QFC64 - Call of the West [RESULTS OUT]

[Kreator]

QFC64 - Call of the West

Pennsylvania, 1965

Jim drove his ACZ Grand Deluxe to the scrapyard with a heavy heart.

He and his wife Donna loved that car. It was superb on road trips, but the Pennsylvania winters and hills took their toll on the vehicle, and once the kids could stick their hands through the body towards the road below, it was time to replace it.

They loved the practicality of their old Grand Deluxe. It hauled the whole family to Florida and back, but it died before they could do their cross country trip. They promised their two kids that they’d see the Redwoods of California, and they need the perfect car to get them there.

Rules

• Open Beta ONLY.
• Model/Family years: Free.
• Trim/Variant years: 1965.
• Wheelbase: 100 inch minimum.
• Techpool - 15M.
  • No negative techpool allowed.
• No spaceframe or partial spaceframe chassis.
• Body - Wagon as viewed by the game.
• No legacy or open wheel bodies.
• Rear independent suspension adds 1k to price (all but solid axle coil and solid axle leaf).
• Open diffs only.
• No V16s.
• SOHC/DOHC adds 500 to price. 3 and 4 valve engines add an additional 500 to price (ex, a 4v SOHC adds 1k to price).
• Leader regular fuel only (87 AKI, 92 RON).
• No WES standards.
• Cross ply tires only.
• At least 5 full seats (2F, 3R).
• Budget - 14k MAX.
• 0-62 mph (0-100kmh) of under 14s (Jim doesn’t want a dog).
• No race parts.
• Min quality: -3.
• Max quality: +7.
• Must be realistic (no nitpicking, more of “could this have existed?”)
• Interiors not required and will not be judged.
• ATS allowed within reason (no mid engined conversions here).
• Joke/meme cars will be banned.
• Cars that abuse glitches will be banned.
• Cars that follow the letter of the law and not the spirit will be banned.

Priorities

Drivability
Vehicle must be tame and easy to drive on long road trips.

Comfort
Vehicle must be comfortable on long road trips.
This will be evaluated with 2F, 3R seat setup.

Looks
Jim wants something that looks classy, not like it came from the garbage bin.

Practicality
Vehicle must hold the family and their luggage.
This goes beyond the base stat. Think roof racks, seat and door count, vehicle size and shape, etc.

Reliability
Jim wants to cruise the country, not to the repair shop.

Service costs
Must be cheap and easy to fix should the car break down on the road.

Safety
Must keep the family safe in a crash.

Price
Cheaper is better, but Jim is willing to shell out more for a car that’s heads and shoulders above the rest.

Prestige
Jim doesn’t want something that’ll draw immense ridicule from his friends.

Fuel Economy
Gas is cheap and plentiful. There will never be a fuel crisis.

Submission

DM your .car files here on discourse with the following naming convention:

Model: QFC64 - Username (QFC64 - Kreator)
Trim: Free (ACZ Concur S4C)


Family: QFC64 - Username (QFC64 - Kreator)
Variant: Free (2.3L I4)

You are allowed ONE resubmission.

You must also post an ad for your car in the thread within 12 hours of the challenge deadline.

Inspirations

Ford Country Squire

Chevrolet Bel Air

Pontiac Tempest

Dodge Coronet

Chevrolet Corvair

Studebaker Daytona

Mercury Comet

Plymouth Belvedere

Chrysler Town and Country

AMC Rambler

Ford Fairlane

Pontiac Bonneville

Rule deliberation ends: 2025-10-28T00:00:00Z
Submission deadline: 2025-11-05T13:00:00Z

[Capri78]

Any rules on WES?

[RyoMotoCo]

leaded non AV i assume?

[supersaturn77]

Yeah, emissions regulations are a thing that the world doesn’t care about all that much yet, so I’d assume we’re doing regular leaded here?

