Definitely no ITBs, just TBI (another name for single-point EFI).
and that's the totally-not-a-Z28-clone, my challenge entry is just a knockoff V6 Berlinetta (2bbl carb, literally no power, etc.)
3 Likes
Goes hard as fuck, both variants.
3 Likes
REVIEWS
There was one bin for @YelloLight whose entry I could not retrieve from a Google Drive link.
Tigershark Ocean - @PoseidonAutomotive
Rank: 25. This is an entry from a new member of the challenge community, and the inexperience unfortunately shows in a build that is practical thanks to a second small row of seats but that is otherwise generally uncompetitive. Hopefully, this can be a learning experience to build on in future entries.
Design: 4/10. The design’s overall rather plain, but the headlights are strange, and the unusual vertical door handles are in the B-pillar without being visibly connected to the door.
DeTomato Slayer PSX - @fallenvalkyrie
Rank: 24. The Slayer unfortunately delivers the drawbacks implied by its hypercar-type looks without the benefits you would expect. It’s finicky, gas-guzzling, and extraordinarily expensive to service. While it does deliver good straight-line speed with a 7.2-second 0-60 time, it has very little cornering grip and doesn’t deliver a sporty driving experience. Other attributes are most middling to below-average, with the exception of a high prestige score that only does so much to make up for the Slayer’s other drawbacks.
Design: 5/10. The two-tone paint scheme is attractive, but the nearly horizontal front license plate is odd, the side badging seems too large and not in a great font, and the giant rear wing with two dual-tipped exhausts is a bit too over the top (and probably not road legal in any jurisdiction that prefers the rear of a vehicle to have bumpers instead of giant pipes of hot metal sticking out a foot behind the car).
West Isle Motors Typhoon - @breadtheloaf
Rank: 23. The Typhoon has better than average performance, with a quick 6.5 second 0-60 time and .95 g’s on the 20-meter skidpad. Unfortunately, it otherwise generally scores average or below in most categories, with particularly poor comfort and high gas consumption.
Design: 4/10. A basic build that looks more 90s than 80s and that’s made with a few fixtures that don’t seem to have been selected or placed with much care for creating a cohesive-looking design.
SSV Alumnus - @ShinyBat
Rank: 22. The Alumnus actually scores well in a number of categories, but not in the highest-priority categories. Of the 5- and 4-star scoring priorities, the Alumnus turns in an above-average score in sportiness only, and it’s dragged down by a poor design score. It’s ultimately a rather “spiky” entry that tends to be either very good or very bad in any given category, and the strengths tend toward the less important priorities.
Design: 2/10. It seems like not much effort was put into this design, which has oddly proportioned and unnecessarily wide front fenders and is otherwise made up of a small number of pre-fab fixtures that seem to have been sized and placed rather haphazardly.
Vymer Basilisk SX - @Simmerdoor
Rank: 21. The Basilisk scores reasonably well in many categories, with particular standout scores in prestige, comfort, and safety. But it fails to deliver in some of the most important categories, with one of the lowest sportiness scores in the field and a lackluster design. It also suffers from serious rust issues and has higher service costs than almost any other entry.
Design: 5/10. It’s just sort of…there. It’s simple and not particularly attractive or unattractive. I wish I had something more constructive to say about this car, but it reminds me of some of my own designs that are just very much “an car.”
Firehawk SX - @Ducethetruth100
Rank: 20. The Firehawk is one of the less expensive options and is remarkably inexpensive to service. It’s also reasonably safe, practical, and reliable. But it’s ultimately more of an inexpensive daily driver than a sports car, with some of the worst performance numbers in the field and little in the way of a sporty driving feel.
Design: 6/10. Some decent detail and nice proportions, but something looks a little off about the front fascia grill placement, and the rear lights look a bit too small or too low.
Hamfa 2400 GTT/4 - @Ch_Flash
Rank: 19. The 2400 is quite a looker, but the beauty unfortunately is only skin-deep. While it’s actually a decent performer, it manages to be both extremely dull to drive (at least for this class) and particularly uncomfortable to ride in. Exorbitant service costs of over $1,600 also deliver a huge scoring hit to the 2400 in this budget-focused category.
Design: 9/10. I’m not sure I love the grille, but otherwise it’s just a sleek, good-looking car.
Centauri Phoenix RS - @Nialloftara
Rank: 18. The Phoenix does a lot well but has a few big flaws that keep it from rising hiring in the rankings. Performance is among the best in the field, especially thanks to a 5.5 second 0-60 time that makes it the third fastest in the field off the line. It’s also comfortable and has some other virtues as a daily driver, including decent practicality and good fuel economy. Unfortunately, the Phoenix is somehow both very boring and very difficult to drive while also suffering from an overly busy design, and these factors pull it down in the rankings.
