Yeah, got the result I expected in the end. For a cheapskate, the car’s just too expensive to run. Granted, this is the second time I’ve thrown a car built for one challenge that I forgot to enter into another challenge with virtually no changes. (Body style from Sedan to Wagon, insert lower-power V6.)
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The joys of owning a car that was one of the cheapest ones available when new in the 1970s- well, the 1960s if we count the prefacelift
(so basically a communist car without the awful build quality and reliability)
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I am legitimately suprised i made it this far. May the best car win eh?
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AND THE WINNER IS…
DRUMROLL
(Read this in OOC)
Well, this was, like @AndiD himself use to say, a Mara moment. To start with, I should say that it was not the car that was the sharpest design-wise, and by that I don’t mean “beautiful” vs. “ugly”. The Mara has the right looks, and a nice weathering, but it lacks that little extra sharpness and depth in the details that the very best cars like the Moravia or the Salon has.
Still, the looks were good enough and the Mara would have the most believable image as a family hauler on a restricted budget. Mostly because it more or less lacks any drawbacks where it counts (which it was pretty much alone at TBH), while it is excellent at some very important points.
Congratulations, AndiD.
A LITTLE BONUS
(I was first going to do a full on episode guide, but nah, too much work for too little result, so I decided to just highlight some of their episodes, and their, well… Mara moments)
EP 1.01
Pilot episode. Stig reads in a magazine about the prices on antiques and sees that a certain vase is worth tremendous amounts of money. Later that week, when visiting mother in law, he sees that certain vase. During the visit, her TV breaks down, and Stig offers her their new 33 inch widescreen in trade for the vase, she thinks that he has gone nuts and accepts it. When he comes home and tries to sell it to an antique dealer, it turns out that it is a copy made in Hong Kong in the 70s, absolutely worthless. He manages to trade it in at a second hand store for a 12 inch black and white TV though, which the family now has to watch.
Mara moments: Well, used for the trip, kids fighting in the back seat and…yeah, you know it I guess, the regular stuff.
INGER: “You said that the vase was so ugly that you would not take one for free when you saw it in the magazine, why do you want it now?”
STIG: “Hey, it will soon be gone anyway. Rich people have money but no taste. I have taste but no money. Soon I will have both and they will have nothing but an ugly vase!”
EP 1.02
Anna wants a dog. To show her how much of a responsibility it is to have a dog, Stig decides to accept an offer from his workmate to watch his rottweiler/amstaff/malinois mix for some days. Unfortunately, what Stig forgets is that Anna is going on a class trip that week so Stig has to watch the dog all by himself, leading to some less than pleasant situations.
Mara moments: Tearing out all the foam from the back seat is all fun and games. Woof!
STIG: (Browsing through the telephone catalog). “Inger, do you know in which country they eat dogs? I need to know which restaurant to call if this filthy mutt is going to poop on the carpet one more time!”
EP 1.03
Inger has gone away for some days so Stig decides to clean out the garage. He gets an OK from the boss to borrow the work van and takes all the crap from the garage to the dump. Someone finds it on the dump, steals it and sells it on his garage sale where Inger buys everything back on her way home.
Mara moments: Being filled up with junk at the garage sale.
INGER: “But all of that stuff was very far inside the garage, how was I even supposed to know that we had it?”
STIG: “I don’t know, maybe it was a sign that we…NEVER NEEDED IT TO START WITH?”
EP 1.06
Stig’s neighbour (that he hates) have bought new snow tyres for his Otari (that he hates). Stig thinks that he is just bragging and means that the one he has from when the Mara was new is as good, and that the 4 wheel drive of the Otari can’t compensate for his driving skills, because he did his military service as a truck driver. Needless to say it ends up in a snowy ditch, but the family manages to hitch a ride home with two youngsters in a Valiant Laser where the whole family has to cram themselves in the backseat while listening to eurodisco blasting at full volume.
Mara moments: More or less the whole episode.
STIG: “Don’t question my driving skills, I did my military service as a truck driver!”
SAMUEL: “Great. Now I know that if there is a war, the enemies won’t have a chance, if the bullets does not get them, dad will manage to run them all over with a truck!”
EP 1.07
Samuel wants a Nintendo 64 for christmas, but Inger have heard that videogames is getting too violent, she has also read that music is a good way to spawn creativity among children so he gets a drum set for christmas instead, which drives Stig crazy when he has to listen to it. Finally he sells the drum set while Samuel is away and buys him a Nintendo 64 instead, of course making him upset since he has changed his mind and thinks that the drum set is much more fun.
Mara moments: Not too many, but when loading a drum set into a car, more stuff can happen than you actually think.
