Jacksonville Beach, Florida; January 1993
Our guy Mike Maverick - real name Tony, mind you - started his re-integration with the wrestling business by reconnecting with his former protege, Scott Suave. Suave - just as Maverick - plays a villainous character, a heel. In the 1990s, that means they and a whole lot of other such talent share a locker room.
The Dangerous Alliance - an example of a villainous, or “heel”, stable. If you know wrestling, you’ll recognize some of them as being real-life counterparts of the characters I put into this story!
Prologue for Round 1
Mike: Scott, I gotta give it to ya. You sure know how to give an old dog a great welcome back.
Scott: Aw, don’t start with that. You took me under your wing back when New York was small-time; it’s the least I could do, Tone.
Scott - an honorable man devout to his friends and to his God - and to a certain herb, too, paradoxically - was all too happy to introduce his old friend to his new colleagues, starting by going to the beach. And Jacksonville - being Jacksonville - supplied some fitting weather for the occasion, though it was nominally winter.
Scott: Hey Phil, get your frilly mug over here! This is the guy I wanted you to meet. I taught you how to bleed, but he’ll teach you how to draw money doing it!
Phil: Draw money bleeding? In this company? You gotta be shitting me, old man!
Looking like a million, fresh off two beers, and with a tinge of angry, insecure anxiety in his voice - the man approaching the two veterans is Peerless Phil. A Texan playing the role of a pretty boy with a mean streak - but who’d probably be more at home playing his own, pissed off alcoholic self.
Phil: So you’re Maverick? I watched that little special feature they filmed on ya back in '89. I been wanting to play that character for years, ya know! Dream had been saying there ain’t a market for it, but now that yer here it seems like he’s full of crap!
Mike: Yeah, Dream seems like a very, eh, “Diplomatic” fella. Suppose you shouldn’t be buying all that he’s selling. But what can you do, kid? The last booker I worked with ran me out the business for a decade. You ain’t got it so bad, in comparison.
Scott: Alright, Alright, that’s enough belly-aching from the both of ya. Tony, tell Phil something useful instead.
Mike: Get patient. Use your promo time well if you get any at all - don’t waste it. Maximize your minutes. You have the face, you have the attitude, you have the ring work - it’s a matter of time. You swear so good that you’ll hand us the sailor demographic on a silver platter. And every 80s wrestling kid is growing up into one, so it’s a rich market.
Phil: Well, seeing as you ain’t juuuuust telling me to be patient, I’ll take that. I gotta start thinking about promos in advance - hit’em where it hurts. If they want me to be a heel, they’ll get the baddest man alive!
Scott: Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do.
Down at the hotel later that evening
The heels headed down to Marv Mathers’ room. A veteran himself, Marv - known to many as The Peacekeeper of the Fiendish Four stable and notable for being the “brother” of one of the bookers - got himself a fat room with a TV. Mike paid his dues for the day by bringing in and hoooking up a tape player - there would be lots of reminiscing, coaching and ribbing over the old Northern wrestling tapes he brought. Philip brought the booze, and Scott brought some of his stuff as well.
Marv, though, he had a stack of car magazines on the coffee table, and he got straight to business with Mike.
Marv: Dream told me you wanna get rid of your ratty little Canuck wheels. The way I see it, this ain’t a personal matter - it’s a public matter. A locker room matter.
Scott: That’s right. The last thing we want is a big heel like yourself driving a jobber’s car. Or, you know, anything that can’t cram a whole bunch of us in.
Phil: The way I see it, all those luxo-cars aren’t the most dependable anyhow - so if a luxo-car is also known to have problems, that’s something you shouldn’t buy.
Mike: That makes sense. Which instantly puts something like an Aetherion limo out of contention: They’ve been hit in the faulty material and tooling scandals, according to one of this magazine’s columns.
Marv: Truth be told, what puts it out of contention to me is how its ass looks. Makes me wanna drink myself to death.
(A statistically competent entry on the surface - big, fast, aluminum-bodied to total rustproofing. Raises eyebrows in some realism departments - like the 12.4:1 compression on, best believe it, regular gas. Other than that it’s middle of the road… Unfortunately, both co-hosts concur that it doesn’t look good at all, from the cheap-looking “default with different hue” color, to the smorgasbordy rear vents. The proportions aren’t bad, though. But this is not a visual bin, but an instabin - as the entrant exceeded the techpool cap.
Truth be told, I was warned that my reused “example” techpool image - which depicts an overall techpool of 44.3M - could have caused problems. I should have changed it to one depicting 40 million or under. However, when 29 out of 31 entrants pass a spot check, I count it as the remaining 2 having only themselves to blame.)
