Dude, get yourself a fucking big bowl of Es Teler, because it’s gonna be HUGE.
Also let’s just say I’m purely writing these in order of entry (like the last time I hosted), and the only thing you’ll know coming away from reading is if your car’s out of the running.
Just… please… let him work…
heiiiiiiiiii i didn’t expect to read that here. you’ve eaten one before haven’t you?
in fact, you’ve been here before haven’t you?
also 2 post is not really a problem. i even made a separate thread just because i didn’t want to feel like i’m cluttering here.
@NormanVauxhall just can’t take it anymore and want it to come as fast as possible.
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try to read that out of context. another accidental gold.
I’ve never been to Indonesia, but my family tree goes through Malaysia a lot and there’s similarities. Did I mention I love sago pudding?
also FFFfffffffffffffffffff 
TIL that ‘sagu’ is actually called ‘sago’ originally. and we don’t have that here, i think that’s a malaysian cuisine.
we have this though
es cendol/es dawet. same thing
You know what’s great about Australia?
You can get Malaysian, Indonesian*, nearly anything you care to have. This includes cendol. And unlike in Malaysia, you don’t have to worry about where the ice came from LOL.
Also everybody else don’t worry, I won’t be going to bed without posting the first half of the reviews.
* there’s a freaking chain of Indonesian called Es Teler, no jokes
oh really?
i smell a cliffhanger coming… please keep it and just post it tommorow. don’t make us can’t sleep tonight 
also.
you meant this?
the es teler 77 chain shops.
Yeah those ones.
Also, let’s put it to an impromptu vote for those who are here now: who’s in favour of me posting the first half now and the second half tomorrow, and who’s in favour of me keeping it until I’m done? Aside from work, this is the only thing I’ve got going on right now yes I literally put the rest of my life on hold.
I’m not picky either way, honestly. I’d prefer, though, to have the first half, if it’s practical to do so.
I’d rather have the first half today, a little less wall of text 
I’ll take the first half too. I wanted to hold off and try to be productive at work today, but it’s Monday so I was struggling with that to begin with.
Although as @strop said it’s completely irrelevant but in the interests of expanding the immersion I should say that Maesima does actually offer a slightly greater range of colours a Total of eight with the addition of a Phthalo Green Metallic and Midnight Blue Metallic for the standard Prova vehicles but given the limited production numbers of the ST-R variants a more limited colour choice was chosen to reflect the sporting nature of the brand or at least that’s what the Maesima sales team would say. 
@koolkei Bold choice to go with the green colour but I like the subtle nostril scoops but that’s a really nice engine.
@strop I’ll also take first half today or really whatever I can get 
But don’t feel as if you have to sacrifice any of the quality it’s been great so far that teaser preamble has really set the scene nicely.
Just do it
I get it now @strop - I will now focus only on facts, such as cars which I submitted, rather than how well my other options would have fared.
Okay here’s the first half then people.
Note: sometimes, harsh comments are harsh. Don’t take it too personal, I hope 
##Storm Primal GT
As the first cab off the ranks, the story is larger as there’s more preamble.
A sporty two seater in the guise of large sedan, Strop immediately suspected the squarish shapes, the blocky tail lights and the somewhat anthropomorphic face would immediately fall afoul of Kai’s tastes, and judging by his expression as he paced around the car, Strop was correct.
“How is it possible to make a car look bored? It’s a bored car with a giant ass.”
Strop couldn’t really say much in defence of the car. Australians had largely fallen out of love with the large sedan for a reason. “I hear it has turbo,” he offered lamely. “And three times the power of Toothless.” But he too was already imagining what kind of extra flair Kai would be giving the car with spray cans. Probably some curly eyebrows. And more jagged teeth.
“Well, let’s see how it drives, then,” Kai deadpanned while sliding into the driver’s seat. Strop followed suit in the passenger side. As Kai was starting the car and listening to the not-unpleasant straight six exhaust note, Tesla galloped up to them carrying two helmets. Aiden followed close behind and immediately scurried to mount cameras in the cabin and on the bumper.
“Seriously?” Kai arched an eyebrow at the proferred helmet.
“OH&S dude, you know the drill.” Tesla still held the helmet out in front of Kai’s face, as if expecting (or hoping) that he would actually take it.
“Yeah, but I’m not going to be wearing a helmet in my daily driver. That’s ridiculous.” Kai riposted.
“YEAH,” Hannah suddenly appeared, still brandishing the megaphone. “BUT YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE DRIVING LIKE YOU’RE ABOUT TO ON A DAILY BASIS NOW ARE YOU.”
