There was a time when Lucy was a typical ladder climbing executive. His main talent was his networking, navigating social situations for his benefit in smokey bars and company events, and smooth-talking clients into thinking he cared about their needs, while twisting situations to ultimately lift him further up the corporate ladder.
Alongside these events, he had also been a pretty heavy smoker, going through multiple packs a day at some points. Having started as a teen, he never really thought much of it, and he failed to address his accumulating symptoms until it was too late. After battling a series of near-fatal respiratory conditions, the formerly charismatic businessman became frail, ugly and weak, barely able to stand and his throat no longer able to speak.
Yet proverbially, this is how he also found his voice. Disappointed with the selfish way he squandered his health, he quit his corporate career, and dedicated the remainder of his life to the public good. He used what wealth he’d accumulated to found an ambitous anti-smoking advocacy and charity organization, traveling around Bosnia to share his impactful story as a lesson for the nation.
This campaign was much more than just fearmongering; The same people skills that’d made him such a great executive before, now helped him understand how to connect with his audiences, with far greater impact than any mere fact or statistic. And that was with a message of life, and of hope, that reached audiences young and old; if he in his age and health, could turn his life around, then it really was never too late to do the right thing.
Several years after the quickly-growing group’s founding, we now find the organization preparing for its biggest fundraising event yet; hosted at a prominent Sarajevo performance venues, Lucy has planned out an incredible night of lectures and musical performances series. They’re hoping to raise at least KM 1,000,000 to support both local medical institutions and their own future projects.
Twas a calm summer afternoon as Lucy worked on final arrangements for his schedule in his hotel room. A knock came at the door, prompting his financial assistant (and son) to go get it.
“That’s gotta be the talent coordinator. Ready to go, Dad?” They’d been planning to meet with some of the event’s singers for dinner, at a prominent seafood restaurant by The Miljacka.
Lucy made a half-hearted 5 more minutes gesture, but his assistant had none of it as he unlocked the door. “Come on now, you’ve been at that all day. A break would be good for you.”
THWACK!!!
Lucy jumped and looked at the door, just in time to see his son fall to the ground. That wasn’t his talent-coordinator; it was a group of 4 armored strangers with guns! Too quick for him to react (even if he had been healthy) They wordlessly stormed into the room, threw a bag over his head, and dragged him up from his wheelchair and outta the room.
It was only a moment after they left when his assistant came to and realized what happened, quickly bolting upright and running downstairs. Meanwhile out front, his talent coordinator pulled up in her MPV just in time to see a bunch of strange figures hurriedly chuck a large bag into an SUV.
She turned to greet the arriving assistant in complete oblivion. “Hey! Say, wonder what those guys are doing.”
“They’ve got Lucy!! You gotta follow them, quick!”
“What?!”
The SUV squealed off towards the road before its doors had even closed, while the assistant ran around to the coordinator’s passenger door. “They busted in and kidnapped him! No time to explain, you gotta follow them!”
Realizing the severity of the situation, she too squealed her front tires the moment he was in. Her MPV was able to catch up to the lumbering SUV pretty quickly, outmaneuvering it in the tight Sarajevo streets, as they deduced was going on.
“Who would be so evil to attack an old man? Especially one that runs a charity for Christ’s sake??”
“I can think of one group.” Responded the assistant. “You remember the local tobacco company with suspected ties to organized crime?”
“What, really?” The coordinator struggled to recall it, while distracted by road antics. “I thought that that was all just rumors, though?”
“We did too. But I’m not surprised either; they’ve got such a bad rep for their ethics, even old Dad wanted nothing to do with them!”
“So, now that Lucy’s doing all this ‘anti-smoking’ stuff, you think they’re trying to stop him?”
“Must be. Wanna keep his message from- shit!”
As the armed men noticed their car chasing them, one of them leaned out the window and started shooting back at them.
Meanwhile in the SUV trunk, Lucy had squirmed out of the sack they threw him in. Given his condition, the attackers hadn’t even bothered to tie him up. But he did have 2 aces up his sleeve; one, literally up his sleeve, was his watch that had a GPS tracking function. And two was based on a strange story some contact told him at a bar once. He held out his hands, concentrated hard, and recited (well, mouthed) the spell he’d been told…
In his hands abruptly appeared a tome; the tome, of MLC20, just as he’d hoped! With this, he’d (hopefully) be able to spawn an incredible car, that his family and colleagues could use to track him down! He had to hurry though, before they lost him!
He hurried his way through selecting priorities, knowing time was of the essence. But as he was beginning the rules, one of the shooters looked down, saw what he was doing, and reached over the backseat to try and snatch the tome. In the ensuing tussle, Lucy was able to finish the invocation, but the guard’s meddling made him accidentally select all the wrong rules.
Despite the gunfire, Lucy’s colleagues had managed to keep the chase up all the way into the northern edge of the city. Desperate to end the chase, the SUV driver resorted to ramming a random traffic car, spinning it out such that it blocked the road and forced the Coordinator into a crash.
