Luxury, Speed, Driving Pleasure. All in one single package.
Presenting the ultimate super saloon of the year.
Forget your Vipers, and Espirits, and F355s. Can they seat 4,
AND go to 100km/h faster than 4.5 seconds?
No they can’t.
Unmatched ease of driving, comfort, and feel.
The penultimate driving experience for you.
Specifications
It has a 5.2L V8 with 481 horsepower, weighs 1.45 tons, has double wishbone and multilink suspensions, advanced auto and a geared differential.Rest I forgor
Monarch L9000 Executive
The L9000 is for people who want to be driven in style. With a handbuilt interior, Hydropnumatic suspension, and a 7.3l N/A V12 it’s a beast on the road. Unrivaled by Anyone or Anything.
(about, depending on timezone) 24 hours remain
Attention everyone. Due to poor communication on my school’s part and poor planning on my part, my exams are scheduled next week. This may or may not result in a delay in judging, but I’m relatively determined to get them out on time. If this is not possible, I will post the rankings and go for the reviews/explanations afterward. Thank you for your understanding.
1995 Wells i6 GT-R12-L
We took our bread and butter midsize, stretched it, gave it allwheel drive and a V12 packing 420hp.
The result…
Now it needs wings…
Whether giving chase or in the driveway, this top of the line version of the i6 plays the part.
All day comfortable and even more so, all day powerful. Drive or driven the 1995 i6 GT-R12-L checks every box.
The i6 GT-R12-L
Compromise for no one.
Optional lore background
Despite the early spring chill, the door to the bar was open, a Hetvesian flag flapping above it in the breeze. Muttering under his breath about those damn Nordics and their “free-air-life”, Jay walked inside. Across the street from the Taste of Biervaria restaurant in the heart of the Little Hetvesia district of Gasmopolis, it was decorated to resemble a stave church - stark and very wooden - and just as dimly-lit, so his eyes took a moment to adjust. As the the carved knot motifs and Hetvesian knick-knacks everywhere came into view, a soft contralto with an accent he couldn’t place called out from the side, “You must be Jay.” He turned in its direction to see a lanky, oddly proportioned, sapphire-eyed 30-40-something stand up gracefully from her table, trailed by a cape of jet black hair. Reaching out a leather-gloved hand, she broke a warm smile flanked by snakebite piercings. “I’m glad you could make it. I’m Skaiðrun; you can call me Skye. Did Tony fill you in on what I have to show you?”
“Not much. He said he met someone at a show who… worked at the Hetvesian embassy? Or something about Dalluhan Coach and Motor Works? He was vague about that, but clear that they had something for my search for a new car, so he arranged this meeting. That someone must be you. Out of curiosity, though, you don’t sound either Dalluhan or Hetvesian to me…”
The snakebites widened as Skye replied, “I’m from the Dalluhan island of Walhimmula, or Valhimmlan as we call it. When the original Valhimmlan was invaded by the Hetvesian Confederation and turned into what is now the province of Neunschwanzstein, the Dalluhan sultan took in the refugees and gave them a then-uninhabited island to colonize. Its few hundred residents, myself included, are the last remaining speakers of the Valhimmlar language, long gone elsewhere. But that was centuries ago, and apart from some right-wing nationalist nutjobs, we bear the Hetvesians no ill will. I don’t, anyway. I grew up bilingual, with Valhimmlar and Dalluhan, and learned Hetvesian and Gasmean in school. Never lost the accent and don’t care to. My job was a good fit with all those languages. My passion, however, is cars.”
“What kind of cars?”
The snakebites couldn’t get any wider. “Come!” She strolled out the door, obviously excited, her cape following some time later. He realized why she looked out of proportion - those boots could’ve come from the Colossus of Rhoves.
“It took me a while to find safe parking in this crime-ridden shithole, so we’ve a few blocks to go. I’ll fill you in on some background meanwhile. Tony was half-right - to be fair, I’m impressed he remembers at all; when we met he was several beers in, and by the time we got to my apartment…” She blushed faintly, suppressing a giggle. “Well, anyway, I’m a freelance… ambassador, you might say. The Dalluhan foreign ministry and the local Hetvesian consulate are both clients of mine. DCMW isn’t, but I’ve done contracts for them in the past. I’m friends with many of their higher-ups, involved in the official owner’s club, and my job puts me in a position to do some high-level promotion.”
