Seeing that the forums have been around for about a decade (and many of us have been a part of it for the majority), I created this thread to see how y’all interpret your old car designs. There are quite a few defunct companies out there which would be interesting to see through a contemporary lens!
Before there was…
Did you know that there was
?
Soon after I joined the forums in 2014, I began to realize that my main company at the time - Rennen Automotive - was pushing itself upmarket with each competition it entered. With supercars like the Kusanagi and luxury sedans such as the Staccato, it didn’t take long to realize that I’d dug myself into a dead-end when wanting to create lore-friendly vehicles that were both fun to drive and reasonably priced, as I’d take too much care in the engineering of Rennen vehicles.
Thus, I set out to create a new mainstream brand - Although it did not begin nor finish at Kron, I thought it would be interesting to show what my take on a German design would be, as it’s a little more out of my comfort zone than the grandeur of Rigore or the boldness of Kimura.
My mainstream brand began life as Aurora Motors before receiving a name change to Auclair - either way, it was designed as a French company. These quickly fell off the table for whatever reason my 14 year old brain was thinking, and it was substituted for Atarashi Motors. Again, for whatever reason, this fell off too, and by May of 2016 I renamed the Atarashi Motors thread into Kron GmbH.
Here’s a quick history snippet from the old thread, which currently resides as the Retired Kimura thread.
The only time Kron made a public appearance was in the CSR17, hosted by strop back in July of 2016. This was back in a time where CSR results were presented like mini essays and Discourse threads read like chat rooms, so it took quite a bit of sifting through in order to find. The I entered was this orange blob!
The 2014 Kron K3 was a compact hatchback that was very ill-fitting for the CSR round (it’s strop, for crying out loud). Shown here in the SL model, I’m pretty sure it utilized an oversquare 2 liter turbocharged inline-4 with a FWD layout (although I can’t remember). The model I sent in wasn’t the original design, too, as shown by the photos I still have on my imgur account.
Here’s a fun little gif I made of it, too!
I removed the hood bulge and reworked the taillights before handing it over to the powerman himself. Regardless, I was pretty proud of the design, even if it were a somewhat coma-inducing. How would I interpret this design as a more experienced designer?
I tried to keep the engineering as faithful to the original as I could remember, but the design itself I have myself slightly more liberty to play around with. You might be able to tell that it’s still quite close to the OG 3-door hatch I submitted 5 years ago. We unfortunately don’t have the old Megane mod anymore, so I resorted to using the Focus 3-door instead, which is considerably less bulbous in shape. This is beneficial to the Teutonic design, but made it more difficult to translate the rear end, which uses more simple fixtures to create the lights (actually, my method for making lights now is far more simplistic than it used to be back in the day). Overall, I’m pretty happy with the execution. I’m excited to see what everyone else has to offer!
Upon Closer Inspection
Kron_K3_-_K3_SL.car (61.8 KB)
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A nice remake of one of your lesser-known cars, and one that reminds me of the Mk3 Focus ST of the era. Well done!
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I am DEFINITELY going to stare at my old designs and reimagine them 
Will be fun to completely recreate some of my… more iffy old ones, even if they are only 2 years old
Two Designs, One Year
For a little background; I bought Automation on Christmas 2019. What you’re about to see is one whole year of evolution, from a quality spammed, era-inconsistent monster car to a simple and well-designed 90s car. With that being said;
The 2020 Alpha One S 3.7T
loud audible sigh
yeah.
mhm.
I’m not gonna even try to put a positive spin on that. It’s horrible in every way imaginable, from the +15 spam everywhere, to the mismatched door handles. Moving on from… whatever that is, allow me to show you what I’ve learned over a year, and how I’ve grown as a designer.
The 1990 Edison Journey LS
waow, a car that isn’t like pepper spray to the retinas
Not my favorite rear end design that I’ve done, but certainly miles beyond the One S. also yes I know the rear seats are sticking through the chassis, I’ll eventually fix them
Even has a semi-nice interior. (ignore the chassis bug, new update earlier today did that)
Not a whole lot to say about this one either, it’s just a fairly typical early 90s family hauler to showcase what a difference that a year makes. You could argue that it’s less a recreation and more of a complete redo, but the spirit is there.