Still filled with adrenaline from the chase, the assistant stormed outta the car and released a huge shout of frustration. “Why’d those bastards have to do this?! Dad didn’t wanna do anything but help people!”
“Hey, at least on the bright side, they probably don’t actually wanna hurt him. They just need to hold him until the festival’s over!”
“You mean until its cancelled! We need him to do it! the whole schedule revolves around him! None of us know how to host this event, we’re just assistants!”
“I mean… we could try…”
“Remember last time we tried? In Gradiška?”
“…that’s a good point, actually.”
“It’s hopeless!!” The Assistant, now in tears, sat down on some piece of roadside debris from the crash to cry for a bit. The Coordinator also needed a moment to process the situation, and took a full minute before realizing The Assistant was sitting on something glowing.
Once she pointed it out, he got up to look at it; it was a tome, and indeed the pages inside were glowing. He hesitantly picked it up, muttering “…could this be from Dad?”
“…Does he always drop behind glowing books?”
“well, not books specifically, but he has brought home a lot of weird stuff from bars in the past.”
The 2 leaned in closer as he opened the book, which suddenly engulfed them in a bright light, to the combined sounds of harmonious angelic sparkles and surprised Bosniak curse words…
RULES
Lucy had left the two a note, catching them up to speed with his rescue plan; but said note failed to explain why his rules were so all over the place. The one demanding high sportiness made sense, sure. The one for towing capacity could’ve been an attempt to prevent them getting like a truck or something. But the ones asking for bad braking distance, and dated cross-ply tires, made no sense. And then one requires it not to be a car?
As usual, no one met this strange combination of rules. But there were 2 vans that failed everything for the 2 point bonus; the Deliver just seemed like a bigger, slower version of The Coordinator’s wreck, while the sporty Rocinante did seem fast enough to work at first… until they found out it didn’t run.
From there, the pickings remained slim. The ancient DCMW Ghurruz was the only vehicle to meet the cross-ply rule, and one of only 2 for the braking distance one; and despite its age, it was clearly tough enough for battle, making it a desirable option.
Lowering the threshold even further finally let in enough cars to start the round, albeit not necessarily the good ones; this crop of goobers included a promising, powerful American GT, but also all 4 remaining meme entries and a rock-hard racecar. So overall, our rescue team was faced with a worrying a crop of impractical-at-best vehicles, but with a few bits of hope sprinkled in.
(note; since neither the Sausalito nor Globetrotter entered this round, who were our current contenders for the tie, this does indeed confirm that this will be the last round of MLC20.)
3-POINT CATEGORIES
These, fortunately, had managed to be more coherent. Lucy had requested good offroad and 4 wheel drive, because he knew he’d likely be going somewhere rural, and had also correctly selected good braking distance this time. He did also ask for the car to look presentable, though; he wanted to arrive back at the event in style.
Offroad was the clear realm of the Ghurruz, with it having the highest score in the competition. It was also one of only 2 qualifying cars with all wheels driven; the other, the Wii-WashHell, was understandably deplorable at actual offroading. Other than the Ghurruz, most of MLC’s actual offroaders had failed to qualify, and the cars that had were average at best (except the pretty-hardy Deliver); but since Offroad was a Top-5 category, some of them got max points too.
One car that got a literal zero on offroad, the Barrijat Supremacy R, made up for it by dominating in braking distance, While the Ghurruz was one of the worst. This gap was lessened by the Commander doing so terribly, that even the Ghurruz scored above-half points.
Finally, on the matter of the aesthetics. These favored the cars which already happen to be leading this round, with the Deliver and Ghurruz being our top 1-2. Once again, the Deliver’s handsome looks came through (average rating: 7.75), and combined with its bonus to help it catch up to the Ghurruz (average rating: 7.13); although the latter’s second place finish still just barely keeps it in the lead.
Honorable mention to the Korrodiert, the vote’s 3rd place finisher who unfortunately didn’t qualify this round (average rating: 7.00), as well as the Triton, the last place finisher who also didn’t (average rating: 3.13). The lowest-ranked car that did qualify was Goonistan Airlines (average rating: 3.75). More individual scores can be found in the spreadsheet.
5-POINT CATEGORY
Back to more important categories, Lucy wanted a mechanically simpler car that was less likely to fail them at the wrong time. And of course, he wanted the car to have a satnav that could find him. This combination rained unholy pain and destruction on the Barrijat, with its quality entertainment setup of “none” and its service costs being over double the second best entry, at over $14k
But these were all-or-nothing categories; in service costs, everyone that wasn’t a meme car was in the top half and got full points; with the exception of the Saunaab having the best costs of anyone by far. The Deliver and Ghurruz came 2nd and 3rd respectively, with the latter’s size and power just barely outweighing its age and simplicity.
But the Ghurruz understandably choked at the satnav requirement, as did most vehicles. There were only 2 qualifying cars that met that one; the otherwise-underperforming Commander, and the now-leading Deliver Crewvan, who’s managed to get 5 points ahead of its only rival. But with our 9-point category last, will it be able to hold onto this lead?
9-POINT CATEGORY
Yeah. It will.
