I went with a bench for realism sake. With my reliability being 70.2 and 11.8mpg (UK) I don’t think there was enough appeal to overcome those. 
Bench for realism, lore, and ease of modeling. And I just like benches.
Buckets here. They were rather uncommon in pickups of the day, but not in bigger rigs.
I used that a bit for storytelling only, but in fact, your one was among the least practical. being cool and fast helped getting that far.
2 Likes
Thanks all for the congratulations and to @Happyhungryhippo for the entertaining reviews!
I would be happy to host the next round and have some ideas. This would be my first time hosting, so if any of you have tips/resources for hosting, please feel free to send them my way! I definitely won’t be able to pull off Hippo’s AI-imagery wizardry but will do my best to carry on Earl’s story.
I have to second Hippo’s comments on some truly striking designs, especially @riley and @ChemaTheMexican. Seriously, any time I see a Zephorus in a contest I’m entering, I think, “Oh no, I have to go up against one of those!” I’m guessing some of the rest of you can relate! And when I saw @moroza’s entry, I was blown away by the amount of capability he packed in for under 10k.
And yes, the Adirondack 97 is admittedly…basic. I was tinkering with designs with some nice chrome trim, bigger wheelbase, and a 6-cylinder engine, but I have been trying to build the Flint brand with reliability as a core of its identity, and I just couldn’t get the quality I wanted without cutting pretty much everything else. I also thought it would be unrealistic to have a small, utilitarian truck with a bench seat, basic interior, and no radio but lots of fancy chrome. There was a reason I made my ad about a “Quality First” design philosophy because I really designed with an almost quality only approach. So Hippo hit the nail on the head with his description of the bad comfort–and I thought that was probably going to sink my entry, but at least it would sink while being true to the brand identity.
Also, I think Hippo is right that reliability was about 83 (I am away from my computer right now), but I think a 2 might be generous or rounding on comfort. I want to say it was maybe 1.6, but maybe even a bit lower?
I will try to get something up in the next few days for rules discussion for the next round.
6 Likes
Honestly chuffed I got a mention despite being an early elim. Now that the dust has settled I think I’ll go see if I could have touched up the v6 version I made to be a more competitive offering— reliability being the biggest killer, it’ll be a stretch to even get my 64 up all the way to the mid-70s.