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Ah nice thread idea! I actually just finished remaking an old Arion for my new thread! 
Old
New 
Old
New
I’ve definitely came a long way I’d say 
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Background
I decided to bought myself Automation around 2019. Back then I was pretty much clueless on how the game works, cars that I built at that time was pretty much inconsistent. What you will see here is how much my design has changed through out the times that I play Automation.
2004 Saidenki Rynin
Bruh, Bruh LoL
2004 Saidenki Rynin Remake
A big improvement from an earlier design.
.car Files
Saidenki_Rynin_-_Base_Model.car (45.2 KB)
Saidenki_Rynin_-_Base_Model_Remake.car (72.3 KB)
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This sounds interesting! I’ll fill this space when I get a chance
One of my earliest builds, probably about 9-10 months old now, is the 1995 Duke Triad- a pretty dull Eurobox saloon/sedan. Above are the only photos I have of the original. I wasn’t exactly proficient with all the fixture stuff, so the original wasn’t that detailed and some bits didn’t look quite right.
This is the remake. It has some resized fixtures (door handles and mirrors are now a realistic size), better side trims and a more refined design overall.
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The Amuna Mauricio was one of my first cars I ever posted on here, and was notorious for numerous reasons for a while. It’s also one of the best-known cars I made back in the early days of my forum presence, for both good and bad reasons. It was a 2003, totally inefficient and quite slow supercar that was associated with my total disaster of a challenge.
This year I decided to make a spiritual remake/successor for the 2020 model year a while ago. I posted it once somewhere, and it’s safe to say it was a far better design and has far fewer negative connotations, all while still using a V12 like its predecessor (in higher trim levels).
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Before there was…
There was
The brand created directly before Kron was named Atarashi, which was a bit of a mouthful. I made a few cars for this company, and it was the furthest that I got in fleshing out a mainstream brand before ditching it for Kron and then Kimura.
Atarashi’s debut was a big one, winning the CSR 5(!) with this very professional and well-crafted advertisement.
Well, we all have to start somewhere, right?
Suppose I could’ve done better.
The winning spec was a 2015 Atarashi Kaishi 1.0 liter base-spec trim, packaged with 14 inch steel wheels and an interior fit for a king’s dungeon. The only reason it won the particular CSR round was since it was made at a time where min-maxxing was quite popular and as a result, cars with strange configurations were being entered - the Kaishi was a soberingly boring vehicle that I guess managed to do alright. Anyways, here’s what I would’ve turned into if I were making it now - I’m trying less to adapt the design as opposed to reinvent, compared to the Kron K3 I redid before. The car is analogous to the Kimura Avina subcompact.
I unfortunately don’t have photos of the rear, so I had to extrapolate bits of designs from other Atarashi vehicles I was making at the time as well as the CSR review description, which said “The car was certainly attractive, with a sharp headlight and interesting lower bumper. The rear had blacked out tail lamps, somewhat reminiscent of an early 2000s tuner car, but still with decent taste.” This version of the car uses a 1-liter I3 instead of the I4 in the previous version. Like the original, this is most definitely a case of “basic transportation” - a manual transmission, basic interior, and enough power to push you to 100 kph eventually meant that it’s not a thrill seeking vehicle. But hey, it’s not designed to be - and that’s ok.
Upon Closer Inspection
Surprise bitches we got a TWO IN ONE POST that’s right I made TWO Atarashi redux cars!!! I stumbled across a few photos of this so I figured I’d re-do this too.
The Tenshi/Soigne was the mid-size sedan of Atarashi. Tenshi was the first name and Soigne was a different name I used when I didn’t like Tenshi, although in retrospect Tenshi was definitely the better name for this car. I redid the design of this car back-to-back in 2016, with the new model having a sleeker and more contemporary appearance that would eventually translate its way onto Kimura’s design language once I got that running as well.