Design: 4/10. The design is too busy, with tacked-on air scoops all over the place, including hood scoops on a mid-engined car and scoops at the very rear that don’t seem like they would intake air to anywhere really, but then paired with an exceedingly plain taillight design.
Testar Primova Mk.III - @sutartt
Rank: 17. It’s a sporty ride with surprisingly good practicality and utility stats, and performance is respectable, but scores are middling in most categories. It’s also notably uncomfortable and rust-prone.
Design: 5/10. An attractively shaped car with an interesting paint color, but the combination of pop-up headlights with a set of double headlights on the front looks busy, the tailpipe sticks out rather awkwardly, and the taillights seem a little narrow for the body.
Bozukai Emotion - @Wumbosized
Rank: 16. First off, this was the only entry to receive a scoring penalty for a rules violation, as it came in at WES 5 emissions instead of the required WES 6. I just did some clicking on the emissions optimization slider to make it compliant, which no doubt changed some stats, but you get what you get and don’t get upset. You also get a -5% penalty to overall score. It has all of the vibes of a sports car, with good looks and a sporty driving experience, but actual performance is mediocre. Other than good fuel economy and low service costs, the Emotion generally scores at or below average in most categories, with particular problems with poor rustproofing.
Design: 7/10. A fairly simple yet attractive design with some good detail, although the outside edges of the taillights leave part of the taillights looking like an afterthought and have a straight line that doesn’t seem to really match with the curving sides of the body.
Yamaguchi Vega DX - @Happyhungryhippo
Rank: 15. There’s a lot that the Vega DX does right. It’s a safe, practical, and fuel-efficient vehicle that’s also reasonably reliable and delivers a decent driving experience and performance. But it costs a pretty penny up front–$15,500–and is distinctly uncomfortable. It is also one of a few vehicles that, with an offroad score of 0.1, is likely to make the slightest venture onto an unpaved driveway or unpaved parking lot into a traumatic experience. These few significant drawbacks pull the Vega’s score down to the mid-pack.
Design: 7/10. A believable and detailed early 80s car, although not tremendously exciting, and with double B pillars that look a little odd.
Hexe Hester Baby - @Isabella
Rank: 14. The Baby delivers a sporty driving experience for the bargain-basement price of $12,300, and it manages a sub-7 second 0-60 time while also returning an impressive 27 mpg. But expensive servicing costs will eat into the savings on the purchase price and gas, and its good straight-line performance doesn’t translate to the corners, where it has poor grip. The Baby is also further brought down by a low design score.
Design: 4/10. It looks more 90s than 80s, and the design is all over the map, with a gaping front grille (on a mid-engine car), no discernable door handles, overly large badging on the rear, and oddly shaded taillights.
CBC Cruiser JX - @AKA_NOBUDDY and @Jaeger
Rank: 13. The Cruiser is a competent automobile with outstanding reliability and high scores for prestige, comfort, and safety. It also generally about average or better in most scoring categories. But the Cruiser’s strengths just aren’t in the most important categories in this contests, with a lackluster design especially holding back the Cruiser in the rankings.
Design: 4/10. The front fascia, especially with the small grille cutting into the bumper, isn’t particularly attractive, and a lot of the rest of the car–taillights included–just looks rather plain.
Zephorus Espion - @Riley
Rank: 12. The Espion is one of the most practical entries thanks to its liftback design and small rear seats, and it’s respectable in a number of categories. But it’s uncomfortable, gas-guzzling, and expensive to service, with little in the way of particularly strong scores to balance out its negatives.
Design: 6/10. While the design is competently done (as one would expect from Riley), there’s something about the design that subjectively doesn’t really add up for me, which I think might have to do with a hood that seems disproportionately long when juxtaposed with a truncated rear.
DeValero Corvella Corsa V6 - @Tragedy
Rank: 11. There is an argument to be made that this car should place much higher or even take home the gold, as it scores at or near the top of the field in many categories: comfort, prestige, safety, practicality, utility, reliability, and environmental resistance. It even delivers a 12.8 offroad score–more than double the next best score–that essentially broke some of my scoring formulas. But the Corvella just doesn’t deliver as a sports car, with the second-lowest sportiness score in the field, the fourth-slowest times off the line, and some of the worst cornering grip in the field.
Design: 8/10. A near-perfect replica of a Chevy Camaro with very little in terms of any apparently intentional design changes, and with a tremendous amount of technical skill. While impressive, if this were an original design this well-executed, rather than a well-executed copy of a real design, it would probably score a bit higher.
Sparkhill NatAs R Fastback - @Dog959
Rank: 10. The Sparkhill is a very small car that delivers many of the virtues you might expect given its size. It’s easy to drive, great on gas, and cheap to buy at $12,200. It’s also a reasonably practical and comfortable car in spite of its small size, and solid mechanical reliability and low service costs don’t hurt either. But the Sparkhill ultimately doesn’t deliver a sporty driving experience and serves up a 0-60 time over 9 seconds. It’s also particularly rust-prone and is further pulled down by mediocre design score.