More optional background
“Dalluha, as I see it, undeservedly got caught on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, and DCMW was for decades unable to sell to the West. That is, apart from Fruinia, whose culture and circumstances were a poor fit for most DCMW products. To circumvent the political bullshit, at some point they formed a Hetvesian subsidiary called Norðwagen - they don’t care if you call it Nordwagen; modern Hetvesian doesn’t have the ð anyway - and started selling rebadged DCMW under that brand. This was decades ago - not sure when, but I wanna say sometime in the 60’s - and even though the border’s been open six years and there are DCMW dealerships, Norðwagen has much better market appeal, so the rebadging continues. For various reasons, mostly stupid bureaucratic ones, they’ve been restricted to selling just a couple of models, nowhere near their full portfolio. For Gasmea, they chose to specialize mostly in the trucks that you Gasmeans gobble up left and right. You might’ve heard of them?”
“Yeah, I glanced at their catalog - like you said, trucks and hardcore offroaders. So… first, if you don’t work for them, what’s your role in this? Second, what are we looking at? Don’t waste my time showing me a pickup truck - I’m hauling my boss, not manure.”
"I’ll lay my cards out bare. First and foremost, I’m an octane-blooded gearhead, sharing enthusiasm about a car I personally liked enough to buy one. Underneath it’s a seventh-generation DCMW Sharriallat that’s been selling in Dalluha since 1993, though the nameplate dates to the 1940’s. Recently it had a facelift that included left-hand-drive and some minor changes for the Hetvesian market, where it goes for sale later this year. It might sell in Gasmea, but the costs of regulatory compliance here discourage low-volume niche vehicles.
Second, I… uh… rather like Tony, and he made it sound like doing this demo would make him look good to you and to your mutual boss.
Third, some of my clients are private sector - let’s just say they’re some Outstanding Citizens - and there might be much mutual benefit if they and your employer got to know each other. Regarding that, I’m dipping a toe in the water on my own initiative, not in any official capacity quite yet, and let me be clear that I have no material interest in this sale.
We’re going to go for a drive, then if you like, you can borrow it for a few days, try it out, show it to your boss… whatever. It’s just broken-in and I have full coverage, so use it like it’s yours. If you want it, you can have it for my cost - $79500 with a transferrable warranty, de facto brand new. If you want a different one, I can arrange that. If not, it’s no skin off my back, and I’ll either keep it for myself or exchange it for one with a manual. I’m a die-hard stick-n-clutch driver, but for chauffeuring purposes, I specced it with the 6-speed auto."
“So it’s not sold here? How am I supposed to register it? And what about parts and service?”
It isn’t - yet - but the hardware has a lot in common with some higher-end DCMW and Norðwagen that are. All DCMW and Norðwagen dealerships have at least one master technician, who’s trained in Dalluha, and will be surprised to see this here but will know what to do with it. Yes, certain services are going to need that master tech or parts shipped from the motherland, so service costs are on the high side, but it’s no worse than, say, Gasmean-market Claudi models, and a lot more reliable to begin with. As for paperwork, it’s already been privately imported under an exemption for diplomatic staff - myself - and has a transferable Gasmean title. It’s the only one in the country, and likely will be for at least a couple more years. Ok, here’s the garage."
“I still don’t have a clue what this vehicle is, this DCMW, ehmm…Shalala… Shangri-La… Charlatan… Sharia Law…”
“Oh, right, sorry. It’s badged as a Norðwagen. Specifically…” She poked a code into a keypad, and a roll-up door began to rise.
The car
“…The Norðwagen Fenrir.”
Skye stood back and let Jay walk around and see for himself for a moment before narrating, "DCMW calls it a Personal Luxury Wagon, basically a Personal Luxury Coupe with extra cargo room. The Sharriallat nameplate began in the 40’s in the Dalluhan domestic market; when Norðwagen and Western sales began, it took on the name Fenrir, representing the ultimate yet sensible vehicular companion for lone wolf types - a medium- to high-end shooting brake, essentially. The concept evolved in the late 60’s when Archana expanded its road network into several remote and very scenic regions, and it became very fashionable among the well-to-do in Dalluha - that is, most of the population - to go on roadtrips to these places, especially for couples. The cars got bigger, softer, more practical and reliable. So did their buyers, for that matter. They gained a few features, notably a hydropneumatic suspension with manual ride height adjustment, and AWD, though the very first ones were old-school part-time 4WD. They also gained their official type name. The idea was for the lone wolf - or a couple of them - to be able to go anywhere in comfort and style, and conquer any obstacle, come what may.
