Luna_on_venus' Cars and Other Automation-related thingys

[luna_on_venus]

1987 Tamna Taiga – “An Honest Day’s Work.”

You can clip it around the corners of stone walls, you can crash it into a tree and then through a small shed, you can try and drown it in the English Channel, you can set it on fire, hit it with a wrecking ball, you can drop a caravan on top of it and then you try drop it off a skyscraper. Like the AK-47, the Taiga will stand up to practically anything the world over can throw at it, from the deserts of Libya to the jungles of Indonesia to its namesake taigas deep in the wilderness of Siberia, the Taiga is the tool for any job, anywhere, anytime.

Powered by a 2.4L diesel 4 cylinder engine producing 94HP that can have its block directly shot with a .308 round and can be repaired with little more than a screwdriver and an empty aluminium beer can. It’ll happily do 750,000km on its first engine and then 3 million on its second. The gear stick may be in the optional third passenger’s crotch, but the 5 speed manual transmission will surely give you trouble-free motoring for years to come.

The interior is sparse, and that’s by design. Everything from the radio to the air conditioner to the rev counter to the dashboard clock is optional, because Tamna’s philosophy dictates that those who simply want a motorised wheelbarrow to get a job done should be able to get one of the finest build quality at a competitive price, and with a Taiga, you don’t just get a good deal, you get a bargain. Comes in 2WD and 4WD configurations.

1988 Tamna Taiga Sunset Edition – “Work on Friday, Play on Saturday.”

So you’re still wild at heart, we get that. You yearn for to watch the sunset atop a mountain overlooking vast, lush forests as you haul around the lumber and concrete to build civilisation. For that, there’s just what you’re looking for. The Taiga Sunset is, underneath, a regular 2.4L diesel model with the same power output and gearbox, but you get fulltime 4WD and all-terrain tires as standard.

Inside, it’s fully equipped for whatever adventures you may get up to, bringing you to the most harsh areas in the world in air-conditioned comfort. Along with the tricked-out inside comes an outside makeover; new wheels, a rollbar with extra lights, bumper foglights and a bullbar with two extra auxillary lights just for good measure, running boards on both sides and mudflaps all around. The stripes along the side can be coloured using a selection of combinations from the brochure meant to evoke the feeling of being free, of being outdoors, of running wild, or if you really are that wild, you can option your own custom combination unique to your Taiga.

1990 Tamna Taiga RV – "Home Away From Home."

The Taiga, having the repair difficulty of a garden hose (the difference being that a garden hose has more moving parts), makes a suitable candidate for building a home away from home on. Gone is the bulletproof 2.4L diesel engine to be replaced with a slightly less bulletproof 3.0L V6 turbodiesel engine producing just a hair over 350HP with enough torque to be able to haul what is essentially a house perched where the bed used to be.

Outside the Taiga only retains the basic front subframe and cabin from the Sunset Edition its based on, at the back the rear axle has been pushed back to make way for the entire home with all its electrical wiring, fuel, air conditioning and sewage piping bolted on top. Along with it comes some more cosmetic indulgences tailored to the tastes of Yours Truly, with beefier tires for reaching more remote camping spots, a snorkel for driving through rivers, larger mirrors for actually seeing around the massive RV shell, a retractable canopy, a towbar for hauling around the boat I don’t use, and of course colourful sunset striping all the way around.

The interior is nothing like that of a regular early-90s Class C motorhome, filled with all its garish floral patterning and oceans of beige sheets with funny stains. In here, its all thoroughly modern and comfortable, with dark hardwood furnishings, white marble countertops, a TV tucked away where you can watch from the bed, a fully functional toilet and a visual representation of the number of coffees I drank during the course of this project.

Clean, simple, comfortable and able to carry half of a second house with the amount of storage cubbies stuffed inside, everything a 90’s RV should be, updated for the 2020’s.

(The RV alone took some 11.5 hours to build, and while my original plan was to just finish the shell and then go to bed, I ended up building the entire thing in a single sitting ending at about 4 o’clock in the morning with a sense of some achievement and a splitting headache.)