Once Kai and Strop’s ears had stopped ringing, Kai surreptitiously slipped the car into gear. “Yeah, but you know what I say to the drill right?”
“DON’T YOU DARE-” Hannah started, but Kai revved the engine, drowning her out with a big shit-eating grin.
“Fuck da drill!” He proclaimed, and dropped the clutch.
The Primal GT leapt backwards, sending people scattering and diving out of the way as it fishtailed its way, in reverse, out of the car park and along the drive towards the testing track. Halfway up the road, Kai threw the wheel hard, and the car skidded around in a vicious J-turn, body wobbling with the car struggling to cope with the conflicting forces. Clutch in, back into first, clutch out and the wheels bit and they were going right ways again.
“Like fucking on a bed of jello,” was Kai’s remark. To Strop’s strange look, Kai retorted: “No, I haven’t actually done that, but I imagine that’s what it’d be like.”
This was perhaps a somewhat harsh comment, for the car suspension definitely had a sporty feel to it, but being on the slightly heavier side, it came with a lot more lean than anything that came out of the Gryphon Gear factory doors.
The first thing both Kai and Strop noticed was the slightly odd power delivery. The turbos spooled up extremely early, which was great, but then there was a bit of a delay in the delivery of the rest of the torque, while waiting for the valve lift to activate. And then there was the redline, the needle just kept going up and up and up well beyond the turbo losing puff. It was like waiting, several times over, for a warp speed that never quite came. Later, on the dyno, they would discover the full extent of the mismatch of valve versus turbo timing. It was enough for the engine team to want to swap out the cams and reprogram the ECU.
Still, the Primal did make the most of its 300 or so bhp, lugging its not insignificant bulk to the hundred in a respectable 5.1s, through the quarter mile in 14. It was just that the massive bookends of the ‘velodrome’, with their ludicrous banking of up to seventy degrees, were used to the presence of much faster cars, hence the Primal was not one to make a huge impact. On the variety of medium and high speed corners on the inner ring, the car was well sorted enough, but on the rougher, tighter ‘touge’ simulation, the weight made its presence known as the nose lurched around and struggled to find traction. Combined with a plushy interior and nice sound system, Kai and Strop both found themselves succumbing to the temptation to give up on thrashing the car and drive normally, and quite possibly, take a nap.
In what was to become a rather common refrain for the day, Kai found himself cruising along at suburban speeds, asking: “In what way is this car different to a Ford Falcon XR6?”
Aside from the 50:50 AWD, of course, which had it handling more akin to a Subaru (to its credit), Strop’s answer was to flick the drop top switch. The Primal’s unique selling point was that it was a convertible, and its hardtop folded down automatically, even in motion. Within ten seconds, the wind was rushing through their hair and they were bathed in the clear morning sunlight.
“This is… different,” Kai remarked. Having hailed from a country in which snow was just as plentiful as sunshine, and staunchly insisting on not racing in open-wheelers ever since he left go-karting, driving with the top down was an unusual experience, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it. Strop immediately had a mental image of Kai in aviators and a foldback with his arm dangling out the side, and shuddered.
Without real motivation to push the car past its limits, Kai’s face rapidly lapsed into the same expression as the car’s face. Without much further fuss, they pulled back into the lot to receive the slap upside the head they were due. More premium than Primal, this car was best suited to the middle-aged guy looking to relive the glory days of past after ditching the wife and kids, but without burning a hole in one’s pocket at the pump (it really had remarkable fuel economy), or giving up the creature comforts or slipping another disc in the process. As for Kai, he would probably turn it into a piece of avant-garde art, and after Toothless, the nosey buggers at GG wouldn’t approve.
Note: the drivability score was higher for a turbo car because the tuning didn’t optimise on torque delivery. I can send you a version of the car that rectifies this. It loses a bit of drivability because all the torque arrives at once, but it is also quicker around the track and just as economical.
##Cadence C-Sport R
“Oh look, a fat American!” was Kai’s first comment. Kai’s characteristic lack of eloquence and tact aside, this did not bode well.
Still, the bulbous body and rounded shapes, while a stark contrast to the angles of the Primal GT, carried if anything even more the impression of rolls and muffin-top. Specifically, Strop rapidly identified that the front end had been styled like somebody tried to cram a Dodge Viper SRT-10 face onto a sedan. It was like converting the once revered Skyline name into an SUV. And the rear was strongly reminiscient of the Chrysler 300c, so evoking that particular brand of bloat was inevitable. Strop knew instantly that more flame decals, GT stripes and fake sponsors were lining up to get stuck on this car, if Kai were somehow to end up owning one. It was already the kind of car that well-off ex-hoons who had grown up but not quite would buy, and then when their kids got their hands on it, would end up chopped, dropped, stanced and with all manners of new chrome tips and black rims.