What else would an anti-smoking activist consider most important? Why, Lucy’d be a hypocrite if he did all that work to stop smoking, only to get a smokey car; the 9-point category is emissions! And while both his Assistant and Coordinator were annoyed to see something not directly useful given top priority, only the latter was surprised by his Dad’s commitment to optics. Some things never change.
In this cool-wall ranking, our already-leading Deliver tied with the non-operable Rocinante at the top of the pack, with WES 11. As for it’s only serious competitor… well, the Ghurruz wasn’t the worst polluter in the competition. But it was the worst polluter that wasn’t a washing machine.
Other cars had done well here too- the Globetrotter and Commander both had pretty clean exhausts -but even if they’d won, most of them were already 9 points behind the Deliver before this round started. And so, Maxtra’s van didn’t just win, it dominanted, with the Globetrotter in 2nd place a whole 9.5 points behind.
Results
The Assistant sighed as they, and the van, were returned to the real world. “this is just a… slightly bigger version of what we already had.”
“Hey, the alternative was a washing machine, remember?” The Coordinator sprang into action. “At least it’s a normal car that works! Now come on, it hasn’t been long, we might still catch 'em!”
And so the 2 jumped in and floored it once more, peeling off in the direction the pre-calibrated navigation was taking them. The Deliver was no sports car by any means, but after a while they did find themselves slowly gaining on the SUV, especially once they got off the highway.
About an hour later, in the mountains outside the village of Kraljeva Sutjeska, they finally caught up to the attackers; who apparently were taking it easy now, thinking themselves home free. They didn’t recognize their former pursuers in this different, prettier van until it was right on top of them, and quickly scrambled to get out their guns and start fleeing again.
Knowing they were getting close to their hideout, the attackers grew even more desperate to lose the pursuers as quickly as possible. So the driver made another gambit to ram a traffic car into their path. Only this time, the hit was too much for the already-damaged SUV, collapsing its suspension and sending it sliding into a bank on the side of the road.
While the attackers were still stunned by the crash, our pair took advantage of the Deliver’s easy-loading sliding doors to pull Lucy (fortunately safe) out of the back and into the van. By the time the Attackers recovered enough to get their guns, the van was already peeling off into the distance.
With limited road options in the mountains, the trio took the long way around to avoid confronting the attackers again, before rushing Lucy straight to the hospital in Sarajevo. Fortunately, though bruised, it turned out he was largely unharmed, and would still be able to perform at the event. And with the kidnapping having attracted police and media attention, the heat was too high for the tobacco-affiliated organized crime group to attempt another kidnapping.
So the fundraiser proceeded as normal, with loads of great performances and great speeches that moved the hearts and minds of the Sarajevo public. The fundraiser ultimately exceeded its goal with room to spare, raising KM 1,253,000 for the fight against smoking! …and organized crime, apparently.
Perhaps, in the end, MLC20 was a bit anticlimactic, with the ultimate winner claiming said win in the first 2 rounds. But hey, that’s how true-random goes sometimes.
Sometimes someone with the lowest standards, like Abel that just wanted to do an hour drive, end up getting the best-fitting car for the job, while someone in a dire emergency, like Lucy’s saviors, get something just barely good enough. And then Matías, with the most far-fetched needs of anyone, gets the one car that actually makes their near-suicidal plans work.
And the one car that’s probably the worst fit for its future owners- a child superhero and a farming dog -is the only one that got multiple owners at all. The Pingu Commander cheesed it’s way to victory by being one the most overkill entries here, having the best or worst by a huge margin in so many stats; some of which happened to be top categories in 2 rounds.
So Congradulations to @Ringu for the Pingu Commander, the winner of MLC20!
And thank you all for participating! I had a lot of fun making this, getting to know these awesome cars, and I hope ya’ll had a lot of fun reading! As we close, I’ll publish the final working spreadsheet I used, complete with some overall data on how every car did!
Some fun facts:
- Every car entered at least 2 rounds, and no car made it into all 5. There were 4 cars that entered all 4 rounds, with the ultimate winner among them.
- The Pingu Commander had the 3rd highest point total (73.3 points total), the second highest average finishing rank (5.2; ranking counts missed rounds for 17 points), and met the highest number of rules (14/26).
- It was the Maxtra Deliver, however that had the highest total points, scoring 103.2 over 4 rounds. It was also the only car to pass 100 points.
- The Apoapsis Triton, meanwhile, had the highest average finishing rank; it never won, but scored podium in all 4 rounds it entered.
- The least successful cars in MLC20 were the ARVA Kosulya and October Overlander. Both only managed to qualify for 2 rounds, scoring less than 20 points total. The Cago 200 was almost as bad, too, ending tied with the Overlander for the worst average rank.
- The Wii-WashHell met the least number of rules total, at 7. It participated in 4 rounds, but by failing all 5 rules for 2 of them.
- Overall, the challenged clearly ended up biasing towards newer, more complete cars, over older and meme cars. The Globetrotter Sedan was probably the most successful 20th century car, coming 4th in both total points and average rank.
