The Isle of Man postal service is looking at replacing their older delivery vehicles and all eyes in the purchasing department are scouring through brochures from various manufacturers to find a small/medium sized van to use for delivery on the island.
Rules
Engine variant set to 2005
Engine must use 95 Ron fuel
3 way catalytic converter
engine emissions below 400
–
Body trim set at 2005
Must use van body
minimum load capacity 750kg
max cost $20,000
safety above 35
Look at real vans for design and technical ideas, no fake diesels please. A turbo charged awd van with an advanced auto probably isn’t going to be right for this type of van and market so be sensible. Any problems just ask.
No changing of advanced trim menu, other than hiding the engine or chassis if needed or moving the engine position. Leave wheels and suspension well alone.
priorities
reliability
fuel economy (kinda broken, but look at the engine efficiency as well.)
service costs
utility. (This includes brake fade and load capacity in it’s calculations, but i will look at the raw numbers too)
practicality
environmental resistance
cost (the whole price is available, however any savings without penalty to the ability are welcome)
comfort (will be used by solo drivers as well as pairs occasionally)
performance (doesn’t need to be fast, but does need to travel at higher speeds through some country roads and also perform while fully laden)
driveability
safety
design
Doesn’t matter
sportiness (it’s a van. End of)
offroad (as long as the van can drive down a dryr dirt road that’s fine, it will not be delivering to any hard to reach properties. These will be serviced by quad bike or the one converted off road vehicle.
Is offroad ability important since they might need to go on dirt roads to deliver mail? Also how slow is too slow? And is Light Truck Monocoque unrealistic for this, as some vans might use it.
Also, is there an ET or PU limit? Lastly is there a displacement tax that would affect judging?
Oh yeah may I suggest adding the Mercedes Vito and Toyota Granvia HiAce to the inspiration list, as they’re about the same size but RWD?
I’ve seen some people confused by the time zone, so I’ll clear it up: 1200 Zulu Time is effectively another way of saying “Noon, UTC”. It comes from the military, where the time zone at 0° Longitude was labelled as zone Z. For clearer communications, the military uses the phonetic alphabet, so it’s said as “Zulu”.
@Texaslav I will look at what stats utility is using for its scoring, but I will probably add that into the 3 or 2 star priorities.
@RN99 off-road wouldn’t be massively important, as long as the can can drive down an unpaved road it’ll be fine, any properties inaccessible by normal vehicle will be serviced by quad bike.
ET and PU limits shouldn’t be needed with the low price but I will give it a look to make sure they can’t be massively abused.
The hiace and Vito are a little bigger than I wanted, the mk1 despatch/jumpy is really on the higher end of size and is a bit smaller than those vans.
I didn’t even think about light truck monocoque tbh, it’s more of a chassis cab/pickup kind of thing so unless you had a pickup with a bed cover on it I don’t think it would make sense. I believe all the vans shown are monocoque anyway, body on frame being for the largest size vans.
@AMuteCrypt Is right, I didn’t want to use anything with a time zone, since we are in British summer time in the UK now it might make people get the exact hour wrong since time zones are referenced from 0000.
The kids'll love ya. And this thing never runs out of petrol. It has a comfy front bench (middle seat is for your cat) and a noice stereo. You know what tune you'll be blasting on your morning route. Yes, that one. The rest is pure high definition cargo space. 1080p? Try 1080 kgs of mail in the back. That's literally more than a ton. More than the weight of the van itself too. The spare tyre has to live outside, but it doesn't mind. What's that? Not modern looking? It's called timeless. 18,900 quiddos a pop. Not quite priceless. Quite princess. Cordelia.
The versatile Casso is a RWD van, equipped with traditional leaf springs in back and a solid rear axle, to allow for safe transport of heavy cargo - up to 2453 lbs.
For cost, which stat should I use? The max cost $20,000 looks like it’s in the body trim rules, so does the engine count too? And do I material cost or approximate cost?
