QFC38 - Wheels Down Under (Submissions Closed)

I’m assuming you googled the GT86 0-100 time and took whatever the first result was. There’s an 86 base model and then there’s the GT86. I specifically remember my dad’s GT86 getting a 6.1s on the draggy and if you look up, the GT86 officially should be 6.4s.

The issue with assuming your car is sensibly engineered and is cheaper to run than a car that’s made by Toyota with 6 less cylinders is the fact that your car wouldn’t exist in the real world by any means. Realism is still a factor in these competitions unless specifically said otherwise by the host. Are you aware of the labor required to do the basic maintenance and spark plug changes on a V10? There’s plenty of other issues with the car, for example a rear-engined rear wheel drive car wouldn’t really seat 3 people comfortably because it’d cook the shit out of whoever’s sitting in the rear seats. Numbers aren’t everything.

If you still have questions or are doubtful, by all means send me a dm and I’ll try to engineer a reasonable version of your car at my free time to show where things went wrong

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:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

:thinking:


:smirk:
tucker 48

:smirk:
tatra 603

:smirk:
tatra t77

:smirk:
chevrolet corvair

:face_with_monocle:

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Uh yeah, those are all long sedans with cabins signifiantly forward of the rear axle and long stretches of almost unsloped roof.

The car in question is a sports coupe with what seems like a pretty modest wheelbase. It’s very obviously not the same. Now stop snarking it up at the host.

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To be fair…



@JustARandomCrackhead there were plenty of other reasons to bin your car.

No problem. Thanks for the feedback, by the way. No hard feelings at all.

1 Like

I agree. In hindsight, the twin-turbo V10 was probably not the best choice of engine. Should have gone for a V6.

Just to make something clear: flights of fancy when designing a car, even a challenge car, are totally cool - but usually it’s best to take it a little at a time. Make sure that it doesn’t hinder the car in actually doing its job, and make sure that the finished product doesn’t look like it’d only exist if hell froze over.

4 Likes
Rd1, Initial Binning


QFC38, Prelims pt1

Initial binning round. If you’ve made it here and then get knocked off, means your car was good enough to not be yeeted immediately, but it just wasn’t a good enough proposition for the host(s).


Following how Texaslav did it in his round.

17 Entries. 4 Entries will be sent to the bin from here. Those 4 will receive a semi-detailed reasoning for why they got bonked, others will receive a few lines. Time is short.


Rhania Raider Strzelecki by @happyfireballman

Let’s talk about this rather massive elephant in the room.

I see the trollcruiser and I appreciate the entry.

HOWEVER!

The recipe to a well done meme that actually manages to plow through real entries and reach the finals has to lie in:

  • Design
  • Getting the stats that were asked for, while committing to the meme
  • Good price proposition

1 and 3 were a glorious failure, considering it does not look era correct or well detailed (even by QFC standards), and it costs 27500 automation pesos. Yes a Land Cruiser 70 exists but

A 2014 LC70 actually has :sparkles: details :sparkles: and tries to be period correct with how the fixtures are designed, rounded and modern.

You did get most of the stats right though, bar from sports and service costs. With $1850 of service costs annually, this is the most expensive car to run combined with the fuel economy and it’s not even close to the 2nd most expensive car to run.

Also, a fuckoff big truck like this would NEVER have a 2/2 seat setup unless it was some super expensive high spec product. Also most trucks past 90s should not have solid axles all around. Many of them started using Wishbone fronts since the 80s.

Good effort, you get a :b:/10

As in for :b:in.


Arima Cavsage by @Koviico

As an Audi connoisseur, I hate to see this go, but it has to go.

The stats are decent at first look. It does drivability right, it does comfort right, it does sport right. Very healthy stats balance. Until we looked at the drivability of other entries. This is off by a whole 15-20 points in average. What went wrong, Considering it pretty faithfully recreates a lot of Audi’s recipes for building a car, and they have some of the best drivability because of their Quattro system?

What the fuck?

Oh…

image

Fucking donk 21 inchers as standard that’s why. A B8 A4 came with 16-18 inches at most. You have quite monumentally fucked your chances of making it to the semis SOLELY from the handling graph shenanigans alone.

Engine is pretty decent, doesn’t need the billet crank really. Good HP/Torque curve.

I can see you shying away from some fancy suspensions due to low reliability I reckon. Here’s a tip for that, pump trim body quality.