Design: 5. A fairly basic design with bumpers that oddly don’t extend all the way across (both front and back), small vents repeated front and back that appear they were placed just to put something there, and proportions that look a little bit off–maybe with too long of a front overhang?
Tsubasa Cyclone - @yesnt4060 and @SheikhMansour
Rank: 9. The Cyclone is one of the most comfortable options and is a well-rounded car that generally scores average or better in many scoring categories, although cornering grip is on the lower side. But there are other cars that score better in high-priority categories, and a poor design score doesn’t help.
Design: 5/10. A decent effort that looks generally period-appropriate, but it’s a bit chunky and gives more of an impression of a family sedan than a sports car. There are also some odd details, like mudflaps and a rear wiper, two antennas, and no front wipers.
Ventus Kingsman R4 - @supersaturn77
Rank: 8. Performance is respectable, durability is excellent, and service costs are low. It also delivers a sporty driving experience balanced with comfort and good safety scores. But practicality and utility is poor, and it’s a bit of a gas guzzler. It’s a solid car on the whole that just doesn’t deliver quite enough to push higher in the rankings.
Design: 5/10. Not a bad effort, but the turn signals and fog lights on the front look a bit haphazardly placed, and the rear looks a bit oddly wide and too low–maybe due to the combination of the wide rear fender bulge, the wide bumper, and taillight proportions and shaping.
Bovos 774 Volante - @Ultimate_Billy
Rank: 7. The 774 is an uneven entry that excels in some fields–including excellent sportiness, good fuel economy, and a sleek-looking body that won’t rust easily–but it’s uncomfortable and not a car you would want to be in during an accident. The 774 Volante also takes a significant scoring penalty in a 1-star category, as its 0.0 offroad score would seemingly turn even the slightest encounter with an unpaved surface into a full-blown crisis involving a call for a tow truck.
Design: 8/10. A sleek and attractive design overall, although something looks a little off about the rear turn signals and the way the bumpers merge with the body.
Valiant Volta - @mart1n2005
Rank: 6. The Volta is a practical, safe automobile that delivers reasonable–but not particularly good–levels of sportiness, performance, and comfort. It’s also reasonably priced at $14,200. But the Volta lacks the strengths in the high-priority categories needed to push it higher in the rankings, and it also takes a scoring hit from being particularly prone to rust.
Design: 7/10. It’s an attractive and believable design on the whole, although perhaps a bit lacking in panache.
KMA KX2 1.6 - @abg7
Rank: 5. A case could be made for the KX2 to rank a spot or two higher, as it is basically at or above average in every engineering scoring category other than prestige. It’s particularly a standout for comfort, utility, fuel economy, and low service costs, while maintaining respectable sports car credentials in terms of both driving experience and performance. But it doesn’t have enough outstanding qualities in the most important categories—including design—for it to find a spot on the podium.
Design: 5/10. Other than the too-large rear badging, there’s nothing particularly offensive with this design, but there’s nothing particularly attractive about it either.
Alvern Arden ESi - @Capri78
Rank: 4. The Arden sneaks up on fourth place with perhaps the most consistent showing of any entry. It has relatively few standout attributes—both good and bad. Reliability is good, performance is respectable with a 7.4 second 0-60 time and .912 g’s on a 20-meter skidpad, and service costs are low. It’s safe and very practical while also managing to deliver a reasonably sporty driving experience. The only area where the Arden comes up short is comfort, which is only a 2-star priority and that appears to have been traded off for practicality with a small row of rear seats. It’s not overly exciting in any area, but consistent competence gets the job done for the Arden.
Design: 6/10. A believable design for the time period with some good detail, but the rear badging and taillight proportions seem a tad off, and it’s just not a particularly exciting design.
Nordwagen Loki S-4x2 - @moroza
Rank: 3. The Loki is pretty much what you would expect from the high-class Nordwagen brand trying to build a “budget” car: it’s an impressively engineered automobile with a rather loose interpretation of the word “budget.” It’s one of the sportiest entries and backs that up with an impressive 5.53 second 0-60 time and cornering grip over 1 g on the 20-meter skidpad. It also manages to be comfortable and reliable. But the Loki is among the most expensive entries at $15,000 front, and fuel and service costs will inflict more pain on the owner’s wallet.
Design: 8/10. An overall handsome and extremely detailed design, but with a few proportions that look a little off to my eye: headlights that seem a bit thin and low, a too-upright A-pillar, and taillights that look like they could be a bit wider.
