Stats for the GSI Kilimanjaro, the tiny car with a big name. Locals prefer to call it “Chakula Kiboko”, or “Hippo Snack”, although as the VP of GSI’s African Division noted, “That only happened once”.
The Lightstar Janus 418A is the first of the best three cars for the purpose of giving Africa some wheels we will look at in detail. This big car has all the external features of a car that cries off-road. It is relatively big, and spacious. The ladder chassis of this car is made out of corrosion resistant steel and the Janus has a front longitudinal engine. The Janus has MacPerson struts in the front with a Solid Axle Coil in the rear. The body panels are made out of polymers, which might be cheap, but it least those do not corrode and will give you little to no maintenance.
The Janus has an AWD drivetrain and the engine for this fairly big car produces up to 74,6hp. The 1.8L Inline 4 engine itself has simple materials, but relatively modern and effective. It is made out of cast iron with a DOHC and 16 valves in total. Its low friction pistons will help you with your fuel mileage. Due to the fuel situation in Africa it was downgraded a lot compression wise, but it retains a nice cam profile of 30. This ensures 125Nm of power in the lower RPMs. It has fuel injection and a standard intake. Fuel itself is conservatively used in this engine, thereby making it more economical and the ignition time is lower than what you find in most developed world cars. However, this makes the drive less aggressive. The Janus has no catalytic converter and that is of course viable for Africa, but some sort of consideration to the environment would have been nice. Its two baffled mufflers help reduce engine noise a lot and make driving the Janus more pleasant.
The 5-speed manual gearbox with locker function for those off-roading adventures works well and also here overdrive allows for better fuel economy. The tires on the Janus are typical off-roads and rather big compared to its competitors. However, this car is also bigger, so some more surface area for all that weight isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Its relatively large drum brakes are simple, but effective enough to stop the Janus within 41 meters from 100 km/h. The fully clad undertray is a rather strange choice; it costs money and makes maintenance more cumbersome. Furthermore, if the Janus does get stuck next to the road, you first need to take all these off. On the other hand, it will reduce the drag and thus help you financially in the long run.
The car offers basic interior, and of very bad quality I might add. I have seen some cars throughout my time as a reviewer and we surely do not expect much for cars designed to be practical and cheap for Africa, but in this car everything is loose and made out of breakable cheap stuff. The soft plastic dashboard shows holes and can be set in motion with some pressure here and there. Some of the indicators do not seem to work well; though ticking it seems to work. The seats are made mostly from plastic with some sort of thin cloth layer on it that doesn’t seem to last for long. The floor is painted and badly done. However, thanks to its spacious layout the Janus has 6 seats, which ensures you can bring most of your family with only one drive. Entertainment is not there, though there are still cigarette lighters present. Instead this car offers a huge package of driver assists, including power steering, ABS, traction control and even electronic stability and it seems these are of decent quality. Safety on this car is rather dubious; it offers a fair range of safety features on paper, with airbags for the passengers in front and crumple zones throughout the Janus. However, we really doubt whether it is all so durable, it seems more like it offers a lot and tries, but in practice all of these might not work when actually needed. Suspension settings are proper and simple, no fuss there with an emphasis on high ride height and comfort.
Overall conclusion
The Janus is big and over here that is an advantage as it is one of the most practical and spacious cars. It also has 6 seats, which help this car becoming even more useful as a family transporter. For its size the Janus has good fuel mileage at 35.3 US MPG and its 75.7hp Inline 4 engine offers adequate power. 0-100 can be done within 13.5 seconds and the car is rather reliable, even though it has a lot of driver assists on board. The driver assists also help to make this car easy to drive. Comfort is bad though, but the number of seats make a bit up for that. Safety wise we have seen better, as said, the car offers a lot on paper, but whether it really will work when necessary is really doubtful. This car will likely not rust anytime soon either, thanks to the plastic body and service costs are still decent for its size. Overall this makes this car a good buy for those that want reliability, space and an easy ride. The price tag on the Janus is more expensive than many of its closer competitors, but it still offers good value for money and that is what counts in the end.
The British build Infinity Motor QX 10 1.8 is like the Lightstar Janus a typical terrain type of car, albeit much nicer to look at than the Janus. But can a British car be reliable? The ladder chassis is made out of corrosion resistant steel with a front longitudinal engine and AWD drivetrain. The suspension consists out of a MacPherson in the front and Solid Axle Leaf springs in the back. It has polymer body panels.