Furthermore, being significantly larger, heavier and more powerful than the Primal, it was difficult to escape ongoing comparisons in the same vein. Sure enough, once again fobbing off the helmets, they blew out of the car park with tyres squealing in protest at both the lateral and longitudinal forces. An extra hundred horses would surely help the cause, no?
Not really. Even without the extra weight of the drop top and the plushy premium interior, the C-Sport R didn’t have a whole lot of R in it. It was certainly faster off the line, with its split AWD power delivery system, but ultimately barely any quicker on the track mainly due to the lackluster handling. For its fancy air suspension and rather flat and steady ride, traction was limited by its overly narrow tyres: more suited to the economy versions of its trim. It got to the point that to drown out the pointless tyre screeching, Kai cranked up the radio. Apparently, one level up from Ford Falcon knockoff was Ford Falcon knockoff in Fat American Clothing. And they were pretty sure this car wasn’t American.
On the plus side, 420bhp, even in a bus, was good for some low speed burnouts with the traction control off. And with enough coaxing and a lot of handbrake, it could be coaxed into getting a bit out of shape, although with this much extra on it, once it did get out of shape, it was really very difficult to get back in, limiting the fun factor. Mentally, Strop added camber plates, ludicrous toe-in, chopping the centre diff, maxing out the locking on the rear diff, giving the interior the Sparco treatment, putting a 2MW sub in the boot, illegal neons, CF hood and a giant wing to the list of likely mods.
On the once-again somewhat muted drive back to the lot, Strop’s worst suspicions were confirmed when Kai asked: “You think they’d notice if I put huge stickers on it?”
“YES.” Strop replied, a little too quickly.
Kai’s shoulders slumped a little. “Øv.”
##BMMA Salmon 2.3 GT Sprint 2
Nine thirty, and it was time for a change of pace. What better car to do this than from the same company with which they enjoyed a strong partnership, Znopresk Automobili (or, rather, one of their subsidiaries, BMMA, from which they had sourced the base engine which powered their clean sweep of the AMWEC). Back in 2015, the prospect of working with the supergiant best known for their excellent value for money products was met with confusion and horror, and the joke that they would eventually be tuning eco-boxes stuck. Obviously, that was not what eventuated, but considering the mildly hot hatch in the lot as a prospective car for Kai to drive and own, the irony of the moment was not lost on anybody.
Truth be told, Znopresk had a bit of an inside line, for they had already snuck the car in during preseason testing. Kai had already dubbed it Bemma. In their wide range of trims for every car, this one was a rare premium trim with more go than typical for the Znopresk urban European sensibility, truer to the BMMA focus on sport.
But first impressions were the most important thing, and this time, Kai was coloured impressed. “If I were a Mafia Don,” he proclaimed, “I would buy four of these, in black.” For a lightweight hatch, it did carry a certain gravitas, a brooding that conjured images of a mournful violin playing whilst mustachioed types philosophised over the necessary shedding of the blood of traitors.
However, Kai lacked a certain… stature and body habitus for filling the role of a mafia boss, not to mention, a mafia boss driving their own car would have detracted from the whole image. For this reason, Kai tossed the keys to Strop. “You’re driving”. On seeing this, Tesla didn’t bother trying to force the pair to wear helmets. Strop wasn’t sure whether to feel flattered or vaguely insulted. Probably a bit of both.
Certainly the drive out of the car park didn’t send everybody running for their life, as Strop was in chauffer mode and didn’t drop the clutch at six kay. On track, the car looked and felt dwarfed by the length and width of the straight and the banks, and 220bhp certainly didn’t seem like very much. Yet the inline six was joy, with smooth power all the way to the redline somewhere around the 9k mark. Very much a BMMA thing. Weighing less than the average hot hatch, this two seater was both pliant and brisk in the corners, never coming unseated, and the traditional FR format lent itself well to pushing hard coming out of the corners and feeling the weight shift just so.
“You can go a bit faster if you want,” Kai said after a few minutes of what Strop thought was enthusiastic driving.
“I don’t think this car has much more than that,” Strop said. Kai stared down his nose at him, prompting Strop to punch him in the shoulder. “I’m not a race driver you know!”
“Well, good enough,” Kai said, settling back and admiring the trim. “I could get used to this.”
Bemma was lightweight, nice to sit in, nice to drive, cheap to run and mechanically simple enough to take apart and put together with what was in the tool box. With the added benefit of being appealing with good street cred, and the driving philosophy of a BMW 1 series minus the pretense and douchebaggery of being a BMW, this was immediately earmarked as a potential contender. Also the driving gloves did lend themselves a bit to the consideration, because they added Badass potential.