Mechanically, they’re closer to a typical SUV than a car, in part for durability on what Archana charitably referred to as their “roads”. The Sharriallat/Fenrir has reinforced and unusually long control arms, all three diffs manually lockable, and the aforementioned hydro suspension. Dual fuel tanks allow over 1000km range if you’re sparing with the happy pedal. In its home market, it comes standard with underbody armor and all-terrain tires."
“So this thing goes off-road?”
“Well, it’s no Land Crosser or Heep, but the Sharriallat is as capable as most SUVs while being a lot safer and more comfortable. The Norðwagen version, made for western markets with much better roads, has medium-compound tires and a full aero underbody. So you won’t be rock-crawling or mudbogging, but the adjustable hydro suspension and diff locks remain.”
“What’s under the hood?”
“The 12DR5-LT48 - a 4.8-liter twin-turbo V12 making 620 horsepower and with an extremely flat and wide torque curve, with 85% of peak torque between 2100 and 8500rpm. There’s an entire engineering department in charge of exhaust tuning, and for this engine they hired consultants from a Fruinian church organ maker, taking extra care to make it sound good when you want it and not at all when you don’t. There’s a three-position exhaust valve switch on the dash - Closed, Manual open, and Auto open. The triple pipes at the back are tuned to play a perfectly-tempered C minor chord at its 8400 power peak. 0-100 time is 4.7 seconds, and it tops out at 322kph.”
“Does it stop and turn?”
“100-0 in 38ish meters, 0% fade no matter how hard you drive. As for turning, it weighs over 2 tons and isn’t exactly a sports car, but all that weight is quite low, it’s easy to drive though the electric steering is numb, and holds .97-1.0g with stock tires. Active swaybars mean only 5.4 degrees of lean despite the featherbed ride.” Motioning for Jay to do the same, she opened the frameless driver’s door, the mechanism reminiscent of a well-oiled rifle bolt. Obviously practiced wearing those Colossus boots, she deftly got in and pulled the door closed, the latch clicking shut with a heft and solidity that a bank vault would envy.
Skye paused for a moment in the tomb-like silence, the long-faded-to-subconscious din of the city suddenly very noticable by its absence. Countering now the dearth of anything to hear was an abundance of things to see, touch, and smell - at least four kinds of leather, brushed solid stainless steel trim, tung-oiled burl rosewood with birch, ebony, metal, and polished stone inlays. Suede above, thick soft cut-pile below. Inner and outer armrests symmetrical with their seat, air vents as well. Not a single casting mark or rough edge. Not a whiff of offgassing plastic or undried glue. A substantial and uncluttered table between the seats with raised walls, another fold-out table for the passenger, silk roller shades discreetly tucked above the window frames, a small fridge in the rear console. A crystal-jeweled Vinthal clock loomed like an overlord of it all, silently counting the seconds. Everything that moved was smooth, tight, and heavy. All of it palpably solid, substantial, and impeccably crafted.
“DCMW has refused to jump on the ‘gadgets=luxury’ and costcutting bandwagons, preferring instead to focus on old-school quality in materials, design, and function. Not one system has <0 quality and many have +15. They still use sheet lead for soundproofing, along with double-glazed windows including the windshield. They also believe that safety begins with the driver, so A- and B-pillars are as thin as possible, and apart from the sound system and on-board computer, there isn’t a single button or touchscreen anywhere - it’s all switches, levers, and knobs that keep your eyes on the road where they belong.”
“So did they min-max the comfort and leave out all the tech? I coulda smelled that one coming from a mile away…”
Skye replied with the trained grace and patience of a professional diplomat, "Why, not at all; it’s there, it just ‘speaks when spoken to’. The on-board computer, for instance, normally lives folded into the dash above the clock here. This curved dash on your side doubles as a screen for a projector above your head. There’s also ABS, TC, ESC, active swaybars, active xenon headlights, a thermal camera, rain-sensing wipers, electrically dimming mirrors and panoramic roof, the finest CD sound system money can buy, some more I’m forgetting… and then there are the seats.
