TMCC13: Calaber
San Francisco, 1968
Filming has begun on a gritty action thriller following SFPD detective Lieutenant Brock Calaber as he attempts to protect an important witness under threat from a powerful mob. The movie developers plan on doing something relatively novel in cinema: real car chases, filmed from both outside and inside the cars.
Brock Calaber is meant to be depicted as a gruff everyman, and the vehicle chosen for him is important in conveying that. It should be cool, tough, and fast, but not fancy nor too flashy. It should not be a behemoth, but it should also not be a diminutive import: something that fits in the American standard of a compact, pony car, or a smaller intermediate is desired. The car can be bone stock, or can appear lightly modified.
Priorities:
- Style: Tough, menacing, cool, not too flashy, not too fancy. Something that looks desirable yet attainable.
- Price: The car should be as affordable as is reasonable. Brock Calaber needs to appear like an everyman.
- Engineering Realism and Reliability: The car needs to be tough, affordable, built from proven tech with replacement parts easily sourced. More on this in Extra Notes.
- Performance and Sportiness: The car should be capable, both for the chase scenes and to match the protagonist.
- Drivability, Comfort, Safety, and Practicality: the car should be good at being a car.
- Service Costs and Fuel Economy: these kinds of cars are notoriously poor on this front, but try to not make these too atrocious.
Rules:
- Trim/Variant year: 1968
- 2 door appearance (2 door coupes, sedans, and 3 door liftbacks all good if the body looks appropriate)
- 4-6 seats
- Radial Tires ONLY (more on this in Extra Notes)
- No Semi Slick
- Maximum 1 piston calipers
- Rear Drum brakes mandatory
- Solid Rear Axle mandatory
- Max Loudness: 45
- Max Trim ET: 85
- Max Engine ET: 100
Extra Notes
A few things I want to touch on regarding realism and muscle cars in Automation. I covered some in the rules, but I want to make a few statements on other aspects that are a bit more nuanced:
- Tires: While these types of cars would have used bias-ply tires, Automation does not allow the typical sizes of the bias-ply tires commonly found on American performance vehicles of the time, so please use radials. For an American car, I’m expecting a width between 195-225 and an aspect ratio between 70-80 on a wheel size of 14" or 15". If you’re making a smaller import-style car, the tires should be narrower in width.
- Engine: What is typical here is the OHV V8 with a 4 barrel carb or 3 two barrel carbs, however, I am going to allow leeway here on the realism front to allow for a greater variety of builds. Fuel injection, though atypical, did appear on Chevrolets and will not be frowned upon, but due to it’s outright superiority in Automation, it will be lightly penalized for parity. Overhead cam layout engines was also around but atypical at the time, for example, in the OHC Sprint Firebird and LeMans, and I take no issue with it on inline engines.
- Differential: Automation unfortunately does not provide a limited slip differential to vehicles in this time period. Most American performance vehicles of the time did, in fact, come with limited slip differentials (Positraction, Safe-T-Track, Trac-Lok, Sure-Grip, etc.) but I know of only 3 examples that came with an Autolocker: standard on the '65 Shelby Mustang GT350 and optional on specifically equipeed '70 Ford Mustangs and Torinos. For this challenge, due to the lack of a better option, the use of an Autolocker is 100% acceptable as a stand-in for a limited slip, no realism hit for this.
- Transmission: Typical American transmissions at the time were 3-4 speed manuals and 2-3 speed automatics, but if you are building a smaller-engined, import-style car that doesn’t produce much torque, a 5 speed is not unheard of.
- Chassis: Many American vehicles at the time were moving to semi-unitized construction, sort of a middle ground between body-on-frame construction and the more advanced monocoque available in Automation. As this type of construction is not represented, using Monocoque or even Light Truck Monocoque to represent this will not be frowned upon, and I am hoping with the ruleset and priorities I’ve set here that all three options will be viable.
Outside of any glaring issues or sudden game updates, submissions are open now until December 6th, 10 PM US Eastern. Submission code is the standard: “TMCC13 - your name” for the model and engine family.
. It’s not the way I would tune a car personally but hey, I’m not Liutenant Brock Calaber.