The Car Shopping Round 59: Ricing-san
Paintjobs even a blind man would hesitate to show himself in, camber angles that make the Tower of Pisa look straight, wings you could comfortably dine on and exhaust notes resembling a frenzied blender trying to shred nickels and dimes - that was the world of Kenji Haruzake. At least, it used to be.
Over the course of some 20 years, Haruzake-san had garnered recognition and respect, becoming a bit of a hero in the scene. But as he was approaching 40 and starting to appreciate the historical significance of vintage cars, a tender bud of doubt started to sprout inside him, slowly eating away at his enthusiasm for garish color schemes and boisterous bodykits, growing ever larger in the process.
One day, he saw a heavily modified car drive past. It was a model he hadn’t seen in years. It was then that the lingering doubt finally got the better of him. The realization struck him like lightning: All these years, he had been sinning! Fighting the tears, he headed home, sunk into his thinking chair, and pondered: How could he atone for his wrongdoings? How could he placate the ancient car gods?
It didn’t take him long. He knew what he had to do. For every car he maimed into what he has been convinced was a piece of art, he would acquire one ruined gem and restore it to its former glory. He lunged to his feet energetically and checked for the next bosozoku cars meet. What would his first rescue candidate be?
How this round works
(Still using the KEE engine)
This will be a somewhat unusual round with an element of uncertainty added in, where you’ll have to guesstimate how old, and therefore collectible, your submitted car needs to be to meet the pricing target. Scores will be determined using two seperate styling scores, one based around how much of an icon the original car is, the other around how badly it is modified. The final score will be modified according to how close the car’s calculated value comes to meeting the target.
The year is 2010 and Ricing-san is looking for ruined JDM classics he can restore. Entries must consist of 2 trims: A stock one and a modified one.
The stock trim must be an icon from at least 20 years ago (trim year 1990 or earlier; preferably a good deal older)
The modified trim can be any year from the stock trim to 2010 (year has no effect on scoring), and should be as wild and garish as possible. Any type of car can be entered - a timeless station wagon can work just as well as an exotic sports coupe or even an ancient, near-extinct kei car. The style scoring system is as follows:
- The stock trim will be scored up to 12 points, comprised of up to 6 points for how much Kenji likes the styling of the car and another 6 points for the car’s historical significance. The scoring is subjective, albeit with a bias towards expensive/posh cars for styling and towards age for historical significance (Sexy and expensive cars can potentially score better in the first part, cheaper ‘everyday hero’ cars can be older and therefore score higher on historical significance)
- The modified trim will get a score of up to 8 points. This is also based on subjective criteria with a bias towards extreme designs - the wilder, the better.
The overall styling score is (stock trim score)*(modified score), i.e. a car with a stock score of 9 and a modified score of 6 will get 54 points in total.
There are no restrictions regarding Price/PU/ET. Rather, I will calculate the value of the car based on attrition (technical value) vs collectability (heritage value). The asking price of the car is the sum of the technical and heritage value.
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Technical value is calculated based on this Excel sheet:
Techvalue.xlsx.zip (4.1 KB)
Simply fill in the stats of your stock trim in a2, b2, c2 to get the technical value of your car. The result may well turn negative, in which case it will be considered zero - from a purely technical point of view, the car is basically worthless - however: -
Heritage value is added to the tech value and increases progressively (slowly at first, then increasingly sharper) and is influenced by Prestige and Reliability. The posher the car, the steeper its price will rise due to collectability. As a rule of thumb: If you submit a pricey exotic, make it rather young, plain everyday heroes should be older to make up in historical value for what they lack in status.
Ricing-san is planning to spend somewhere around 8,000$ on the project. If the calculated price falls within the range of 7,500 - 8,500$, the pricing modifier will be an ideal -0% - the car retains its full styling score.
If it falls below or above that, a penalty is calculated as (1/5 of the deviation in %)². This is the percentage that will be subtracted from the styling score. Example: A 10,000$ car is 1,500$ over the 8,500$ upper bracket (~17,6%). (17,6/5)²=12.46, meaning that the score will be reduced by 12,5%.
Please advertise the stock trim only - I will reveal the modified trims in the course of the evaluation.
Hints
- Stats are not important, apart from prestige and reliability of the stock trim, as these affect the way the car’s value develops. Stats of the riced trim have no relevance whatsoever
- This round is mainly about styling, which goes two ways: The more iconic the stock trim and the more miserable the riced trim, the better
- Recommended age for normal cars is about 30-40 years, slightly less for very expensive cars/slightly more for very cheap ones. Note that very old cars (40+) can become really expensive as they are becoming antiques.
- Kenji is looking for JDM-like cars, so f.ex. American muscle or hypercars aren’t likely to pique his interest. Apart from that, the scoring system is made such that pretty much any kind of car can score well.
- You can use the Techvalue-spreadsheet for reference, but it may actually be better not to calculate anything and just estimate an appropriate age for your car: the cheaper the car, the older it should be to be valuable, the more expensive it is, the younger it should be (any car entered should be at least ~25 years old, though)
Deadline: Friday, 29.12. 21:00 GMT
EDIT: Rule set overhaul