Some PLW use the extra room for partial or even full rear seats, but the best use it to optimize seat quality over quantity. The base seats are quite nice; these, however, are a $10000 option - not only hand-made to the highest standards possible (15Q + 10TP), heated and cooled, 20-some-way adjustable, and with massagers, but they’re also active. Both seats have automatically inflatable side bolsters to hold you in a turn. The passenger’s seat frame also has its own suspension linked to the chassis hydraulics, further absorbing bumps before the occupant feels them. The engineers found that it reduces vehicle control, though, so the driver has to do without - it’s for the VIP in question, the one and only. For context, the DCMW Farurrim limo has three of these seats and starts at $600k. Both seats have over a meter of fore-aft adjustment, and recline near-flat with proper leg rests.
There’s also a movie projector and a two-mode screen - one for both occupants, and one out of the driver’s field of view. The latter mode is integrated with the seat suspension and synchronized to cancel out motion sickness.
Apart from the transmission, this particular car is loaded with every option available except four - the tow hitch, the camper package including rooftop tent, the satnav, and bulletproofing. The first two seemed pointless here. Tony gave me an idea of your budget and the armor would’ve cost about triple that. As for satnav, I’m aware that Gasmean authorities are a bit heavy-handed about wiretapping and surveillance, so I figured it’d be a liability for you and your boss. If you do want any of those, again, that can be arranged. Anyway, buckle up."
The drive
With a turn of the key - a hefty piece of finely machined steel, in a smooth, tight, heavy tumbler - a brief muffled whirr was shortly replaced by a faint hum, audible mostly because everything else outside the cabin wasn’t. The hum grew slighly in pitch but remained near-silent as Skye pulled out of the garage and onto the road. The ride… what ride? Was the car even moving? Without looking out the window or encountering a proper pothole, one couldn’t be quite sure. On the half-decent pavement of Main Blvd., it was a magic carpet, allowing nearly nothing from the road through the seats, and only enough through the wheel for the driver to have some idea of grip. They cruised towards the City Circumhighway. As they waited at the last light before the on-ramp, Skye and Jay could hear - barely - an engine bouncing off redline to their left.
Skye smirked, “Oh look, another cookie-cutter Indicator. Some of them are very fine cars, but how… common. And they want to race? Well, even with this kind of power, there might be something faster out there. I assume you’re as keen to find out?”
Jay simply grinned back. Skye flicked the smooth, tight, heavy exhaust valve switch to Manual Open, and suddenly the hum, a gentle pianissimo lullaby, became a surly mezzoforte dirge. She blipped the throttle, producing a sharp staccatto yell from just downstream of the resonators. To this replied not only the luxury sedan to their left but also to their right, an enormously tall, boxy thing wearing Mr. T levels of bling, and with the seating position and attitude of a battleship.
“What is that, a Hummper?”
“No, a Range Rambler. Might be the new supercharged one that famously beat a Muttonghini in a drag race.”
Green light. For the briefest moment, time seemed to stand still and all was silent. Then the Colossus took one quick, decisive step to the right. For the next few seconds, time became a nebulous concept as Fenrir’s four Tyrellis rotated the planet towards itself, the silence annihilated by a bellowing horde of demons, morphing as the revs rose into a perfectly harmonized choir of angels wailing C minor. Milliseconds later, a refrain. The organ builders had done their job well: whether infernal or heavenly, the tone from the triple pipes befit the grandest of Fruinian cathedrals.
The sedan was first off the line, and for the first three gears stayed just ahead of Fenrir. By fourth, however, the taller and wider four- or five-seater started to run out of steam, and as Fenrir walked past, a white-gloved hand emerged from the rear window and waved a salute before the car dropped back to normal speeds.
“Jeeves there probably needed a change of pants and a raise.”
The Range Rambler, on the other hand, was powered by something quite serious indeed - it didn’t leap off the line like the others, and struggled with wheelspin for the first two gears. But by third gear it had caught up and by fourth was nearly a km ahead.
The gloves steeled their grip on the wheel, and the sapphires their firm stare ahead, the cape draped backwards over $10000 bison hide. Traffic was modest that day, but at 250+kph, any traffic was effectively mobile chicanes. As fifth gear sang its slow crescendo, Skye assertively flicked Fenrir from lane to lane, occasionally lifting or braking to pause and reassess gaps between bystanders. This was no sports car, its reflexes unhurried, cushioned, and relaxed, yet it confidently went where pointed no matter the speed, never lost its composture, stability, and grace, never threatened to do other than it was told. They caught glimpses of the Rambler, each time further and further away.