##DSD Muse
And now for something completely different. If the Salmon was small compared to the Cadence and Primal, this was low. Low and monstrous.
“I’ve had dreams about a monster that looked a grey one of these.” Kai mused (dabumtish). “Well, nightmares actually.” A pause. “Could I have a poster?”
Good monstrous, in that case. DSD was one of those 'STRAYA type companies that insisted that all things good came in eight cylinders and could lay a sweet set of smoking elevenses the whole way down a drag strip. In a way they were Hannah’s kind of outfit, if Hannah hadn’t been converted to slightly different nuances in the philosophy. That said, while cramming a highly tuned big Ford 427 block (with added twin turbo) into a tiny engine bay made even basic cleaning, polishing and oil changes even more difficult than in Mephisto, cramming a big engine into small things was the stuff of great and hilarious.
As much as Strop thought he was good for a non-race driver, he took one look at the giant twin snails flanking the block and headed straight for the passenger seat. The next minute was Tesla literally chasing Kai around the lot trying to slam the helmet on his head because they would definitely die if they didn’t put one on. Strop had already strapped his on, and when Kai finally gave Tesla the slip, slid feet first into the car, locked the doors and wound up the window, he shot Strop a dirty glare.
“Chicken,” he said.
“Cock,” Strop shot back.
For a small car, the Muse was decked out, and carried a lot more weight than expected. But come about 5k rpm and this did nothing to stop the car from being COMPLETELY FUCKING BONKERS as close to sixteen hundred horses bolted the gate, lit up the tyres and away they went, banging through the gears faster than could be called. This time, Strop and Kai felt every one of the six G as the car carved through the full extent of the seventy degree bank at a good three sixty, onto a top speed just shy of the original Mephisto. Curiously, at top speed, the car was still banging off the rev limiter.
“Now that’s more like it,” Kai quipped, before promptly testing the brakes and pulling the car hard into a tight right hander.
A full chat stop from four hundred and thirty while pulling into full lock is by any account a gut wrenching maneuver. When you’re doing this in an undersized, short wheelbase mid-engined car with way too much weight up the rear, with front tyres that are almost as wide as the rear for ridiculously maximal responsiveness, not to mention the auto locker diff that ensures maximal acceleration, but lets go as soon as you start turning, and the car turns into a squirrelly little bugger that gives the stability control a heart attack. That’s when the stability control’s on. In this case, Kai likes to turn it off, so it wasn’t even around to have a heart attack.
The car promptly shat itself, closely followed by Strop almost doing the same as the rear end shot out and the car barrelled into the corner ass first in a plume of tyre smoke.
By the time they came to rest somewhere in the grassy runoff, the engine had cut off and Strop had a new headache from his head smashing against the frame. Then he remembered he was the one wearing the helmet. Kai looked a lot worse: he had a dazed grin plastered on his face and, more importantly, blood cascading down his forehead from a gash somewhere above his hairline.
“Dude,” Strop said. “Are you alright?”
“Just awesome,” Kai slurred. Strop started searching for something to stem the flow, Kleenex, a towel, anything, and came up with a slightly oily rag secreted somewhere in Kai’s pockets. “Just hold that tight.”
Kai tried pushing him away. “No, whaddya talking about, les do that again!”
“Fuck you, and NO,” Strop scolded Kai. “You probably have like a concussion or something. We need to get you checked out.” He looked up and found that everybody had more or less cottoned on, probably thanks in part to the footage being live streamed to the pit lane, and thanks in the other part to the fact that they very visibly shot off the track at high speed. Within a minute the truck had pulled up and a few carloads of crew, and within a few more minutes, a familiar looking ambulance pulled up, and out stepped a familiar looking paramedic.
Even with her long horns shaved down so she didn’t punch a hole through the roof whenever she stood up, Ada was imposingly tall and sharp in her uniform, more so when she was looking down disapprovingly at Strop and a slightly insensate Kai.
“Let me guess, our frequent flyer again.”
“Who else,” Strop sighed.
As the minutes passed, Ada’s first aid and assessment of Kai’s condition was hampered by Kai increasingly insisting he was fine and could he just go back to testing the cars. When Ada told him a firm no, he pouted and crossed his arms. “It’s my birthday.”
Ada threw up her hands and stood back up. “Whelp, I think he’s fine. You guys do what you want.”
Hannah immediately bristled and clasped her arms around Kai. “But what if he has like one of those brain-bleed thingies!”