Also, strongly advise environmental resistance being more of a holistic than stat based thing. It’s a weird behaving stat, like utility is, with strange magic in a hidden secret box. Especially given this is an era in which unprotected steel frames are more or less the norm, from what I can tell — I don’t recall if even hardy little Jeeps had galvanization on their chassis yet.

[Kreator]

@Capri78

Any rules on WES?

I forgot about that. Like what Saturn said, no one really cared back then. The game has WES 1 for some nations in 65, so that may be the requirement.

@RyoMotoCo

leaded non AV i assume?

Forgot fuel type. Definitely leaded only.

@supersaturn77

Also, strongly advise environmental resistance being more of a holistic than stat based thing.

Didn’t know it was that janky. May remove it and bump up reliability in its place.

[abg7]

@Kreator

Cross ply tires only.

That’s all we had 60 years ago - and while we’re at it, we should limit ourselves to hard or medium tires, which is what the inspirations usually had.

[Kreator]

Changes to the rules:

• Specified allowed type of gas.
• No WES requirements.
• Removed environmental resistance as a judging stat.
• No negative techpool allowed.
• Spaceframe banned.
• Set quality limits.

[Mad_Cat]

Wouldn’t say it’s all we had 60 years ago considering Michelin had been doing radials for a while at that point, but Cross Plies were still the common and usual choice

[Mad_Cat]

Does Direct-acting OHC raise the price or is it penalty-free like OHV?

[Kreator]

It’s penalty free, although not sure why you’d use one here.

[donutsnail]

No desire given for any power or performance metrics? Might be good to have a relatively strong engine for long distance highway drives across the mountains

[Kreator]

Great point, but I’m unsure of how to implement it beyond “Must have more than 100ft-lbs of torque”. Let me think on it.

[missionsystem]

Maybe just “would this car be able to move in real life” if the load capacity stat is still broken

[HyperskiesSM]

general looks priority and judging other than ‘must be realistic’?

[nightwave]

@Kreator

It’s penalty free, although not sure why you’d use one here.

I believe the I6s from the domestics were DAOHC at the time, but don’t quote me on it.

[Maverick74]

If by domestics you mean American car companies, then no, nearly all of them would have been pushrod OHV. The exceptions would have been the Pontiac Sprint 6 and the Kaiser Jeep Tornado 6, both of which were SOHC.

[Kreator]

Changes:

• Added design as a priority.
• Added “utility” as a priority. (essentially, don’t make an underpowered vehicle)

[oldmanbuick]

In general, I appreciate when challenges aren’t too strict with the rules and give some different angles to take toward the design, so my first impression was to like this ruleset because it gives a choice of body types and doesn’t have any wheelbase criteria.

But the more I thought about, the more I think that the judging criteria here aren’t balanced in a way that’s going to allow different design approaches to meaningfully compete. In other words, I think there are some pretty fundamental design choices that are basically going to make or break an entry here. In addition, even though this challenge is set in America in 1965, I think the scoring is also going to categorically disadvantage designs based on the large, gas-guzzling, V8-powered station-wagons that were very popular at the time.

The tl;dr here is that I would suggest you (1) limit entries to either a wagon or sedan body style, (2) limit entries to one chassis type (probably ladder), (3) set a wheelbase limit to target a specific size class, and (4) use 0-60 and/or quarter-mile time to create a performance metric (rather than using utility) and give it an appropriate weight depending on the intended size class and how much you want to encourage powerful engines

aaaaaand here's all the tl;dr stuff...

Rather than just speculate, I created a mule and auto-generated a bunch of other cars, and then I ran a mock scoring of those cars based on the listed scoring criteria. The results of that exercise are here: QFC64 Scoring Test - Google Sheets

There were a few things I took away from looking at the results of this exercise:

1. Picking a sedan body type instead of a station wagon body type is going to be a self-imposed penalty. Practicality is a 3-star stat, and wagons get a sizeable body type practicality bonus, while sedans get a significant body type practicality penalty. This wouldn’t be a problem for competitive balance if there was some kind of proportional benefit to choosing a sedan body, but sedan and wagon body types of the same vehicle appear to generally score very similarly outside of practicality.

