Short brief
A cool looking, well engineered 1992 “hot hatch”.
Client background and notes
Benjamin “Quick Ben” Munro is a 27 year old engineer from Aberdeen, with a stable and decently paid job offshore. Which means he can afford both a small rowhouse with a tiny garage, and has weeks off at a time. He likes to drive around the countryside, and even on longer roadtrips, occasionally joined by his girlfriend or mates, which is fun and all but there is one problem; His current car, a hand-me-down 1982 Toyhatsu sedan, is an absolute bore, and he can’t sell it or Granny will be sad. Well, a week ago that problem solved itself when some bloke in a Range Rover plowed into his rear quarter and totalled the car. A week’s worth of concussion recovery later he’s looking through car magazines over a pint, eager to get small fun car to enjoy. He can vividly imagine bombing around the Nurburgring in far-away Germany, but in what car?
Some notes:
Has to be quick, controllable and engaging to drive, as well as reasonably comfortable and efficent.
Doesn’t care much about power steering, same with 3 vs 5 doors - as long as it looks good
-Interior space must be adequate for 4 blokes without too many complaints about buying “too wee a car”
Doesn’t need a lot of cargo space except for the roadtrips, where folding the rear bench will do.
He would like to have ABS brakes, but knows they cost a lot and isn’t necessarily standard equipment on smaller cars.
On paint colors, he’s never seen a grey he likes (“everything is grey here already”), black/white is fine, and has a slight fondness for red and yellow.
He’s undecided on the new styling trends of the 90s vs more oldshool 80s cars. A standout design would easily tip him either way.
General rules:
Body type: Hatchback (including liftback)
Car length <=420 cm (165")
Wheelbase <=260 cm (102.3")
Body year & Engine family: Any
Car Trim & Engine trim: 1992
Quality adjustments +/-: Down to -3, up to +3 allowed
All tech pool values (engine & car) must be set to 0. (in my experience you may need to exit to main menu and reenter for this to update correctly. Refer to @pcmoreno 's post if you wonder wtf is tech pool)
Max price: 21.000 (as seen in detailed stats->approximate cost)
Trim
Max trim ET: 100
Seats : At least 4 full seats
No semi-slicks, Tire width must end with a 5 (example: 195/50R15)
Non-resized Euro plates front & rear
Engine
Max ET: 110, For mixed material engines: 120
Catalytic converter required
Loudness - Max 50
No racing parts
Fuel - Unleaded 95 RON (as seen in detailed stats)
Drivability
Sportiness
Reliability
Design
Comfort
Fuel economy
Safety
Realism
Environmental Resistance
Prestige
Service costs
Value
Submissions:
Naming convention: Model and Family: QFC12 - [Forum Username] Trim and Variant: [your choice]
Notes
Interiors are not required, nor will they be judged.
I chose 1992 to allow a diverse set of bodies; boxy 80s or soap bar (ish) 90s equally viable.
The stereotypical hot hatches of the era were DOHC 16v four-cylinder <=2 liter, front transverse engined and FWD with a manual gearbox.
Still, single cam was prevalent enough, and to a lesser degree longitudinal and 5/6-cylinder engines and RWD/AWD happened, but mostly after this timeframe. I’m well aware of the group B homologation cars, but our guy would like to have an actual rear seat, so mid-engine is a huge No. Rear engine is also very sketchy.
Pushrod/DaOHC would be very weird, even the Americans didn’t bother with that for this sort of car.
Max Power isn’t necessarily the key, IRL most hot hatches were in the 110-175 hp range (Delta Integrale and Sunny aside)
Changelog
Update 1: Client, tires, fuel, naming, inspirations, notes
Update 2: +10 buff to engine ET
I don’t know about you guys, but i’ve managed to make a hot (ish) hatch for the nineties within the current ruleset without resorting to higher ET and so on.
Remember that most had just OHC and not DOHC and only some had VVT and even fewer had VVL. Only some had turbos. Mostly they had I4’s and the odd VR6 (V6 ingame i guess).
I’m (still) conflicted on the engine ET limit. Iron block/alu head DOHC is very viable within 110. Can even have VVT/Turbo, but need negative quality which feels…wrong (“oh, we didn’t bother much with the valvetrain/fuel injectors/etc”).
Many of the real GTIs had a lot of clever work done to get the most performance out of small engines. Having some headroom for extra quality would reflect that.
Anyhow, I think the 21.000 total price limit is still fine as it allows for radically different approaches that still fit the brief (and arguably makes having ET limits at all, unnecessary). I might bump it up to 22.000 to allow for some trim quality too. Conclusion: I’m gonna have a think.
I looked into 95/98 octane (apparently 97 used to be a thing as well) and 95 seems to be have been slightly more prevalent. From an IRL perspective neglible performance advantage of 98 vs availabilty of cheaper 95 tilts me in favor of switching to 95 octane. “Too much” power is still easy to get.
I’ve updated the OP with the other things you noticed, and some more flavor stuff so far.
Edit: I initially considered adding a 5-10 tech point pool allowance,but decided against it to keep things simple, yo. In a test build it mostly lowered the approximate cost with negible stat impact (+1 on everything). Haven’t tested throwing everything into specific categories with the potential balancing issues. Eh, increasing budget is simpler for everyone.
Not bad, actually, but an all-iron 4v DOHC engine seems like min-maxing even in 1992. That aside, I might look into iron block/heads as an option for my QFC12 build if I choose to enter. As for your engine, I suspect you may have omitted variable valve timing to achieve those numbers, but part of me believes otherwise.
I can easily get under the overall price limit by quite a large amount building a typical small hot hatch. My engine is at 101.9 right now with no quality in either direction however. The trim et seems a lot more relaxed than the engine one.
Alright, I’ve raised engine ET limit to 110/120. I think the ET limits are now inclusive of several real world cars (examples: Alfa 33 16v boxer, Civic VTi to some extent, and for trim Golf Limited). Max price remains at 21.000 Automation $. @Knugcab I will consider this (3-door) a hatchback. While we’re at it, the “hatchback” version of that body is more a “coupe” in my book. (And according to the game, has a more spacious interior - the usual wagon debuff to make them less comfortable I assume)