Ada shot her a stare that said in no uncertain terms that she had run out of fucks to give for the morning. “None of what you or he is telling me indicates that he hit his head hard enough to do that. Besides, scalp lacerations always look worse than they are.”
She tossed Strop a spare first aid kit as she started walking back to the ambulance. “Here, you were a doctor weren’t you. Next time he wangs his head or something you patch him up. And make sure he wears his helmet!”
While the ambulance roared off, about six crew members held Kai down while Tesla and Hannah shoved his helmet on. Suitably attired but possibly not competent, he stumbled back into the car. Strop hesitated a moment, before getting back in. At least if he was there to police the traction control, they would have less chance of both being killed, right? And now that they had worked out that Darkshine, the crazy fucker, had put an auto locking diff on the car (because DRAG STRIP BRO), they would be extra careful with power on the bends now right?
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.
The simple truth was, with a car as prone to unsalvageable oversteer as this, driving it on the street would be an ordeal. It was like trying to fly a modern jet fighter with the computers turned off. And then when you try to eject, the missiles fire instead. On the plus side, at least the suspension was somewhat adjustible, moreso than much of the rest of the car, so the serious handling issues were potentially mitigated with more appropriately sized wheels and a lot of careful adjustment.
Note: try turning off the stability control and traction control. You will see that the car now has a drivability of 0.0, which I’m informed means that it’s impossible to drive the car in a meaningful fashion. Meaningful in this sense means very quick. The problem, and this is a problem echoed across some of the other mad cars, is the oversteer bias. There’s an extremely fine and imperceptible line between going fast around a corner and flying through the Pearly Gates backwards, on fire, particularly with mid-engined cars. As a rule of thumb you should aim for the car to have a terminal understeer. This rule does not apply for rear-engined cars, those things are a law unto themselves and, as video footage asserts, the RUF CTR Yellowbird was at its best with liberal doses of throttle and opposite lock.
##Smooth Saabro X
In the car park, the offering from Smooth had generated considerable interest. Saab had gone under, and the absence of their quirky, distinctive (or, if you would rather, pointlessly over-engineered and shithouse) and generally unclassifiable cars was keenly felt among some circles. It was therefore quite exciting that Smooth had purchased the rights to build upon the classic body, somewhere approaching the kind of excitement one has upon hearing the DeLorean DMC-12 was going back into production, except quite possibly actually functional.
“It looks like a Volvo.” Was Kai’s one and only comment.
“Er, no, it doesn’t, it looks like a Saab,” Strop pointed out, wondering if Kai hadn’t quite recovered from his knock earlier.
Kai would not be swayed. “It looks like a Volvo.” He punctuated this with a nose wrinkle and a sniff.
Having known Kai for several years, Strop concluded that his proclamation of distaste was not because it looked like a Volvo. But Volvo was Swedish, and so too was Saab. And Kristensen was the sixth most common Danish surname. And Danes dislike all things Swedish. It was some kind of jealousy thing.
With that, Kai wasn’t even in the mood to test drive the thing, so that duty fell to about thirty something or so other volunteers who really wanted to know what a “Saab Done Right” was really like. And what they found was that it was the most user friendly car in the lot that, aside from the drawback of having an old body compromising its safety, fulfilled every expectation a normal driver with slight enthusiast leanings and a fondness for the left field could think of. It just so happened that person wasn’t Kai, and even if it was, the way the entries had clustered ensured that no prizes would be won on tolerability alone today.
Note: This was the main entry that fell victim to Kai’s petty prejudices. I should have emphasised he was Danish more, but then I didn’t expect anybody to submit a freaking Saab for chrissakes 
##Kramer K4 Coupe 3.0
“It’s a Ford Falcon.”
“Nah, it’s a Holden Commodore.”
“No, definitely a Ford Falcon.”
“Nah fuck off it’s a Holden Commodore.”
“Actually it’s the bastard love child of a Ford and Holden from eight years ago, the Fammodore!”
There were two things very telling about this exchange between Kai and Strop, while scrutinising the front half of the car. First, when the promotional material that accompanied the car stated that the car “looks like a muscle car”, and the argument is about which family sedan your car resembles, you should probably conclude that you hadn’t quite hit the mark. Furthermore, considering the brief that the team sent out earlier quite clearly inferred that Kai wasn’t the kind of guy to spring for a Muscle car because he was biased against ‘American’ stuff, you had to wonder whether whoever was in charge of vetting the process over at Harris and Kramer even read the whole thing.
