Mara Goes Letara, Ep. 5-1: Something to look back at and forward to
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8th January 1979
Boardroom, Mara main factory grounds, just outside the town of Mara, Archana
Again, Rodyn Gumprov’s year began with the annual meeting of Mara’s Comrade Directors to discuss any deviations from their current five year plan. As Comrade Director of Engineering, his past years had been pretty busy since Mara under Comrade Executive Director Fedor Piechov had begun a series of new developments as well as a big Irena facelift.
It all began in the early 1970s with the large Kavaler, a pet project of Fedor’s. It’s success had swayed Archanan officials to give Mara some leeway in new car developments, provided they could make a case that the outcomes would benefit the Archanan workers and farmers. This year, the development of it a new compact off-roader family - among the first name suggestions were Kanyon or Reyndzher - would come to a conclusion, and he wondered whether Fedor would already hint at their next new project.
“Good morning, comrades.” Fedor opened the session in his usual no-nonsense style. “You all have the agenda in front of you - first order of business: sales reviews, starting with foreign markets. First, Letara.”
Sales (and racing) reviews.
Fedor looked to the Comrade Director of Letaran Operations, Inna Horyova.
“Overall, the Irena hatchback was well-received. The Letaran people were much more open to the innovative body style than back here. One peculiar thing though, we had a fair bit of buyers getting the Irena apparently as a second car.”
Bewildered glances around the table.
“Oh, and another thing”, Inna added. “With the revised official size classes, the Irena now falls under the city car classification in Letara.”
“City car? The Irena?” Fedor had his voice raised slightly - which for everyone who knew him meant that he was incredulous. “It looks I need to take another trip there to see for myself what other massive cars have became the norm.” He looked into the round. “Imagine, the Kavaler would be considered regular size, and the Irena fit for a secondary car. Excess!”
Inna continued. “The sportier Irena SSE RTH with two less doors was somewhat less well received, on the other hand, despite our semi works racing team finishing very well, and the SSE looking very much like the racecar. The team came home 5th two years ago, and even scored a surprise victory last year.”
The whole round applauded by knocking on the table, even Fedor nodded appreciatingly. “277 kW against - what did the top cars have?”
“Rumours say over 750 horsepower for the Wolfe and over 900 even for the Benetsch… who came first and second two years ago.” Inna then remembered a particular dislike of Fedor’s. “… what’s that in kilowatt?” she added hastily.
“Over 550 and 660.” Fedor gave the answer himself almost instantly, nodded appreciatingly again, and asked: “You adapt the SSE cars yourselves over there?” Inna nodded.
“Well, then no harm done.” Inna could almost visually see Fedor make a mental note about sportier variants in his mind. Not that he ever needed written notes anyway.
“And we are going to drop the RTH part, people do not seem to consider radial tyres to be special anymore.” Inna made a short pause. “In contrast, the pickup was also quite well received by the Letaran farmers, and also over the competition. It’s not the biggest market, however. And there are indications that Niichi will introduce a pretty promising competitor next year.”
“Very well”, Fedor muttered. “Let’s hope they appreciate the Interceptor version of the Kavaler that we submitted for consideration…”
As the reporting moved on to their Fruinian sales, Rodyn noticed an acronym he was not familiar with in as one of the later items in the agenda: GT79 participation. He wondered what that might be about…