This is probably not fine. Last time I worked on an S4 from 1999, that thing had vented discs all around. I would at least expect vented at the front.

I won’t knock it for having a 6 speed manual, because I myself am in the market for a B7/B8 generation A4/A5 with the 3.0 TDi and a manual.

Design is pretty well done, very bold and understated look. We both loved it and were down to letting it pass until we saw some of the interesting engineering choices up there. This is the only entry that is very well designed and is leaving us at the bin pile.

Anyway, decent entry, needs some work to make it a proper contender.


Clari Gén’Eta Frolage 2014 by @Vento

French cars were a bit ugly in the 00s, but they started looking pretty good by the 10s. This is not one of them.

Not to knock you for it of course, you’re a far better engineer than a designer. And so am I personally, at least for modern cars. Which is why I hide behind a collab where the other person does the brunt of the design and I add some ideas here and there or some niche design features. I suggest you do the same until you’re good enough to design a good car on your own. Remember, stealing designs and adding your own twists to it goes a long way. But don’t OUTRIGHT STEAL either.

I mean what the fuck lmao.

On to engineering. Why does it have an all steel configuration? Especially the panels are entirely untreated steel. In 2014, this is almost impossible. The environmental resistance is by far the worst in class because of this. This’d rust in 2 business days in Melbourne’s bipolar-ass weather.

Double Wishbone all around, LONGITUDINAL AWD hatchback. This just feels so wrong in so many ways. It wouldn’t have if it was done right, but if it was done right it wouldn’t be here.

Slushmatic transmission, 6 speeds too in 2014. I see what you’re doing her with the budget proposition and everything, but there’s a limit for how low you should go. This ain’t it.

Stats-wise, or at least most of the stats-wise, you have a pretty strong entry.

However realism, coherence and design takes a massive nosedive. Sorry, better luck next time.


Centara Kuiper by @Edsel

The paint is something else. Loading this in my showroom preset gave me a flashbang worse than CS:GO. I am dumbfounded by the specific color setting here but you do you.

This is another car that gets really good stats, but upon closer inspection, the engineering gets really interesting.

This costs $26000, higher end of the budget spectrum. For 26,000 automation pesos I get:

  • All cast crank/rods/pistons
  • A VVL that might as well not be there from how it’s functioning
  • Single throttle MPEFI
  • No Precat
  • No differential
  • Cooling flaps for some reason. IDK why it needs cooling flaps when it takes 8 seconds to 100 km/h, and the brakes could’ve used more pistons than the flaps.
  • Weird usage of quality. +4 in aero, +2 in brakes, +3 in traction aids, +5 in safety. Points that you could’ve used in places where it actually matters.
  • The most car.jpg looking automobile I’ve ever seen (you know it’s bad when you out-Abg the Abg).

Yeah no sorry, we couldn’t let this one pass. Initial stats looked pretty strong, but other entries were simply too coherently engineered and better designed.


That’s all the rd1 bins out.

We will be interrupting this pt1 right here for the time being as the angrycock is a dum-dum and forgot Today’s Saturday, and therefore public transport times are fucked. Unless I wanna be late at work, I gotta get off my PC right the fuck now. I will get back to this after the shift. But rest assured pt2 won’t be delayed a whole week. We expect to get done with QFC38 by this week.

I’ll be coked up with caffeine by the time I return so expect some spiciness.

16 Likes

welp, better luck next time. need to step up ky engineering as always xd

1 Like

I suspect the chart is referring to excessive oversteer - something that can be avoided by increasing toe-in angle (in 4.3 only) and widening the rear tires relative to the fronts (although the latter will increase service costs if overdone).

So I just did not know that the emissions button existed, I always fail these challenges for the stupidest reasons

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Then again, emissions calibration (which is only possible if a catalytic converter is fitted) wasn’t possible until 4.3, so it’s understandable that most players won’t notice it for some time. I was aware of its presence as soon as I saw it, though.