Even with that aside, it was time for another round of: Is this another Ford Falcon XR6 Turbo? In this case, the answer was quite the resounding Yes! A turbo straight 6 put it in good company with the Primal GT, except it was RWD. Proper Muscle Car stuff. It was also had four seats, which was two more than Kai really needed, not that he minded that, except for the fact the car only had two doors, making it a 2+2 and also dreadfully difficult to play rear-seat nookie.
On the plus side, this trim came with the premium ten speaker package, which made blasting out tunes an almost visceral experience and fairly invited one to enter meathead douche nugget mode: Windows Down with AC/DC dialled to 11. And the engine was tuned just right: early spool and a good shove of torque, adequate power for your hairy-backed VB (or Fosters, depending on state) swilling stained blue singlet wearing tradie. Not to mention the ratios were closely spaced, and the suspension was firm enough to make the car as responsive as a sedan of 1600kg could be, and somehow, the nose just loved to turn in so much the car would go sideways on anything faster than a medium speed corner, which, of course, gave one instant access to the most holy grail of bogan douchebaggery: the weekend drift warrior.
And that is how instead of doing the usual drive around the whole of the test track, because that would have been boring, everybody migrated to the touge part of the test track and laid cones at the apex of each corner, and had an impromptu drift tournament until the rear tyres blew. The car simply lent itself to the task, which was the most likely intention of its manufacturers.
All in all, the car wasn’t bad at all. Aside from the lairy steering balance, it had little in the way of flaws, and it was plenty adjustable. But it clearly appealed to the kind of person that wasn’t Kai, in fact, the kind of demographic that was shrinking because it remained nostalgic and staunchly reactionary to the changes of the world. He was simply the wrong demographic, and it was simply too big.
Not to mention, this was exactly the kind of car that ended up having giant FOX and Kappa stickers plastered all over it, and for the yoof crowd, all the really American hoon brands, at that. And for good measure, probably the vinyls of porn stars with their thongs hanging around their ankles. The douche was simply too strong with this one, which brought up the biggest issue: it simply wasn’t sexy.
##Shelob by Leeroy
When the tyres on the K4 finally went up in flames, it was close to eleven. Eyes lit up when it was revealed that the next car to be tested was the behemoth, the big daddy, the meanest motherfucker.
Well, that was arguable, but the numbers certainly put forward a strong case. 1963bhp. Mid-engined AWD with a manual gearbox. The giant 10.9L V8 was pushed to near breaking to achieve such stratospheric figures, and to accommodate everything the bulk of the car was considerable: 1923kg. And decked out in the Moldovan outfit’s powder blue, this incarnation of the Shelob was best described as the counterpunch to Bugatti’s Chiron. Only it wasn’t really a counterpunch, it was more like Leeroy took the punch on the chin and replied with a Chuck Norris Roundhouse kick to put the hairs on your back. From the zero rear visibility to the humungous 24" rims with what promised to be hard-as-rock 15 profile tyres, this was the ludicrous apex of hypercar concept engineering.
“It looks squinty,” was Kai’s first comment, which wasn’t all that encouraging. But the ludicrous power and speed it promised was the major drawcard all along and he even really quite eagerly clambered in, even if he scowled while putting on the helmet (only so Ada didn’t have to waste half an hour of his time attending if he knocked his head again).
Like the Muse, this was not a car to be toyed around, with car parking lot shenanigans. With still close to a thousand Nm from an idle and a manual gearbox, it had to be carefully piloted to the track. Once properly positioned, the real fun started. Unlike some of the other cars here, the bulk of the work was done by the gargantuan engine, not the turbos, thus attesting to no replacement for displacement. Shod in race grade tyres (it would have been madness to equip any less), the Shelob set off surprisingly fuss free, the power climbing and climbing and climbing until the angry alien swarming of the V8 was joined by the whine of the UFO apocalypse and OH GOD THERE IT WAS and the wheels started chirping somewhere around the eighty mark. After that bit of drama, it was head down and all wheels go with the reading on the speedo climbing Gryphon Gear rapid.
Strop felt a slight welling within his chest, and it wasn’t just the fact he was getting crushed into his seat with the force of a space shuttle taking off. He knew what fast was, because there was none faster than Gryphon Gear. But to witness his friends from the other side of the world at Boqliq finally put out a edifice of power and speed like this, it was the realisation of all the consultations that he and the team had ever given their engineers about how to maximise top end power and build for speed. And now they could truly say, that they had gone full Strop. It was a big moment.
Approaching the big bank at about four hundred kays, Kai glanced over. “Are you crying?”
“Eyes on the road,” Strop snapped.
