - it doesn’t meet the requirements. Can you find that guy again and talk to him about a different powertrain? Because I really hate to bin something this gorgeous, but a hard rule is a hard rule, and it’s broken.”
“It’s not the only one, at that - we couldn’t get the result road-registered because it doesn’t meet emissions requirements. The engine is 2020, which year in Dalluha must meet WES 9, but this only meets WES 7.”
“Ouch.”
Blinoor paused a moment and sighed. “Bollocks… so visually splendid, but two hard rules broken are two too many.”
VERDICT: Binned.
3. LMJ Design
by @knugcab
“Definitely more ‘resto’ than ‘mod’, at least the exterior. Where’d this come from?”
“An older gentleman at the bar, a regular of the local classic car club that I’d met before. I remember us yakking about Mercedes V12 engines, otherwise that’s about when last night’s Dark Age began. I’m glad there are good reference drawings…”
“After the bombastic performance of the last candidate, this is frankly a bit underwhelming… although, as I study it more, I see less ‘underwhelming’ and more ‘sensible’. And the interior… ok, yeah, this is a visually modest but ultimately thorough proposal. Let’s start the visual tour, shall we?”
“It looks like a period-correct custom paint job at first glance, though there are a lot of subtle visual tweaks. The exhaust and reverse lights have traded places. There are bumper tits on the back. It’s unclear where the license plate is supposed to mount, but that’s a minor quibble. Not sure what that chrome bar under the rear window is supposed to be, but it looks like it belongs there anyway. The sides…”
“They’ve tidied up the side details. In a good way, I’d say, except two things I notice. First, it’s all well and good to give a modern fuel filler, but the original had dual tanks and fillers to match; where is the second one here?”
“Perhaps the tanks are now integrated? I’ll have to ask and clarify. And the other thing?”
“Why did they leave the side vents the original, unrestored, badly peeling paint?”
“…I have no idea.”
“Coming around to the front… hah! This time, instead of missing teeth, we’ve got a couple of crowns. I can’t say I like or dislike them.”
“Same here. I think, regarding the exterior, that’s a pretty apt summary - the proposed work is fairly subtle, not intensive or extensive, and what changes there are… simply are. The result is perfectly servicable, and does justice to the visuals of the stock car, but as modifications go, the feeling elicited is mostly Indifference. Which is a lot preferable to Lamentable Ruin as with the first candidate, but takes a back seat to Splendor, as with the second. What’s inside, then…?”
“It gets more interesting in here. As it should; I’ve always said that a car is defined by its interior more than exterior. Whoever runs LMJ appears to be on the same page about these priorities. Although I can’t say quite the same for the esthetics.”
“Fake marble, really?”
“Hand-painted, allegedly, but… why? Some DCMW have used real marble, and in the right place and the right quantity, it works. Here… it’s a bit tacky, eh?”
“A bit much, yes. Moving past that, however, I must say - I like what I see. Not my preferred color scheme, but it’s cohesive, well-executed, visually impressive… apart from… what, seriously?”
“Why on earth is the dashboard painted in the deteriorated original paint?”
“Perhaps it’s a rendering glitch? I can’t imagine that’s on purpose…”
“Overlooking that, what else have we got? The carpet is thankfully carpet, not leather. The headliner has a lovely diamond pattern that complements the seat and doorpanel inserts well. The neatly folding seats are still so, except now with removable headrests. There’s a very nicely integrated infotainment system. And… modern seatbelts! They do spoil the open-window visuals a bit, but I’d say it’s worth the tradeoff, no?”
“Ehhh, sure. What do we think of the looks overall?”
“I liked the ZRD’s exterior a lot more, but the LMJ has a bit of a lead inside. Both are quite cohesive on the whole. Functionally, this one keeps the hatch and the folding bed feature, so ranking them by looks and design alone… is hard. The ZRD is just so much nicer to look at. But to own and drive and live with, it’d be this one. Of course, there are mechanicals to consider as well. What’re we working with here?”
“The proposal is a Mercedes M275 - a 5.5L twin-turbo 36-valve V12, making a smooth and reliable 517hp with a nice, round, gentle torque curve. This is fed through… bah, another slushbox! But it’s my own damn fault for not stating a preference for ye olde stick-n-clutch. Rear-drive, except the clutch-type diff is to be a more civilized and reliable gear-type… high-quality tires… a lot of extra quality poured into footwork… presumably to make the conversion from hydropneumatics to air shocks more straightforward and reliable. Likely similar logic was followed for the variable electric steering and ABS.”
“Does it work?”
“Judging by the specs, I’d say it does, more or less. Consumption is a problem, at 13.9L/100km, but it’s minimally acceptable. The power, and especially the low-revving torque-monster powerband, are great as such, but it’s a good thing I’m doing most of the driving; there’s no traction control, and the skinny 205mm tires are going to have a hard time with anywhere near full power. The less direct control due to the seven transmission speeds controlled by a semi-autonomous wizard somewhere, doesn’t help matters. Aside from that, it seems well set-up - brakes are balanced and fade-free, the suspension very comfortable while still handling well, it’s reliable, and overall well-sorted-out. Shall we keep it in consideration?”
“Yes, of course. It’s not the most exciting restomod proposal, though it has its highlights, but it’s sensible, cohesive, and functionally a decent match for what we’re after.”
VERDICT: Taken into consideration.
To be continued…