Hey, don’t we all? :wink:

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Serves me right for submitting a Buick Verano to a bunch of college students lol.
I kept spamming quality 'cause I was worried about getting slammed for not using all the budget, but in retrospect I should’ve probably leaned into that advantage. Ah well, excited to see how this goes from here! :D

I do have a few questions about the criticisms though, since I'm not sure what makes all of the decisions "incoherent"
  • The VVL accounts for 40 hp in a 180hp car (over 1/5th of its output). I don’t understand how that’s insignificant enough to “might as well not be there?”
  • I don’t know anything about precats, so forgive my ignorance, but it didn’t need a precat to pass emissions, so why would I have put one on?
  • I need to learn more about cooling flaps. I thought they were starting to appear on all manner of regular cars in this era, as a way to improve fuel economy without sacrificing airflow. It’s hard to find much good information on them, though.
  • And in allocating quality, I was deliberately trying not to minmax by shooting for the numerically most rewarding categories (which as I understand I would’ve gotten hell for in most other categories), instead broadly allocating it based on which concepts fit the car/company best regardless of their stats.

Note I don’t mean to challenge or contest the ruling, I think the car got what it deserved just fine (and I’m very much enjoying this challenge). I just wanna understand my mistakes a bit better so I can learn from them.

7 Likes

I can answer the VVL one - when Wrekt does one, the separation between the two cam profiles is like 65+ :sweat_smile:

In all seriousness, it doesn’t seem like you’ve done that much wrong, but I can comment on the quality issue:

Usually, we frown on negative quality being used to bottom out the cost for something that’s not properly balanced at those quality levels. As an example, I once hosted a challenge where somebody made an overpriced car and made it fit in the budget by putting -8 quality into traction aids, which as long as you have ESC are expensive.

“Positive-but-below-techpool” quality is currently accepted as normal. Staying at zero in places you don’t want to spend money in is considered fine. This might well change at some point because it’s really not much different from doing negative quality with the pre-techpool sandbox, but so far the consensus has been that it’s okay.

Most notably, +5 in safety probably hurt you a bunch because not only does it cost a pretty penny, it also makes the car heavier as opposed to most uses of quality. The +3 in traction aids similarly could have hurt because ESC is stupidly, unreasonably expensive in this game and upping the quality does not bring many benefits.

4 Likes

Hi.

  • My issues with how the VVL is setup is that there is simply not enough gap between the two cam profiles for me to consider the extra set of cams worth having. It adds weight, some reliability penalty, extra costs and complexity down the long run to the engine. You are making a certain amount of horsepower from that VVL setup, correct. You are getting a much better fuel efficiency than without the VVL, correct. But you are also disregarding how two sets of cams and their switchover are setup in cars. I can assure you my mate’s 2011 Corolla Conquest has a more aggressive VVL setup than your car. And that makes less horsepower.

  • A pre-cat is just something what a standard cat does until the engine warms up. It’s good for cold starts, after that it becomes more of an exhaust flow restrictor. Not a huge realism error by any means, but most non-performance cars past 00s generally have had them from my experience.

  • I forgot to add something extra here. You added cooling flaps but also PUSHED COOLING AIRFLOW TO 100. I have never built a single car that has needed 100 airflow for reliability, and that includes race cars. Basically what this means is when your cooling flaps are active, your car is letting copious amounts of air in. You do not want that if you want decent fuel economy. Automation might say you’re getting 7-8-ish L/100km but the moment those flaps activate you’ll see the number plummet.

  • And in allocating quality, I was deliberately trying not to minmax by shooting for the numerically most rewarding categories

  • And this is how one loses a challenge. Think about how real life cars are made. The money is put in only the places where it matters. Anything that is unnecessary or low priority gets very little development money. This is why so many commuters came with drum brakes even in the 2010s. Let’s have a look at the NA market Mk3 Focus. Great performance, handling and fuel efficiency feats, absolutely horrendous interior with hard plastic, bland design compared to competitors, and the seats were subpar at best. Why? The target demographic of a sporty Focus at the time didn’t really give much toss about interior or ride quality, and even to this day most 3rd gen Focus ST/RS buyers do not give a shit about their ride quality. It’s a fun/track car to them. WHICH IT IS. Same way, I cannot see why your Buick Verano which is supposed to be a comfy, cushy cruiser with really good fuel economy and reliability should not have heaps of point invested in trim quality, engine family, interior quality, transmission etc. You won’t be dinged for that. Also refer to what Texaslav said.

That said, I went ahead and changed around some things in your car that would make it more compliant with the other entries that DID make through in the realism filter. If you are interested, I’m happy to DM it to you.

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Yeah, I’d love to take a look at that. Thanks so much for the feedback, I really appreciate your time!