SAMUEL: “But dad! I had changed my mind, I would much rather have a drum set than a Nintendo 64 now!”
STIG: “Oh, yes! And I would much rather be deaf than listen to your goddamned drum set one more time, and now I am the adult so now I choose to be deaf! …eh, wait, what did I just say?”
EP 2.01
Linda has a crush on the toughest guy in class, and she has discovered that he is going to a festival that she is also planning to attend. To play cool in front of him, she decides to drive around on her scooter without a helmet, which is discovered by the parents so she gets grounded for a week and can’t go to the festival, which she does not give a crap about, sneaking out through the back door. What she didn’t realize is that Stig has agreed to work on that festival as a security guard because, well, he can’t say no to some extra money, which makes everything VERY troublesome.
Mara moments: Jamming on the brakes for a certain bare-headed motorist
STIG: “If you crash and hit your head you will have the same brain capacity as a garden gnome afterwards! Now, if I needed a garden gnome, I would have bought one, because that would have been much cheaper than getting that goddamned expensive scooter for you!”
EP 2.02
Stig has bought lots of bottles of some discount archanan car shampoo that he is trying to sell to the whole neighbourhood to earn some money. He first of all tries if it works by washing the Mara, which gets clean, and it does not do any harm at all to the (already very matte) paint on the Mara, but it does on every other car that actually has a paintjob worth caring about. Even worse, is that it is discovered that this car shampoo has been banned to sell even in Archana after 1987 since it is too harmful to the environment, so the government confiscates every bottle he has.
Mara moments: Getting clean for the first time in some years.
INGER: “The flowers in the garden died after you washed the car!”
STIG: “That’s probably just a hole in the ozone layer, stop using so much hair spray!”
ANNA: “Dad, everything on the bottle is in Archanan, how am I supposed to understand this?”
STIG: “Well, everything you speak is in teenager language so how am I supposed to understand you?”
NEIGHBOUR: “My red car turned pink!”
STIG: “Do you know how much money people are paying to get their cars repainted in colour-changing paint?”
EP 2.07
Samuel is selling lottery tickets for his ice hockey team, but when he has sold them to the whole neighbourhood there is still lots of them left, so Stig finally gives in to buy all of them. Later, the family goes christmas shopping, but when Stig realizes how high the parking fees are outside the mall, he parks the Mara in the worst part of the city, where parking is free, and makes the family walk from there. Of course the Mara gets stolen, ending up being driven through a window in a smash and grab attempt at the same mall where the family is shopping. When the police finally finds the car, it is beyond repair, but at the end of the episode, Stig wins both the 10th prize (a bag of gummy bears) and the 1st price (a brand new Saarland Ambrosia wagon) on the lottery tickets. After that, a reoccuring gag is how he cares for his Saarland more than for anything else in the whole world. It may or may not have some connections to the show being sponsored by Saarland from season 3 and onwards.
Mara moments: Pretty much explained above.
SAMUEL: “But dad, imagine if I will play in NHL someday?”
STIG: “Yeah, then I expect you to pay me back for EVERY SINGLE LOTTERY TICKET, THANKS!”
INGER: “Oh come on, that parking fee is not too bad.”
STIG: “I would have agreed on that if they had built a heated garage around the car while we were shopping!”
INGER: “What? Parking here? Are you nuts?”
STIG: “It’s just an old Mara, what is the worst thing that could possibly happen?”
LINDA: “That would be if nobody would steal it so it is still here when we come back.”
SAMUEL: “Dad, you didn’t only win 10th prize, you won 1st prize too!”
STIG: “Oh yeah, so what’s that? Ten bags of gummy bears? What am I supposed to do with ten bags of gummy bears!”
SAMUEL: "No, it says “a brand new Saarland Ambrosia!”
STIG: “Oh, that’s SO much better! What in the whole world am I supposed to do with a brand new Saa…a…eh, wait, what?”
HONORABLE MENTION
@Ch_Flash for building the wrong car for the family, that somehow was the right car for the annoying neighbour.
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Yay, I won something! Great challenge - who could have thought that mundane could be made so genuinely interesting and deep…?
I’ll have a think over the weekend for TMCC22 - I have an idea or two, but want to flesh those out a bit before committing, esp. with the current upheaval around techpool and stuff.
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Congratulations on your win, just shows it’s worth persevering with challenges and that you have improved with your designs and engineering
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I was worst of the best. Best of the worst? Anyway at least i made it to the finals. Nice one Andi.
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- Reads this
- No sight of Salon Bonus being mentioned
- Major disappointment
Jk though, great review, and fun plot ideas for the episodes
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Thanks for the honorable mention, and who knows I maybe am your annoying neighbour… 