Katami Juno - @bang6111
Rank: 2. The Juno looks good and scores at or above average in nearly every single scoring category. It delivers a better than average driving experience and performance is respectable with a 7.4 second 0-60 time and .9 g’s on the 20-meter skidpad. It also delivers a lot of virtues for a daily driver, including good safety scores, outstanding comfort, and 27 mpg fuel economy. Where the Juno really comes up short and notches itself back a spot from the winner’s circle is its abysmal rustproofing. So as long as you don’t have salt on the roads where you live or don’t mind having to junk it after a few years when it starts falling apart, the Juno is an excellent car.
Design: 8/10. A good-looking car with sleek lines and some good detail all around. While it looks a bit futuristic, it looks like it could fit in the early 80s and avoided the trap some other entries fell into using the same body ('86 Rossa) that looked more like they were from the 90s.
Bizzarro 2900i - @Texaslav
Rank: 1. The 2900i does a lot of things well, and the things it doesn’t do so well are lower priorities. Utility is the only abysmal stat, while fuel economy, safety, and practicality are on the lower side. It’s one of the sportiest entries and backs the sporty “feel” up with a blazing fast 5.41 second 0-60 time and impressive cornering grip of .955/.937 g’s. At the same time, it avoids feeling like a penalty box with one of the highest comfort scores, and it also won’t break the bank with solid reliability scores and average service costs.
17 Likes
Damn, 4th place, I think that’s my best finish so far, especially with such a stacked field.
Very happy with that one.
3 Likes
11th seems to be my lucky number :|
Valid criticism, I definitely could have done a lot more to differentiate it from an irl third-gen. Pretty much how I expected things to play out, though, as it was more of a commuter-spec than an actual sports car.
2 Likes
its all experience at this point
Oh wow 2nd place?
But yeah katami cars aren’t really known for rust proofing their cars, at the very least it’s accurate since it is Japanese lol.
Anyway it was a pretty fun challenge all things considered. Despite me having to speed run an entry quite late into the challenge, it turned out decently well.
4 Likes
one of the antennas are a parking pole
the wipers are weirdly put on the car, a weird quirk
Makes me wonder how the Foxbody Mustang SVO inspired Ascot I had planned would have done… oh well, maybe next time.
1 Like
You should be! 25 entries is a pretty big field.
Make no mistake, your skill level is insane, and I do like seeing your replica builds–I just think that there should be some points for originality in designs too. For this contest, I think it was a case of a good car, but just not a good car for the challenge. I’ve had those before.
Glad you’re keeping it in perspective! I’ve had my own share of bins and a last place finish or two, and it’s never fun that someone has to finish dead last in any challenge given that I know people put a lot of effort and pride into their entries.
You could have fooled me on the speed build! As for the rustproofing, I ended up calibrating the scoring so that while the lower priority categories weren’t likely to help you or hurt you too much, a really low score in any of them could significantly hurt your score.
I meant to add this at the end of the reviews but was scrambling to get them posted and didn’t know if I would get any time to log in for the next few days (turns out I did), but thanks to everyone for participating, and congrats to Texaslav on the win! Although as I was wading through 25 entries, I did find myself halfway wishing I had made this a suburban family-mobile challenge that might have drawn fewer entrants!
Also, I am not planning to release the spreadsheet since it’s a bit of a mess that won’t make much sense, since I ran through a few different scoring models before settling on one that seemed to reasonably balance the scoring priorities. If there’s a lot of demand for the spreadsheet, I can try to clean it up into a release-ready version that will make sense to someone other than me.
5 Likes
i thought the budget was too tight for the brief, I thought I make a sane attempt at betting all in for reliable sportiness, seems the idea was good but not good enough.
Still, this QFC was a C H A L L E N G E, meaning I had to put considerable brain effort into it. Which isn´t bad, after all.
2 Likes
I just did a little tinkering with your build, and the idea was actually very good, and the price wasn’t what killed you. It was the suspension tuning. The springs were too stiff, tanking comfort and the offroad score to the point that it got you a “cannot touch grass” penalty. Playing around a little bit with the suspension tuning to make the springs a bit softer, you would have finished 2nd overall:
3 Likes
Well, propably the only car then when customers buy aftermarket suspension kits to get the car more comfortable instead of sportier 
3 Likes
Passing down. Thanks for the win, congratulations and good work to all participants and you, the host
3 Likes
I can host the next round if the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-placed entrants also pass.
OK, so we know @abg7 in fifth is willing to host next, but could @bang6111, @moroza, and @Capri78 chime in on whether you want to lay claim to running next round?
Don’t think I’m able to host atm since I’m too busy with university coursework so I’ll pass.
Even into the 1990s this problem still persisted - the FTO was among the worst offenders - but it was less common by then.
Still, the lack of rustproofing in real life can be attributed to the country’s long-standing policy on wintertime road maintenance, which doesn’t use road salt, leading to most car models not having underseal.
Nah mate, gonna have to pass.