The Inline 4 1.8L engine in the Motor QX 10 delivers some 54hp, which is adequate. Basic cast conrods with low friction pistons help fuel economy, whereas the extremely low compression might offset that a bit. The cam profile of 28 ensures that you drive most economical around 1700RPM in the Motor. We can see that some attention was put into the engine, which is nice considering it is designed for Africa. The fuel delivery is through a single point EFI fuel injection system and set to be very conservative with the fuel mixture. Ignition timing is retarded, but no-body needs an aggressive economical car here. It has no catalytic converter, which remains one of the things most companies seem to save money on, but it does have two baffled mufflers which ensures the already not so loud engine is even quieter, excellent for safari!
The Motor QX 10, has a 5-speed manual gearbox with manual locker and even power distribution for its AWD. It also features an overdrive to save fuel at higher speeds. Its smaller off-road tires are in line with the size of the car itself. The brake set-up is a bit strange; it features relatively simple drum brakes with comfortable pad types, both in the front and rear, which makes the rear more eager to stop than the front. That also shows in the braking distance, which is more than 45m from 100km/h to full stop. The engine is getting way more than enough cooling, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing in the hot summers of Africa.
The interior of the Motor QX 10, is simple. It has 4 basic seats with simple padding. The dashboard is made out of cheap plastics, but doesn’t wobble so much and all the indicators work. The floor is painted, but at least it has been done properly. The car offers no radio or cassette and only a cigarette lighter is there to attend to your daily addictions. It also has a cup-holder. The car features no thrills in terms of driver assists either, only power steering is provided. In terms of safety the car is a bit outdated, but what it offers is at least functional. Suspension is set-up with basic necessity in mind, everything is there and that’s it. The car tends to understeer, but for most speeds it is fairly well balanced. The ride-height is what you expect from an off-roader like car.
Overall conclusion
The British build Infinity Motor QX 10 1.8 is a simple, yet well-made car. It offers a good drivability and nice gas mileage of 37.8 US MPG. It does 0-100km/h in about 15 seconds, which is somewhat slower, but more than enough for these parts. All of this will really help those looking to buy an economical car. Off-roading is adequate when necessary and even though it is a bit cramped in terms of space it is still spacious enough for 4. Though this car will not be a heavy duty beast, it is certainly up to the task should it present itself. Comfort is low, but at least it is not botch-work. The car is however extremely economical, and this is mostly due to an engine that is simple, but build with care and shows bulletproof reliability. You will not quickly get into problems with the Motor QX 10. In terms of maintenance is it cheap and offers an excellent resistance to environmental wear. Where other cars lie on the scrapyard, this will keep going. Furthermore, it is very cheap to buy as well and that is a big plus for Africa. I am very sure that within the upcoming future thousands of these cars will drive around Africa happily without too many problems. Their owners will certainly smile when they reach their next 100,000 kilometers with this car. The British at Infinity can make cheap reliable cars after all it seems!
The BAM P1100 A from Bavaria in Germany is the last to be reviewed, but that doesn’t mean it is the worst! This car looks nice and it’s a German. So, we expect something here as well. But, can they make cheap cars that are not overly engineered? The P1100 has a similar set-up as the nearest competitors. It offers a ladder chassis with corrosion resistant steel, macpherson struts in the front and a sold axle leaf spring in the rear. Just like the Motor and Janus it has body panels made out of polymers, ensuring lightweight, cheap and a corrosion resistant body. Furthermore, similar to the competition it also has a longitudinal orientated engine under the hood. Some money seems to have been saved on some of the body components though; the headlights still look fine as do the taillights, but we did hear these do sometimes gather moist or stop working. Maybe something BAM should look into.
The drivetrain of the BAM P1100 A is AWD with a 52.3hp Inline 4 8V 1.1L engine, made out of cast iron. It uses a tried push rod head, so at least no German over engineering there. The cast conrods with the low friction pistons ensure again good fuel efficiency. The cam profile of 53 is somewhat sportier and together with a low compression it will still run fine on the worst fuels. Max power is reached around 5800RPM and the engine has a somewhat richer fuel mixture compared to its nearest competitors. It also features a Single Point EFI injection system like the Motor. However, the P1100 A does have fairly normal ignition timing. Just like its nearest competitors it has two baffled mufflers, making the engine quiet.
