a.k.a what kind of car do you make that you can sell for 35000-ish?
As some of you know, GG recently teamed up with little-known Italian sportscar manufacturer GBF to see what they could do on a budget sports platform. It’s a very far cry from the ultra sharp, honed weapons of mass destruction speed and performance that we’re used to seeing from GG. But as I already mentioned, the whole idea of this project was to see what kind of stupid speed one could wring out of ‘normal-ish car’ production parameters.
To refresh your memory, this is what they came up with:
At least, this is the base form, that seats 2 people, and was priced at 35K USD or 50K AUD.
Some of you may also know that Motoring Man, Gavin Anderson reviewed the car and was somewhat baffled at the concept and execution. It would probably have helped to frame it as a kit car that emulates supercar performance for a very reasonable price. The main difference between this and kit cars is that it comes with a full-sized supercar styled body with air-conditioned interior, and uses an obnoxiously large engine, so it weighs nearly three times as much as both an Atom Ariel and Caterham Super 7. So what is it really? A pony car with a turbo stuffed into a supercar body?
Strop was baffled at Gavin’s bafflement. Despite knowing the joy of ‘slow-fast’ (thanks, Regular Guy), GG insists only on making fast fast, so offered fast-fast for the kind of price you might expect slow-fast, or comfy, or any number of other things. And that’s the thing. Now he’s worried. He’s worried that even though they’re only doing this as an experiment and that they’re selling it in low volumes, that it’s not going to be the gateway to their master plan of making all things fast at all budgets like the company envisaged.
So now it’s time to do some market research, i.e. the kind of thing you’d think a normal company would think of doing before they made a car and released it to the public. To be fair, GG never had to think about this stuff since they were always in the business of creating space in a market so rarefied it might as well have been a vacuum. But now they’re trying to sell a car that many people can actually consider buying, they had better start. After all, there’s quite a few good sporting cars from around this price. Erin, Rennen, Baltazar, Maesima, Revera, Armada, Matteo Miglia, Dragotec, Cavallera all should produce them, and that’s just to name a few.
##The Brief
GG has sent out an open invite to all known car manufacturers, requesting samples of passenger vehicles that can be sold for a certain price. The focus is on 2-5 seaters, and has a preference for the sporty, though that doesn’t have to be the car’s primary feature. If there’s any other company that makes supercar performance available at this price point, they also really want to know, as if the market can be hyped up through some competition, that would likely prove beneficial.
To this end, please submit a car that is:
- Preferably lore friendly car from a company which has some kind of lore that already exists on this forum, but if you don’t have a company or your company isn’t mentioned on the forums yet I won’t exclude you
- Trim year 2013-2018, model and engine years can be whatever as long as the car is being currently sold new.
- 2-5 seats
- Not Delivery or primarily Utility or Cargo type vehicles
- Preferably something that performs well in the Fam Sport, Fun, Light Sport, Track, C sport sectors
- Engineering time <100 engine and <100 trim (not strict, but strongly preferred)
- Production units <100 engine and <150 trim (not strict, but strongly preferred)
- 0% markup Market price 17000-25000 (a little under and a little over is ok)
- Can make it around the Green Hell track in under 8:30, or Airfield in under 1:25
As a general rule, the further under the budget you go, the higher I’ll allow the engineering times to exceed the stated limits. For example, if the engine engineering time is 120, but the 0% markup price is 16k, that’s ok, but if it’s 120 and the markup price is 23k, that’s too much.
Body requirements:
- Please don’t use fiberglass panels if you can help it
Engine requirements:
- Maximum fuel required 95RON
- Needs a cat
- Noise levels <60
Trim requirements:
- No semi slicks
- Tyres used will be a set of standard sports with 0 tech. Min profile 35. Max width 295mm.
- Cooling must match or exceed engine requirements
- Minimum safety 45 (will need to be sold in Fruinian countries into the 2020s)
- Minimum average reliability should be 70
- Fuel consumption no greater than 14L/100km
Aside from that everything else is open.
##And What Is GG Planning To Do With These Cars?
Simple. Drive them, figure out what it’s like to live with them, what they’d be used for. How much and what are you getting out of your money, all for the purposes of defining how much living with 710bhp in a 2 seater is really worth (and whether it only belongs in supercars). Most likely we will be testing them out on our own proving grounds (which I haven’t even designed yet, uhhhhhh), but then taking them out for some real world testing. By way of illustration…
This is a map of the northern portion of Melbourne. Like most Australian cities, Melbourne’s pretty sprawley. The GG HQ site has been marked out. So too has a place called Calder Park, some 40 minutes away, as well as a quiet rural locale named Humevale, see the annotation “great B roads”. What’s so special about this place? It has a single lane road which serves as a really tight and twisty touge. The road where Strop first chased Kai while driving GG’s first prototype, Nightfury, but this is a side note. It makes for some real white-knuckle riding and it looks mostly like this:
The full course would be 7.3km of hillclimb, and looks like this:
There are many roads like this in Australia and other countries besides, and any driver knows that they’re the ones with the thrills, so we’ll be thrashing all the cars through this. The time will be one thing, but seeing just how much of the car’s potential can be brought out on this challenging road will be another.
Now, as for the Calder Park Raceway:
It’s gone through some legal challenges and funding issues recently, but remains available for events. A closed testing event like this one is not difficult to book, so making a track day of it would be the natural solution given that for many enthusiasts, that’s where they really want to take the car.
Therefore, for each and every car the–
##Itinerary
will consist of
- Inspection
- Initial speed and braking integrity testing
- Skidpan testing
- Driving suburban route to Humevale Rd
- Time attack on Humevale Rd Hillclimb
- Driving through CBD to Calder Park
- Calder Park Raceway track testing
##How is this judged?
First things first, there’s no winner. Your car will get a brief comment on each part of the itinerary, and one of my special pointy graph things with attributes that I haven’t yet decided. Then there’ll be an overall statement from Strop and team about what they think the car stands for and why it’s worth or not worth what it costs. There’ll be pretty coloured tables and stuff, you know what you usually get when you enter my things.
Also the cars will be compared against my own benchmarks: a GG original (Lilith, which is over twice the price so isn’t a benchmark), the Bellua, one from Armada (the Fore Gen V
##How do I enter?
- Use Kee Engine
- You may submit one car per company, which means, if you control more than one company, you may submit more than one car (but the company should exist on the forums first)
- PM me your car, name both the Model and Engine Family GMR-username and export. Do not rename the exported zip.
- Post an image of your car and the stats and price on this thread (just like CSR rules, except it doesn’t need to be an ad)
- If your car is already on the forums, post the link to the forums too!
- You must specify markup, either in the post or already in the file. It’d also be very helpful as always to have a projected number of units produced per year
If your entry falls foul of any of the rules above I reserve the right to turn it away or advise you on how to revise it, of course.
p.s. if you’re concerned you can’t enter because your car may be too cheap, just ask!
Note also that I haven’t even started looking at making those tracks, and won’t be done with them for at least a fortnight if not 4 weeks, so this will be a long time coming. If UE4 somehow replaces Kee engine build publicly before then, well, I’ll do my best to have all the data ready before that happens! 
##Deadline
Let’s make it August 8th, I’ll give specific warnings when the deadline approaches.
I saw it was you who posted this so that’s a lot of why I thought I’d contribute. It looks like you’ve been having fun setting up challenges since then
2, 4 or 5 seats rules out the Nebula tho… Even if an RS specced Nebula would probably get down to 8:30 round the Green Hell 