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Yeah. Reading through your ad and seeing your car there is only so much stretching the rear engine formula can do. A V6 would’ve been better, but a lot of other engineering choices would’ve still yeeted you. The car being a swept back coupe with rear seats isn’t really that out of the question though. Plenty of heat shielding can be used to mitigate things, but a 3 liter V10 is just wrong for packaging in such a coupe with a relatively short rear overhang. You had an idea, but damn was it out there.

2 Likes
Rd2 - Fuck It, We Ball


QFC38, Semi-Finals


Essentially this is a second round bin. If you reached till here, good job. Your car was decent but probably got beaten in stats and config by one of the finalists. LESGO LESGO TIME IS SHORT I HAVE WORK IN 2 HOURS.


Kiyume - Ios TX-R WORKS by @machalel

The Good:

  • Focus ST meets Civic Si vibes. Reliable, efficient, easy and cheap to service 4 banger but non-turbo. Pretty loud which seeps into comfort negative scores but also improves sport.

  • Respectable 0-100 time, not the fastest but pretty decent all things considered. FWD and Helical diff means very maneuverable for its short wheelbase.

  • Pretty nice fuel economy, one of the best in its class.

  • Design is solid. It’s not the most detailed or the most beautiful out there but it’s pretty realistic and the foundations are well put together.


The Bad:

  • Not the most drivable, not the most sporty, and definitely super low comfort. True stock Focus ST experience.

  • Reliability is quite subpar for having sport seats and standard interior, and also a 5 speed manual.

  • The variable hydraulic power steering adds more weight to this car for the driving feel it adds, at that point you’re better off giving it electric variable steering so at least it retains the driving feel while also being lighter.

  • Excessively angled camber setup, bloating the service cost and eventually making it a much more expensive car to maintain.

Loses to Karhgath’s Regal Lion and Riley’s Zephorus Go!


2014 Alpena Indianapolis GXA Street Edition by @variationofvariables

Jesus Christ :pig_nose:

The Good:

  • Cannot deny its striking look and posture. Pretty solid design detail and realism-wise

  • Super strong and robust engine, well tuned all around and good VVL setup. Mighty realistic power and torque curve, and doesn’t cost an arm to service.

  • Very drivable and comfortable for a RWD 6 spd adv.auto with an LSD. Quick 0-100 and doesn’t sacrifice much of the sporty feel.

  • Pretty good fuel economy considering the 300hp V6.

  • Some pretty high-end stuff throughout the car, clearly you’ve budgetmaxxed the shit outta this.

The Bad:

  • Instead of looking like its far more civilized and mature Holden counterpart, it looks like a G6 GXP. I know it’s intentional but what can you do.

  • Pretty high service costs, that suspension setup and those high end gizmos are not helping here.

  • Trim reliability is on the lower side of things, I feel like this could’ve been easily fixed by pumping extra quality into shit that mattered a bit more instead of choosing TREATED STEEL instead of Alu or Partial Alu.

Loses to Vero’s Archer Mistral by not a whole lot, very close duel. Hurts to let this go, I was warming up to it (mostly cuz of the nice ass, well done.)


AMS Albite 4.2 by @abg7

The Good:

  • As understated it is, this is a rare car from you that doesn’t outright look like car.jpg, that title goes to Edsel this round. Bold and stately looks. The Toyota Crown GRS204 enjoyer in me likes it and so does my co-host.

  • Stats are pretty decent with them being geared more towards sportiness. Overall a decent spread.

  • One of the fastest entries, 5.2s to 100 is blistering quick for the budget and market.

  • Shoving the 4.2 V8 in a P plate legal car by artificially increasing the weight is very E39 535/540i of you, granted those cars understate their horsepower numbers instead but same kinda beat.

The Bad:

  • Top of the budget, super high service costs. Mostly thanks to the staggered tyre setup. I kid you not as a student I would never even consider a car with factory stagger.

  • Fuel economy is doodoo but tbf that’s expected from a 4L+ V8.

  • Reliability, despite you pumping the weight slider to at its lowest, is relatively low on the trim. And as a matter of fact, the engine isn’t the most reliable either. But highly strung V8 so I understand.

  • The Launch Control was a bit much for an understated car like this, that money should’ve been sent on some undertrays. That’s an essential for a car like this.

Overall good car, but gets beaten by Chowi’s Jefferson and Tex’s Arlington.


Bergmann Alpine VaroTech Premium AUS by @Mikonp7

The Good:

  • Right off the bat, bold Euro/German looks. Love the styling. Window job is pretty well executed.