2. Picking a ladder chassis basically guarantees you’ll drop several places because it gives a huge penalty to safety scores–a two-star priority–while producing only a moderate drop in price–a one-star priority. I even ran monocoque and ladder versions of one car–the Pygmy Kafue–that drop it from 2nd to 5th place just by switching from a monocoque to ladder chassis.

3. Having a large car similar in size to the full-size American station wagons of the time basically applies multiple scoring penalties. A large footprint significantly reduces drivability–a four-star priority–and also applies a significant “width” penalty in practicality–a three-star priority. While it has some benefits to comfort and, I think, prestige, these don’t seem to come close to balance the significant hits taken to high-priority scoring categories. The two cars in the test batch with 1960’s American full-size dimensions had the two lowest drivability scores and the two lowest practicality scores for wagons.

4. There also doesn’t seem to be any reason to put a gas-guzzling V8 motor in an entry–as I did with my “Skunkworks Mule” in the mock scoring–since it basically just gives a boost to prestige–a one-star stat–while also tanking fuel economy–also a one-star stat.

I think there’s good fundamental concept here for a challenge, but I think the parameters need to be narrowed considerably here. While there are ways to try to balance the scoring priorities so that what you’re aiming for will be the end result without specific restrictions, that can be tricky to pull off.

I would recommend just picking one body style (wagon or sedan) and then one size category, indicated by a wheelbase limit. This would address 1 and 3 above.

To address 2, I would recommend either requiring one chassis type (ladder or monocoque)–which is the simplest way to do it–or try to balance out some sort of additional price penalty for monocoque chassis. In my test, I notably didn’t mess with techpool and didn’t force everything within the price limit, so it’s possible that the ladder vs. monocoque disparity won’t turn out to be a real issue if everyone is forced by the price limit to use the cheaper ladder construction. You could also try to balance by increasing the priority of the price score.

As for 4, I’m not saying you have to encourage big, gas-guzzling engines, but I would suggest adding a “performance” metric and giving it a priority depending on how much you want to emphasize big engines. Since it seems like cornering probably isn’t much of a priority for these designs, I would suggest putting together a performance metric consisting of 0-60 time and quarter-mile time; you might also, or in the alternative, just give a pure horsepower and/or torque metric.

@Kreator

Added “utility” as a priority. (essentially, don’t make an underpowered vehicle)

Utility heavily measures cargo space and load capacity, and it also calculates a towing capacity metric that seems a bit broken in my experience and depends heavily on having a short first gear. I would not recommend this as a way to

There are more complicated ways to handle these things, but the simpler, more straightforward ways of addressing these issues (e.g. setting clear rules, rather than trying to add cost/scoring modifiers or perfectly balance scoring priorities to encourage a particular vehicle class) probably make the most sense for a first-time host and for a QFC.

If anyone bothered to read the tl;dr, I’d love to hear any thoughts folks might have on if there are problems in my own proposals I’m overlooking here, or if there are better ways to handle these things.

Also, @Kreator, this is all being offered in the spirit of trying to offer constructive advice to a first-time host (which I…did not execute very well myself), and I’m hoping I’ll be able to find the time to put together an entry for this QFC round.

[mart1n2005]

Making everyone use body on frame and giving more leniency to larger engines pushes all entries to basically being full size American cars then.
If the rules were “make a family car” it could include SUV’s and mpv’s but at that point it’s probably too much for qfc

A European or Japanese car of the period would be more likely monocoque, except the largest models and at the most an inline six if not a four cylinder.

[Knugcab]

I mean, not even all American cars were BOF, Mopars were unibody up to the fullsize models, I think also AMC had no BOF cars left by 1965, while Ford used it only on their fullsizes and GM still had it more or less all across the line except for the Nova and Corvair (with the Nova still not being a true unibody, but a weird bolt on front end thing that could not be represented in game, not like the later subframed Camaros/Novas either).