Scott: Same article would also disqualify the Veloce Giove. Kind of a shame - I know Tony likes the sporty ones.
Phil: I trust an eye-talian car about as far as The Giant could throw one. Probably wouldn’t last three winters, either.
(This is the other techpool bin. It’s also the only sub-6 cylinder car here, with only 5 pots; is a razor’s edge away from being a low prestige bin; and it has Achilles heels in reliability and environmental resistance that stem from a zero-quality body that is also normal steel (not a binnable/finable offense on its own, mind). We were also underwhelmed by the design, especially considering the bangers Ch_Flash tends to put out.)
Marv: Mortal-Kombat-4 over here isn’t going to do either, if workmanship’s our metric. Lakestar has been in hot water with the government due to making engines out of tolerances and then failing to fulfill warranties when they pop.
Scott: I don’t think MK will ever even get to 4. The guys that make it could be bought out by our Northern friends to make games for them - and we all know they’re G-rated as can be.
(This car is binned for having a 1995 engine variant. Apart from that, it’s unreliable, thirsty, hard to drive, and isn’t much of a looker. To remedy most of the above would be a matter of tuning - it can barely utilize half of its cam profile of 60, and the suspension tuning is terminal oversteer-inducing as well as harsh.)
Mike: And then there’s this damn thing. Flint’s apparently had some sort of production collapse that’s so bad, their cars have been found sold new with surplus engines from the past. Possibly even ones pulled from the junkyard. And if they have that going on…
Phil: Yeah, DTA. And look at it: It’s one massive car, but it looks small and docile. Only the donuts are huge and that just makes it look goofier.
(Sadly, the only six-seater here is claimed by a 1986-variant year motor. It has other issues, too: low prestige, a “less cool Aurora” look, and the absurd 30-inch-tall tires. While dynamics were not a high priority, it’s not every day you see a car on medium-compound tires flop so badly at cornering, with 0.6g being the best it can achieve.)
STAT-BASED BINS (low scores in 4-star priorities)
Cavalier Motors Gazelle - @Er_Foxone
Scott: Ooooooh, jobber car!
Mike: No kidding! Even if the airbags weren’t stuck in the top position, this thing is just a plain little brick. With a 1.6 liter engine. That’s not even half a gallon! I can’t trust that!
(Binned for lowest-in-competition prestige - just 32 points - alongside poor design and poor comfort. The car is pretty nonsensical with its tiny 90-degree V6 that nonetheless has a helical diff attached to its slushbox transaxle - driving the front wheels clad in utility tires. I suggest the entrant commit a weekend or so to research ahead of the next challenge.)
Phil: If that one was plain, this one’s just plain disgusting! Why’s it so round but so blocky? Why’s it got a gas engine badly pretending to be a diesel? Why? Why? Why?
Mike: I don’t think a “Why” chant will catch on, kid. Maybe try “What” or something.
(Sorry for being harsh - but this design is just not good. You got huge sealed beams next to an aero-style grille on a flat front surface - and all that made out of the inherently squishy E90 body - all on the Crown Victoria body, which lends itself better to relaxed, rounded, even aerodynamic shapes. It’s got salad shaker rims combined with a formal roof… Just all over the place. And let me address the entrant directly here: Stop trying to shoehorn “Gasoline Compression” engines into places they don’t belong. Fake turbodiesels won’t help your entry or your reputation, especially when you manage to take 8 seconds to 60 with a 360 hp engine.)
Scott: Maaaaaajor jobber car! Teeny little… Wagon-van thing, good for hippies and cruiserweights at best.
Marv: Yeah, I dread trying to fit into one of those eight seats. Please don’t, Anthony.
Mike: Yeah, I won’t. Shame, too - if I could just have that but sized up by 20% or so… Like one of those family trucksters of yore.
(Binned for low prestige. Truth be told, this is not a bad car - it just missed the brief something fierce. Not comfortable, not large, not even that cheap either.)
Phil: There’s a family truckster right here, in sedan form.
Marv: You gotta be shitting me, kid! That is a mockery of an actual Supersport barge. It’s got cut-rate struts up front, it’s got the roofline of a Japanese import, it’s unreliable - not too mention too harsh-riding.
Scott: It plain doesn’t look right. There’s better barges around these days. Many better ones.
(Binned for design - it’s very plain, and the Lancer body just does not work very well for a full-size role without some major cutting-up. I appreciate trying to make an Impala SS replica - I’m a Roadmaster owner myself - but there’s a better SS replica already in the competition. One that’s actually ladder-framed, solid-axled, and doesn’t need expensive ITBs for power. A lot of the tuning and options baked into the car are inefficient effort - entrant will be making better stuff with more practice.)