  • Fuel efficient and torquey engine, plenty of pickup from 3000 RPM.

  • Helical diffs and clutched LSD gets it a very decent spread of drivability, sport and comfort. Lightweight and fun to drive. One of the best fuel economy too.

  • Luxury infotainment, a bit out there but certainly plausible.

The Bad:

  • Only 155 hp out of the engine and 8.1s 0-100 out of something that looks like this. You’ve committed B8 generation Audi A4 2.0T S-line. Looks like a sportscar, but just a nice slowbox underneath.

  • Horrendous reliability across engine and trim, the luxury infotainment and semi-active dampers do not help.

  • Higher service costs than some non-turbo cars. Impressive lmao.

  • If this was way cheaper and reliable, would’ve been a fighter with these stats. Unfortunately at 26,000… No.

Loses to the previously mentioned hatchbacks (Regal Lion and Zephorus Go!).


Matsuma Mussa 4-X sport by @Mart1n2005

You have balls of steel to suggest me a crossover for my personal car.

The Good:

  • Despite my hatred of this class of cars, it’s a crossover. With AWD and no diff, granted, but still capable of taking minor offroad and roadtrip feats better than some lowered sport saloon/coupe/hatch.

  • Stinking fast for what it is, just one tenth off of Yuri’s Alpena at 5.7s 0-100, all thanks to a 6spd DCT. Okay VW. And for that matter, pretty fuel efficient.

  • Decent stat spread yet again, more geared towards drive and comfort.

  • The 1.8 Turbo 4 is pretty efficient, reliable, and relatively cheap to service considering it’s pushing 205 hp and 285nm torque.

  • Overall a nice package with great interior, safety focus, driver aids and spring setup.

The Bad:

  • Unfortunately, all the nice gizmos also add to the service costs on top of the already high costs of the turbo.

  • Which wouldn’t have been an issue if reliability was higher. Definitely on the low end and could’ve been improved with a tad bit better use of techpool, quality and budgeting/prioritising parts.

  • Rear and side looks good but not a fan of the front. Very basic. Feels like a CX-3 for CX-30 money and features.

Overall, pretty good price proposition but loses to the hatchbacks in other departments that mattered.


Victus Tigris T3CC by @Ludvig

The Good

  • Drivability supremacy squad with a touch of pretty high comfort. Yeah the sportiness suffers tremendously thanks to a fucking CVT but hey, it’s fast. I can live with that.

  • Juuuuust behind the Zephorus Go! in fuel economy which is a pretty good feat.

  • Engine is relatively understressed with only 1 bar of pressure pushing from the turbo but a big 300nm of torque is there for the pickup. Explains the relatively higher than most turbo cars reliability and service costs. Feels very nu-impreza with the sporty engine and CVT.

  • High end interior and seat setup with electric steering and modest suspension/spring options. Suspension is very well tuned as well.

  • CVT Also means pretty low reliability but not as low as I anticipated. Neither are the service costs that high. And all things considered it costs pretty low.

  • Longitudinal FWD, extra brownie points for that. I salute.

The Bad:

  • Unfortunately, even with a near 50/50 weight distribution, FWD paired with CVT is a recipe for disaster when it comes to feeling sporty inside a car. Even if it’s fast and pulls okay-ish gs on the skidplate, cars like these feel like boats and it shows in the stats. Now I personally wouldn’t mind that much because it’s still a nice car, but other cars handled everything just slightly better.

  • And this is where it comes to personal preference. On paper and sensibility-wise, this is a pretty well made package and I’d be eager to try out something like this. I’ve always been open to boring/unsporty/unconventional cars.
    But I don’t think it’s possible to get over the combined aspect of how much driving feel it’d be missing, how much it’d cost at every point it broke and how much value it’d lose down the long run thanks to being such a niche product.

Overall, a seriously good attempt at proposing a CVT, and it almost made it to the finals, but yeah didn’t quite get there. Just like Yuri’s Alpena, hurts to see this one go.


Okay so that’s all for my bullshit. I will now be handing the finals over to my dear co-host, @Falling_Comet who will get back to this as soon as he can. I am fucking off to Sydney for a road trip with some friends till 26th. Cya’ll later!!!

26 Likes

In short: a cashed-up mobster’s ride in a world of more budget-friendly student’s wheels. As long as the mobster in question has plenty of money to spare, of course.