Nineteen hundred kilograms of hypercar was a lot to handle, so naturally blasting flat out through the banked track was more than the car could handle. The stability control indicator went nuts as the car shed speed, easing out at three sixty even while Strop and Kai were subjected to the equivalent of slingshotting around the moon. And once again the car exhibited the mid-engined format’s notorious predilection to oversteer. Yet with the stability control on, which Strop ensued by slapping Kai’s hand away every time it went ferretting around to see if it could find how to turn it off, the true cornering ability was revealed. Sure, most of the credit would have to go to the tyres that might as well have been painted with Shelleys, but holy fuck, the active aerodynamics allowed the car to keep it even tighter in the fast corners. And fast it was around the track, one of the fastest in fact. While it was true that with a proper modification, the GG crew might eventually come up with a way to wring the final bits of potential out of that hulking frame, it would have taken a lot more engineering and time in the prototype shed with the lasers. On clear display, was the Shelob’s purpose to the core, and it went to every length to achieve it. As far as the properly quick madmobiles were concerned, Leeroy had arrived.
##Intermission
After staggering out of the Shelob by Leeroy, Kai and Strop were sweaty enough that they felt a change of clothes would be a nice idea. Seeing as it was past eleven and most everybody was starting to feel a little… eleven o’clockish, everybody adjourned for morning tea. As it was essentially an off day, now was the time for everybody who had secretly brought the grog along to openly declare themselves and really liven up the party, because hell, it’s acceptable to drink in the morning in Australia (note: no, actually, people around here probably still think it’s weird to do this.) Fortuitously, Strop and Kai were mostly non-alcoholic, and so were more than happy to stick to water.
“So…” Strop mused to his gang, “Did anybody else want to ride shotgun?”
Hannah arched a brow. “Have ya had enough?”
“Nah, I was more wondering if anybody thought they were, you know, missing out.”
“Oh good. Because I sure as hell ain’t doing it. Right Tesla?” Tesla only whined and shook her head. Boden had his best “you know I don’t fit in any of these cars” face on (because it was his only face). And as much as Aiden was a fan, he was far happier setting up the cameras and watching from afar. This left one potential candidate, who having overslept and turned up late, happened to be making up for it now by plastering his slightly ruddy sunburnt mug all over the group.
“I’LL DO IT! I’LL DO IT! I’LL DO IT!” Sam, Kai’s worst-best friend, serial ladykiller, perennial dork, sugar and caffeine addict, and former touring car racing driver turned performance consultant, volunteered.
“Is that Mother you’re holding in your hand?” Hannah arched her other brow.
“Um, no?” Sam made a poor showing of hiding the can in his hand.
“VETOED,” Hannah slapped a hand down on the table. Sam did his very best impression of what happens to those blow-up flappy people mostly found outside used car dealerships when they turn the air off.
“Awww! I’ll be good, I promise!”
Under the beach umbrella they’d set up, they all stared at Kai, who was in the process of crawing under and around all the cars he hadn’t driven yet. Hannah arched her first brow at Strop. Strop shrugged. “Yeah sure, I’mma eat something and if I ride with Kai after I eat I’ll probably puke or something. Besides I’d like to go over some numbers.”
“Suit yourself,” Hannah started, but Sam had already taken off with a whoop. Two seconds later, he could be seen crash tackling Kai and they both went down.
“Oh, this is going to be good,” Tesla quipped. “I’ll get the truck ready.”
##Gemini MWR
Strop wasn’t sure what to make of the first car at the resumption of business. The styling was feature heavy. Very feature heavy, with lots of lights and heavy chrome and-
“Holy shit, it’s monster car’s little bro!”
Strop shrugged. He had no idea what monster car was, but for the time being that was Sam’s job. Sam, for his part, was running with it, baring his teeth, contorting his hands into claws, making growly noises and stomping about. Well, that’d definitely make good footage for the Christmas party.
Then they piled into the car and what followed was a lot of revving the engine in the lot. With yet another inline six, but turbo, it did make a rather pleasant rasp and whistle. The predominance of inline sixes, too, was interesting, perhaps an indication that manufacturers knew they were catering to a driver of drivers.
Supposing Bemma was the BMW 125i, then this was the 135i. With FR format, manual transmission, a turbo and 300bhp on tap, it was slightly heftier, slightly more featured, and rather more expensive. And judging by the width of the rubber marks the car left as it fishtailed out of the lot with Sam’s fist pumping through the open window, rather wider tyres too. That extra traction really helped, because this thing ate up the corners in a way more powerful opponents could only dream of doing. But with Sam being the primary influence, it wasn’t long until the testing was done mostly sideways and with a lot of smoke. Damn, could it hold the line well in a drift, the steering balance was tuned to a knife’s edge and if you respected that, in deft hands it felt like it could carve the road like butter.
