Mara Goes Letara, Ep. 1-3: Getting ready for… prototype testing?
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17th October 1947, Ministry of Transport, Lerance, Letara
As Fedor and Rodyn left the building after handing over their bid for the Letaran government van, they started to look for a place to have lunch. On their way towards the city centre, Rodyn grabbed a Letaran newspaper from a newspaper box. Fedor threw a curious glance at Rodyn but said nothing.
They found a nice restaurant with an outdoor patio and sat down.
Rodyn’s eye caught an advert on the flip side of the newspaper that he had thrown on the table. The advert spoke of a ‘Portunis Cannonball Run’. He needed a short while to make sense of the strange term and the whole advert.
“Look at this. They are running a yearly rally across Letara on closed public roads. The roads here look pretty okay from what I have seen. Imagine we would do something like this back home - that would be torture for any suspension. Even for our indestructible Konyk jeep, probably.”
Fedor’s interest was piqued and he took a closer look at the advert himself. He did not say anything for the moment and instead studied the menu in parallel that a waiter has brought in the meantime.
When the waiter came back, Fedor asked him whether he would know more about the event.
“Oh yes, sir, this has been a big event in the last two years. They close off some key roads through the city - and these cars are loud! And fast! All sorts of weird vehicles - and drivers - about. Best week of the year for us though - because they are hungry, too.”
“Thank you”, Fedor replied and ordered food and drink after a short deliberation. Rodyn followed suit.
Rodyn noticed a sudden unease with Fedor, quite out-of-character for him.
“Anything wrong… sir?” Rodyn had to think a second for the correct term. Publicly, he was supposed to address Fedor as ‘comrade’, but in private Fedor strongly preferred the more traditional ‘sir’ from his subordinates. Rodyn came to the conclusion that the current situation counted as private, despite sitting publicly outdoors, since it was reasonable to assume that no fellow Archanan would be around to hear their conversation.
“Not at all, not at all”, Fedor muttered. “Just tried to think where I would get an appropriate car to take part in the rally. This sounds like a very… entertaining endeavour, wouldn’t you think? I would not buy a car, of course, just for a one-off race in a foreign country.”
“I suppose…”, Rodyn began. “What I said earlier. Taking part in such a race would be torture for regular production car components… which is exactly what we had started doing with the first prototyped parts in the P47-1 project.”
Mara had started a new clean-sheet development project of a regular passenger car in January of 1947 after it quickly became clear that sales of their civilianised versions of the military JC-9 jeep - available as closed soft-top five-seater as well a bench-seater pickup under the name Konyk (‘grasshopper’) - had been spotty at best and below sustainable figures in the long-term in post-war Archana. Rodyn had been among the development engineers in the P47-1 project before Fedor had seconded to the Letaran government van project.
The civilianised Mara Konyk which was not regarded as a sustainable long-term product offering for the fledgling company
“What are you suggesting?” Fedor wondered.
“Well…” Rodyn wasn’t sure whether to outline his wacky idea in its entirety to Fedor. “At some point, we should have some working P47-1 prototypes for comprehensive testing. Theoretically… a prototype could be entered in the Letara rally as part of the testing programme… if officially authorised, of course.”
Fedor stared into the distance. In the meantime, their drinks arrived, and Fedor took a sip. “I suppose… I could give such an authorisation. But with what the waiter said - I don’t think the Konyk-derived 1.3 litre engines would leave much of an impression on the field, would they?”
“Probably not”, Rodyn conceded. “However… technically speaking, we don’t need that engine in there for testing. The engine is a tried-and-true wartime construction, largely unchanged for the P47-1. I don’t think we’d get much more insights endurance-testing it once again compared to everything else which is probably going to be pretty much new. In fact, the weak engine might actually give us problems to properly test the rest of the car.”
“How so?”
“There is not much power we can extract from it, even if we really want to”, explained Rodyn. “We actually had started looking into alternative testbeds for brake and suspension load testing beyond the low limits the Konyk engine allows us.”
“Such as?”
“We had not gotten far before I was assigned to the van project, and there were many other more pressing things to worry about. That said… we could check whether we can fit the government van’s engine into the P47-1 chassis. Being a bit less than twice the size, it also has at least about twice the power of the Konyk engine in current form, and I am sure we can extract quite a bit more, if top end-power is going to be the main concern. It’s not an ideal configuration, undersquare at all, but it may be the best thing that we have… if it fits.”
Fedor pondered the points raised by Rodyn. As their main course arrived, Fedor said to him. “Consider yourself reassigned to the P47-1 project, specifically for prototype testing programme development. When we are back, the first thing for you is to check whether the HD6 engine indeed fits into the P47-1 chassis. If yes, I’ll assign one of our engine specialists as well.”
Rodyn’s hand with a fork stopped halfway towards his mouth, as he listened to Fedor’s new directives.
Fedor continued. “I declare that we indeed need some high-performance prototypes for testing the P47-1 chassis and components. Make it happen, as I plan to spend one week of my annual leave next year or the year after in Letara, rac… er…, testing a completed P47-1 prototype under special circumstances!”
