I don’t think any of the other entrants opted for AWD, so if I’m not mistaken, yours may indeed be the only one in the field so equipped.
Actually, looks aside the car was pretty well-engineered. It was still too slow, though, and I would venture to say that opting for a small 4-cylinder instead of a big 3-cylinder would have helped you gain much better power even without increasing the displacement or weight much.
That, and I would change the weight savings approach. As it stood, you had tiny brakes with very sporty pads, which wrecked comfort, alongside an all-cast internals engine. Opting for just a forged crank and rods, but getting 8 to 9-inch brakes with less aggressive pads probably would have served the car better while maintaining better comfort and drivability. In addition, you wouldn’t have to spam the bottom end quality as much just to get rid of reliability penalties.
Indeed, it was alone. Most other people probably didn’t dump enough quality into drivetrain to even see that you could do it. I actually haven’t tried modifying your entry, unlike many others; Was there really ever that much of a advantage to the AWD? I’d figured that you did it for the brand and flair of it, drivability aside.
It gave better Drive than FWD, better Sport than RWD with square tires, and lower SVC than rear-drive with stagger. I wanted it to hustle in Beam with a keyboard (and it does!), but mostly I thought it’d be cool to make a “what if a Zapor were made into something world-class desirable”. It’s part of a larger alternate-history project that goes beyond the scope of Automation, loosely defined as “Russia done right”. I have a few reimaginings of the GAZ M1, M72, and Lada Niva as well.
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The reason for 15-inch was purely esthetic, I just thought 14-inch looked to small 
and the Ceres is supposed to be a kind of low spec car from Archana with steel wheels, cloth interior etc.
Thanks for a very high quality challange, 5 cars from this challange has been featured by Mr Chips on Automation official Instagram.
The new round of QFC has been posted.
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