The numbers didn’t lie either, on the track, the Gemini was consistently 10% faster than the Salmon. Perhaps it had that extra spice that Kai felt a little absent from Bemma, yet on that same token, it wasn’t spice that Bemma needed to bring to the table. When it came to the MWR, the flavour was meatier, but to achieve this, a fair bit more engineering had gone into it, with parts that had less tolerance, and without even looking under the hood, it was clear that the added complexity in the powerplant and drivetrain in particular would make it just that bit more difficult to fiddle with in the garage. It clearly was a very close competitor to the Salmon, different, but close and between them it would come down to a matter of taste.
##Solo Lightning SSM V8 Special
Now this, there was no disguising it, this was an anticipated moment. The sleek lines, the distinctive LEDs that screamed CAR OF THE FUTURE, the exhaust outlets coming out of the engine lid, the giant sweeping wing… the weird argument that Kai and Sam was having.
“Are you an idiot? This is a sexy car.” That was Kai.
“Sexy isn’t sexy if it isn’t getting you sexy times!” Sam insisted, making about as much sense as he usually did.
“What? Just how does that work! It’s a proper hypercar!” Kai threw his hands up.
“That’s just it! It’s too hypercar. And not enough pussy magnet.”
Kai splutted for a moment, his face going nearly as red as his hair. “Explain to me how a hypercar isn’t a…” At this he had to pause incredulously, “Pussy magnet.”
Sam held up a finger, as if to commence a sermon on the sexiness of cars: “It is well established from observation of inner-city Londoners that girls just do not get hyper- OW!”
While Sam had been pontificating, Tesla had walked up and slapped him on the back of the head. She then proceeded to drape herself all over the car, all the while pointedly staring at Sam.
Kai turned to Sam and shrugged, the picture of apologetic smugness. “See, Tesla gets it.”
“FINE!” Sam huffed and stormed off. “Call me back when you want to drive some REAL sexy cars!”
As Tesla and Kai were high fiving, Strop poked his head back into the picture. “So… mind if I hop in then?”
Tesla plonked helmets on both their heads.
At 1294bhp for 1424kg, the Lightning SSM wasn’t quite in the pantheon of redonkulous hypercars with more horses than kilos. This was a slightly academic observation, because at 1294bhp the thought process was better described as an ‘experience’ and that experience was something more akin to ‘hoooooooly shiiiiiiiiit’. Once again, the car came with a manual gearbox, made even more fun by the fact that it had not six, but seven gears, and that seventh wasn’t an overdrive gear. Well, actually, since the top speed of the car was about 444km/h, under most circumstances, it was an overdrive gear. In the corners, the car was eager to get away, turn the nose in and kick the tail out at all times, a habit aided by the widest front tyres Strop had ever seen up to this point (345s), ultra low profile 23" rims (seriously were these people inspired by the LA Donk scene???), and an uneven rear-biased power distribution. On the perfectly smooth road of the test track, the ride was flat as a tack, and the springs may have been air but for all purposes it might as well have been rock. The entire setup might as well have been rock for there was virtually no damping whatsoever. On the merest hint of uneven surfaces, small bumps and cracks sent seismic waves through spines, and larger bumps knocked the wind out of lungs. And on the winding, twisty touge road, the changes in camber of the road laid bare the Lightnings unsuitability for anything but flat race tracks, as wheels literally lost contact with the ground, and the front end skipped around, trying to fly away even worse.
“This could do with a bit of jello,” Kai quipped, wincing as another bump jolted the cabin so hard the radio skipped.
Jello or not, the other problem they faced, when they packed it in and returned to the lot so everybody else could have another gawk at it, was that the suspension was certainly not the kind of thing that could be adjusted off the bat. For one, it was pushrod. For another, the shocks were air. And fancy ones at that. Tuning from the track to the road was not to be.
“Ahhghghghghghghgh,” Kai gurgled in frustration, collapsing on the ground. “It’s so sexy, too!”
But sexy as it was, it had a pretty big obstacle to overcome in its uncompromising tuning, to the extent that it quite possibly wasn’t quite as quick as it could have been. If anything, it was even less versatile than Mephisto in that regard, and that was a sobering thought.
Second half to come tomorrow! Note how I had to post even this first part in two parts… I’m totally slamming through the character limit…
Awww, I feel bad for the Saabro. I would totally buy that car
oh god. finally mr regular release a new video and now this?
BLRBLRBLRBLRBLRBLRBLRBLBRLBRLBRLBLRBLRBLRBLRBLR im drowning in anticipation