Then, disaster befell: two 36-wheelers behind a third suddenly merged to either side, apparently having decided it was a fine time for an elephant race. Trapped by this wall of discourtesy and incompetence, Skye gave an exasperated snarl, and brought Fenrir to what felt like a mind-bendingly rapid halt, though they were still doing 120kph. The straight spur section they had entered was merging with the main ring road up ahead, an enormous flashing sign warning of a 90kph advisory speed for the 165 degree turn at the merge. The elephants, seeing the sign, came to their senses and fell back to the right lane.
"Ok, the Indicator is long gone, but I have to concede victory to the Range Rambler. Fair’s fair - cram enough engine into any old parade float, and it’ll— "
Jay cut her off, “Woah, do you see that?!” He pointed to an arc of smoke rising rapidly from somewhere off to the right. Traffic meanwhile was turning on a lot of brake lights.
Turning the exhaust back to Closed, the tomb restored, they joined the dense stream of cars crawling through the curve, shortly later coming upon the source of the smoke - across half the freeway’s lanes and for about 300 meters was a field of debris of numerous shapes and sizes, some smoking, some intensely aflame. Along the concrete sound barrier wall lining the outside of the turn, there were several chips and impact marks, followed by a huge black scorch mark that extended some hundred meters. As they drove past a particularly close and large burning chunk of something, Skye’s eyes went wide and her face sank - barely recognizable now, it was half of what was very recently an ETK I-series. On another nearby piece, they managed to make out the “RR” stitching on quilted leather just as the flames devoured it.
“I guess the world’s fastest parade float really would rather stay in a straight line…” Skye mused aloud.
“The taller they stand, the harder they fall. Damn, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a wreck this messy,” Jay responded.
“That’s the thing about SUVs for on-road use: people, on a very primal lizard-brain level, love the feeling of lording over others from a high position, but it’s not what -works- for most situations. That Range Rambler is like an elephant, and gets the kind of polite respect and I’ll-get-out-of-your-way deference that simple size and height earn. This car, on the other hand, is more like a stalking wolf - doesn’t call attention to itself quite like the elephant, but once it is spotted, draws the very focused respect that fear of a predator instills. A capable predator that can take a turn and not keel over. Hence the fang theme in the grill. Hence the name - Fenrir.”
They finally emerged from the traffic jam, and ahead was a trickle of cars, no more than one lane’s worth, spread across five. This time, Skye left the exhaust on Closed as she gradually rolled onto the throttle, and the snakebites widened once again, as a wave of molten velvet hove the magic carpet forward, accompanied by a distant symphony of ripping silk.
“So yeah, try it out for a few days, tell me what you think. And tell Tony to come get his pants down from my ceiling fan; the imbalance is wearing out the bearings.”
…I don’t know why I felt an urge to throw in this version of Fugue in D Minor…or well, I actually do. 
The 1994 Planar Danazine EX-S Stealth
Planar’s farewell to the SM40 series Danazine after 16 years on the market, the Stealth edition EX-S is a luxury tour de force.
With blacked out badging, a standard Danazine hood, and a quieter tune to our excellently smooth RXVN-92 V12, the only identifiable feature of the Stealth edition is the exclusive Fulvetta dark metallic green and heart stopping speed.
The RXVN-92 V12 now features VVT and VVL, meaning that it delivers an impressive 229kW smoother than ever, and the PASS v.2 suspension now has electronic control and a more comfort oriented tune. Combine those with an exquisite handmade interior and you get the most comfortable Danazine ever made.
Other standard features include a darker window tint and brand new CD stacker, as well as advanced safety features.
Available now for $80,000 AMU, contact your nearest Planar showroom for a test drive.
I was thinking more along these lines…
Yeah, it was more the egg shape of Ch_Flash’s entry I thought about, lol.
That’s because the '84 Commoner body sets can be morphed to have a blobby, rounded shape with the right settings for some morphing zones.
Honestly looks like a luxurious GM EV1 to me…
Then again, back in 1995, the “bottom-breather” look, with the upper grille being vestigial or absent, was definitely in vogue.
And that inspired me to this, for some reason…
Your vehicle of choice is supposed to be special,
Something desirable, something unique, something magnificent.
Your decision is a reflection of your soul and of your value,
So shouldn’t everyone admire your prestigious spirit?
The 1995 A.G. Tigresse - Esprit Prestigieux Twin Turbo.
“Numbers don’t matter when faced with style…”
– Alberre Guille
True. I still like the look to this day.
The car that I submitted would have had a bottom-breather “sibling” from my less-luxurious brand.
Love this - very sleek and fitting for the time period. Reminds me of the XM in Ronin.