Had quite a few American or British characters so far. What about a Japanese car buyer in the 1950’s? Taxation classes and size restrictions could be interesting then
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Or a life story that at least starts out a bit further off the path of ‘man has a great traditional career with or without a family’.
Or give the new protagonist some character ‘quirks’ that stay with them during life and influence car choice (without being too limiting).
a family with an interest in racing would be great.
Start off with a bootlegger, get some 60’s drag racing (something we’ve missed in JOC, IMO) some SCCA, etc, end with an old grandfather that just finished a shifter kart for his grandson and needs to haul it to and from the track, etc.
Or this just came to me, maybe a German family that hangs out at the Nurburgring and likes to get down on the weekends.
Well, Lanson, you sure do have a lot of opinions, I can’t say anything else. And that’s nothing wrong with that, it is a sign of sanity, compared to having none at all. And sometimes I totally agree with you, other times I don’t agree at all. Again, something I just see as a sign of sanity, because the day when everyone agreed with me, I would be worried for real.
This time, I do understand your point, but as the one that hinted about his preferences in 2B, I feel that I have to give you my five cents about it.
To start with, JOC 1 was actually extremely stereotypical. Young man gets cheap ass heap of a sports car. Manages to make girl think it is more expensive than it is, mission accomplished. Oh, now we have a kid and has to get practical hatchback (which happened as a sidetrack but still), but daddy can still get a second car that goes wroom wroom on weekends as long as the child seat will fit. Oh no, we have too many kids, now we need big boat of wagon or MPV to have room for them all. AAAAGH I AM BALD AND IMPOTENT AND THE KIDS HAVE MOVED OUT, I NEED SPORTS CAR AGAIN TO FORGET HOW AGING I AM.
Now, that was more or less how I was figuring out that a pilot JOC would look, and, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that either. But if every JOC ends up like that, the concept can get rather repetitive after a while.
Now, I haven’t really looked very much into the sexuality of characters in the challenges on the board, it might happen that LGBTQ is overrepresented here, I don’t know. When I saw the hint about “romantically involved” I somehow got the feeling that he probably didn’t care much about it. At the same time I saw possibilities that could make the character development turn interesting ways, considering that realizing such things in the early 60s when it was still very controversial could cause all kinds of scenarios. Either turning out like this…or finally forcing himself into a marriage to make things look “normal”, get a bunch of kids needing a huge ass wagon and finally realizing that you can’t pretend to be someone you don’t are, leading to a costly divorce putting him in a not-a-Yugo, or…you understand. I feel that it could be a turn away from the stereotypical phases in a persons life.
Also, picking up hosting was something you did by your own free will (and it should be said that you did it very well too, so kudos for that), for me it feels a bit backwards to volountarily do something and then almost be a little bit salty about having a hard time doing what you wanted to do (TBH, now I am the one sounding a bit salty, I have to excuse myself but as you may know, I am not a native english speaker, and it is sometimes hard for me to know how to do to not sound too harsh). I can really see it being a problem not knowing what to do with a character, yes, but on the other hand, maybe the next person is full of ideas. (But as I said, you did a GREAT job hosting 2C so don’t believe for a moment that I am not happy that you did).
Actually, that’s kind of why I was a bit disappointed with Kenneth being killed off. Now, I was far from winning, so it didn’t matter anyway, but if I had won, I would have given the story a very interesting twist…so in that case I would have been rather grumpy not being able to continue.
With that said, I hope for some diversity for JOC, to NOT risk it being repetitive. So, no american gay pilot the next time, thanks!
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I was gonna say in my original post that MAYBE he coulda had adopted a kid or two…
Yep not trying to complain, just hoping for something that would be more normal and thus typical of a car company’s strategy.
Normal in a statistical term, btw. Same-sex couples are accepted but they are not normal, statistically. Something like 1.xx percent is hard to build a car for, if we’re being honest to ourselves. If you think otherwise you’re missing the point of being a car manufacturer, to sell cars for a profit.
Well, a challenge doesn’t have you “building a car for a specific X audience”. You build a car that’s suited to the specific client, maybe trying to justify its existence in the actual car marketplace along the way.
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All true, so let’s craft competition to that!
i fully support martin’s idea, plus, it opens JOC to Asia, something that hasn’t been done yet, so im completely behind this.