The 4 speed automatic gearbox with overdrive and manual locker is something we did not expect at first, but it is a pleasant surprise. Power distribution is mostly even, with a slight bias towards the front. The P1100 has off-road tires and relatively small ones as well, with a width of 145mm in the front and rear. This does ensure the car is relatively easy to handle. Brakes are adequate, cheap and simples drums to the front and rear, with fully comfortable breaking pads to match. This ensures a braking distance of 43m, which might not be great, but certainly is good enough. Like the Motor Q 10 1.8 this car has more cooling than deemed necessary for the engine, but that way it will again not easily overheat during the hot African summer. The car hasn’t really been refined at all to decrease drag, so that might impact fuel economy somewhat.
The interior is what you can expect from a cheap car. The P1100 A has 4 seats, with basic plastic features and cheap cloth padding. The dashboard is made out of cheap plastic and has some issues here and there. One of the buttons seems to come off, but you can luckily simply put it back again. The amount of attention put into the refinement of the interior is shocking for a german car, but we have for sure seen much worse and we know it is cheap. The car offers no entertainment features what so ever, except for a small light in the ceiling that can be switched on and off. It does have a fair package in terms of driver assists though: power steering, ABS and Electronic stability are there to help the driver stay on the road, if there is any. Safety is certainly sufficient here. The package might be a bit older technology wise, but many American, Japanese and European cars do not offer much better here usually either. Also we are convinced that the safety is adequate and BAM can surely not be accused for not caring about the safety of the P1100 A’s passengers. Suspension wise this car offers some interesting features, it has progressive springs and a gas mono-tube. The ride-height is as expected off-road type, and any bumps will be decently dampened, especially in the rear.
Overall Conclusion
The BAM P1100 A is a great car, it might not be the most fuel economical compared to its direct competitors with just less than 30 US MPG, but it offers some interesting features elsewhere. Off-roading is adequate with this car, but sure there are those that do better, but also worse. Service costs are low and the car is well protected from the environment. It is not the best heavy duty car around, similar to the Motor QX 10, but it can handle some tasks. Comfort wise, it has more to offer, but could also receive some more attention. Its drivability is great, and actually one of the best I have seen in a while. It doesn’t need to feel inferior to many American and European market cars; in fact it might even do better. Reliability is somewhat lower than its nearest competitors, especially the head and tail lights seem to show issues after some time. The 4 seats are adequate, there are cars with more, but those are usually very big. However, this car does offer excellent value for money. It is not perfect, but no car we have seen is. It does however offer an excellent package of low purchasing price, low service costs with above average fuel economy and good resistance to the environment. Also it is nice to drive, still shows to give its passengers some comfort and is relatively safe if you do not crash above 60km/h or so. Furthermore it has a bit more advanced suspension set-up and has an automatic gearbox, all for a very competitive price. In conclusion the BAM P1100 A, a very pragmatic car that not over-engineered with a touch of german finesse. This car will for sure clog up the roads near Johannesburg. Africa might have found its champion in this one.
Ok, so which one is best now? I leave that conclusion for you all to determine. I will post the final results of the true winner later today or perhaps tomorrow. But for now, after reading the reviews, which car do you think is best?
The large Lightstar Janus? The reliable Infinity Motor? Or the exclusive BAM P1100?
I like conan’s retro-barge - very cool in a '70s way. 
Also … Harisvet1, did you draw those letters out by hand? That’s amazing, if so! It was already a good-looking design with the rest of the arrangement of fixtures, but the lettering on the “INFINITY” (especially with the widening spacing between letters) is seriously rad. 
Looking at the winning cars, I have to think that my major mistake* was not choosing the station wagon body, or adding all the fittings to the interior, or adding a high-flow catalytic converter to reduce emissions, or going cheap on the polymer … but giving the car a non-embarrassing amount of power. I thought a 2.3L inline-six producing 92 horsepower was pretty weaksauce for an offroader in 1990, but I was clearly wrong.
As for the question: if I were recommending a car to someone, I’d probably say the Infinity Motor QX 10 1.8. It seems like all-around the best made, and given that none of them have performance worth writing home about, that would be the deciding factor for me.
no,not by hand 
, the “INFINITY” lettering came as one badge.
A 2.3L Inline 6 with 92hp is pretty weak/common, for Europe or US, but not in this 1990 African eco competition. However, as performance of the engine hardly mattered (we are talking economical here) it didn’t favor your car, but probably made it unnecessarily more expensive. Indeed going for a smaller cheaper engine would have helped. The polymer would surely have helped to make it cheap and environmentally more resistant, but these things you of course didn’t know/realize when you made the car. Also I wouldn’t go for such a set-up in every challenge from now on btw, the important thing is to carefully consider what is important and what not for any challenge and then devise a plan how to get there. Whether it will top-notch luxury cars, fast sporty vehicles with turbos or cheap simple cars as in this challenge, it is all a matter of carefully making a plan and sticking to it to bring out the best.