Both of those cars were powered by 1.6 liter turbocharged 4-cylinder engines for the base spec, with a 3.5 N/A V6 option for the upper trims. Here’s how I would approach a base spec today.
I decided to stick with the design language of the Soigne, but I kept the Tenshi name - either way, it’s still powered by a turbo I4 engine, albeit with about 10 more horsepower. It would’ve had a standard 6-speed manual upon release in 2016, although I’d imagine that it would’ve been dropped in newer models. 17 inch alloy wheels would’ve been standard along with the chrome trim that accentuates the bottom of the car. This vehicle is equivalent to the Kimura Auriga.
Upon Closer Inspection
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Oh hey, I’ve just remembered that I did sth similar once. It wasn’t exactly “how much have I improved my skills”, more like “what can I do in UE4 compared to Kee”. The Orion XMS-1.
January 2018
VS
July 2018
(yes, sorry for a pic taken from another continent, but I no longer can fix that)
I tried to make the UE4 one mostly as close to the original as I could, but back then the possibilites were limited. Rear shots are in the link below.
Originally it was a CSR entry, for that crazy CSR in which most entries were one big trolling - rebadges and restyles of the very same car. Mine was a bit cheeky too, abusing the relatively liberal rule set of a round asking for a regular sports car to build a budget supercar.
Asking why I can’t fix the pic? Well, the game decided at some point to have a go at restyling this car too, so right now it looks like this:
Ok, actually after that I took some time to try and remake it. This is the effect:
I’ve also retuned it, because some things changed about this body and the game itself. Previously it had a transverse mounted 7.8 V8 with 60° v-angle, all to squeeze an engine as close to the original 10-litre one as possible. This time it has a regular 90° V8, again a 10-litre one mounted longitudinally, so it can still have AWD. Other than that, I haven’t really changed much inside. The new engine makes 700 hp and nearly 1200 Nm (or 900 lb-ft) of torque and still shoots this brick to 100 km/h in just 3.4s, but stops accelerating at an electronically limited speed of 300 km/h (186 MPH), so that the tyres are much cheaper. Oh, and it now runs on regular gas, instead of premium, but at a cost of worse efficiency (I didn’t optimise it very much) of 14.2 l/100km or 16.5 US MPG.
As you may guess, I really like this utterly stupid car
10 Likes
To celebrate my upcoming 1000 hour milestone in this game, I decided to remake my first car (that I actually have pics of). So here it is.
Ikano Ranae
How it started in 2018…
this is the only pic i have sorry if it’s terrible
Ikano RANA-E concept
How it’s going now…
much better pics eh?
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This is a huge improvement over the original. The name suggests a purely electric powertrain, something that Automation does not yet support - so what engine did you use as a substitute? Also, it’s unlikely that it’s of a similar size to its predecessor; in fact, I’m expecting it to be larger. In any case, if it were a petrol-powered car (as every car made in Automation has to be), a powerful six- or eight-cylinder engine (almost certainly turbocharged in the case of the former) up front driving the rear wheels (or all four) would seem appropriate.
Thank you! Just like many cars that I make, it’s purely focused on aesthetics, but I did drop a rather powerful turbo V8 in there.
It makes perfect sense; it’s meant to be a grand tourer, and would make a great sports car as well. So how powerful is it exactly? 500 to 600 horsepower would seem appropriate for such a car. Speaking of which, its mirrors are too small to make production - a production version would have full-size mirrors, shaped to complement the car’s svelte lines.
In that ballpark, yes. Also, those are in fact cameras. A production version would have full sized mirrors but I don’t currently plan on making one.
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Chevrolet 1941 Special Deluxe.
I didn’t find the original body, so I tried to build on the finished body from the game. Maybe later I will make it more modern, but so far it has not turned out very well. Also, the game does not have a body that interests me - a convertible. It’s not a very interesting car, so I won’t post a car file, everyone can copy it.
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Wouldn’t this fit better in the car replica thread?
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