[luna_on_venus]

1984 Solair Corgi GX – “Rock and Roll.”

Built in a shed in Nottinghamshire just off the A52 by a few men with funny accents, the Corgi GX is the answer for teenagers with no driver’s license but still want the luxury of a Rolls Royce with the sportiness and leakiness of an MG. According to the bean counters, its a motorcycle with a fibreglass body on top to keep the British sun from getting you wet. According to you, it’s a rolling personality statement. In life, only three things matter to you: the pub, the chippy, and your trusty 3-wheeled steed.

Equipped with an 900cc 4 cylinder engine producing 55HP paired to a 4 speed manual that has synchromesh, pushing the Corgi from 0 to its top speed of 90 miles an hour in about 27 seconds, although you probably don’t want to do that as doing 90 on the M1 would likely get you either nicked or more likely killed.

Aside from the obvious single front wheel, you also get a single mirror, plastic-fantastic dashboard designed way back in the 1960’s, Lucas-made electrics and a banging stereo that likely doesn’t work because of the aforementioned Lucas-made electrics. Starting at £3,990, it really doesn’t get better than this.

1986 Solair Corgi Kennel Motorhome – “Peckham to Peking.”

If you want to clog up a motorway for the next 10,000 years, there’s a dilemma in your way. Do you ruin everyone else’s holiday by trundling around in your diesel Vauxhall towing a fibreglass menace, or how about you streamline that dreadful duo with the Corgi Kennel? You can still block everybody’s view of the Lake District now at half the speed of the Vauxhall now that you have a comedically large fibreglass shed attached to your Corgi.

Under the hood, everything’s pretty much the same with the 900cc four-banger to make sure you stay within the motorcycle tax bracket, but now its significantly heavier and even more unstable because of the tall RV attachment. Who wouldn’t want to go on a caravan holiday where you’re in constant fear that one wrong turn could destroy all of your possessions?

And for an extra £1,650 you can get an extra wheel and 1.1L 67HP engine that turns the Corgi into an excruciatingly dull hatchback that outdos the blandness of an Austin Metro, but why on earth would you ever want a cheap, economical and most importantly, stable car that is taxed as a car and needs a car license to drive?

[luna_on_venus]

1995 Nakano Invicta NX4 – “What is RWD?”

Have you ever wondered what its like to drive a car that feels like an abusive relationship? No? Well here’s one anyway. The Nakano Invicta is the latest in a long line of nuclear bombs disguised as affordably athletic sedans and coupes. The NX4 is directly related to its Group A-going cousin, the very same that was trading blows with the Korean-built Tamna Chollima RS4 in what basically amounted to mud wrestling with a car, and in that vein is equipped with a peppy turbocharged 2.4L flat-4 engine that according to the spec sheet produces about 285HP, but behind the wheel it feels closer to 360HP. Paired to a crispy 5 speed manual transmission, you’ll be flying into trees and ditches on the side of a road faster than most rally drivers do, and you don’t even have a co-driver; you just have the grit, the will, and the sheer disregard for your own life apparent in all the best motorsports drivers.

Outside, you get a full treatment for your rally-wannabe aspirations; sleek Sapphire Blue paintwork, obnoxiously large rally foglamps, obnoxious-er larger rear wing, twin exhausts, a “subtle” hood scoop and sporty alloy wheels. Inside you get tartan cloth seats, three auxillary gauges, a banging stereo with subwoofer and the overwhelming sense of superiority that comes with owning one of these simply incredible cars. You don’t deserve it, and you couldn’t care less.

Prior to the Al-Rilma openbeta, the car that became the Nakano Invicta was originally named the Tsumaranai (Google Translated Japanese for “boring”) Fujoshi Turbo. That’s not me having a laugh, that is genuinely what I decided, probably very late at night whilst being not nearly sober enough to be trusted with naming anything, was a good name for a car, which for the record: it isn’t.

As such, the Invicta NX4 is designed to be what I would’ve made had I had more skill and less alcohol to drink that night. Although apparently I may not be so sober now as I’ve just noticed the car in the extremely compressed gif above is wearing a H-reg plate (1990) instead of the L-reg plate (1995). Oh well.