Also it is in not true that these were the best cars in every situation. There were cars with more power that were stronger or cars with even better comfort ratings, but overall considering the rules and the aims of this challenge these were the most economical and best value for money and offering some extra that made them an exceptional good package deal.
@Tycondero: Mmm, I gotcha. If I were roleplaying this, I think I’d probably still go with the same decision, being as Packbat Auto Works would want to be able to sell a better-appointed version of the same car with a higher-compression version of the same engine stateside, but as a competition entrant I was simply working off of bad assumptions.
Romanov is not very pleased with the outcome of this competition, the expectations were higher for our overall solid Rodina. As a conclusion from this, we must admit that our 4x carburettor is outdated and will not be used anymore.
Congratulations to the other participants for making better cars!
(Of course, in 1990, maximum sports cars or the infamous Trabant were using polymer bodies, realistically, which is one of the reasons why I didn’t use it, but it was available and therefore totally legitimate to use it.)
Congratulation to all the winner. If I knew that the environmental was SO heavy weighted I should have asked to use the classic Znopresk polymer body.
Oh well, I wasn’t expecting a good performance however.
At least I’m in front of Ardent 
Next time I will enclose the exact calculation for such stats as these. Anyway what I did was I used the following calculation to determine “value for money”
“Value for money”=Total production cost/(total reliability + environmental resistance). All other stats were used independently. For each stat (value for money is thus 1 stat in this case with three components) a normal distribution was made which gave each participant a score between 0-1, depending on where the value was in the normal distribution curve. This value was then weighted and all the scores were then added together and multipied by 100 to give the final overall score. The total weight of the “value for money” was 27% of the overall score, which was indeed a heavy weight in the overall score.
[quote=“NormanVauxhall”]
At least I’m in front of Ardent [/quote]
One of these days!
Here are the final results of the top 3, announcing the winner.
[size=150]Der Bayer’s BAM P1100 A[/size]
Congratulations to Der Bayer for winning this competition, but the difference between him and the 2nd position occupied by harizvet1’s Infinity Motor QX 10 1.8 was only 0.59 points overall, which leaves a huge gap between them and the 3rd place in this competition.
So what made the difference ultimately?
The Infinity Motor and the BAM P1100 are very evenly matched in terms of value for money, the Motor is however much better in fuel economy and scored big points there, but the P1100 is a bit better in service cost. The P1100 is slightly better off-road and is slightly more practical. Also the P1100 scored more points in drivability, comfort and safety, while the Motor scored better in prestige and sportiness. However, drivability, comfort and safety counted for more than prestige and sportiness and that is were the P1100 finally overtook the Motor in the score. This is probably due to the more advanced suspension, automatic gearbox and more safety features of the P1100 for a very similar price.
I hope you all liked this challenge and please feel free to discuss the results. It has been at least a wonderful experience for me to host such an event.
So basically, with a polymer body and a really good economy, the chances of winning this were pretty high.
I liked mainly the idea behind the competition and it was fun to participate in it, thanks to Tycondero and everyone who thought the same way.
Congratulations Der Bayer!
Tycondero, may I ask you how can you do such a good picture?
If you open the console (~), and type “HideBuildings()” (cap sensitive and don’t forget the brackets), it will give you a black background.
After this, using photoshop or GIMP, you can more easily remove the background and paste the picture of the car on a background of your choosing.
Additionally, if you turn FXAA off before using the HideBuildings() command, you’ll be able to save the image as a transparency, which makes it easier to paste the car on whatever background you please (but at the cost of aliasing).
Yay, I never expected to win this challenge! Thanks for hosting, I’m looking forward to more!
Would it be possible to see a spreadsheet with the scores per category? It would be interesting to see how much points we gained and lost in the various categories.
[quote=“Der Bayer”]Yay, I never expected to win this challenge! 
Thanks for hosting, I’m looking forward to more!
Would it be possible to see a spreadsheet with the scores per category? It would be interesting to see how much points we gained and lost in the various categories.[/quote]
Ok, here is the detailed score list for the top 3, the other entries are a bid too much to show as it will be a lot of work in order to get that displayed nicely in my current spreadsheet. The total score is the sum of all the parameter score x weight (not displayed). Overall score is 100x the total score.
