Out of Africa Challenge [Final Results]

[Packbat]

I like conan's retro-barge - very cool in a '70s way.

Also ... Harisvet1, did you draw those letters out by hand? That's amazing, if so! It was already a good-looking design with the rest of the arrangement of fixtures, but the lettering on the "INFINITY" (especially with the widening spacing between letters) is seriously rad.

Looking at the winning cars, I have to think that my major mistake* was not choosing the station wagon body, or adding all the fittings to the interior, or adding a high-flow catalytic converter to reduce emissions, or going cheap on the polymer ... but giving the car a non-embarrassing amount of power. I thought a 2.3L inline-six producing 92 horsepower was pretty weaksauce for an offroader in 1990, but I was clearly wrong.

As for the question: if I were recommending a car to someone, I'd probably say the Infinity Motor QX 10 1.8. It seems like all-around the best made, and given that none of them have performance worth writing home about, that would be the deciding factor for me.

[harizvet1]

Also ... Harisvet1, did you draw those letters out by hand? That's amazing, if so! It was already a good-looking design with the rest of the arrangement of fixtures, but the lettering on the "INFINITY" (especially with the widening spacing between letters) is seriously rad.

no,not by hand , the "INFINITY" lettering came as one badge.

[Tycondero]

Looking at the winning cars, I have to think that my major mistake* was not choosing the station wagon body, or adding all the fittings to the interior, or adding a high-flow catalytic converter to reduce emissions, or going cheap on the polymer ... but giving the car a non-embarrassing amount of power. I thought a 2.3L inline-six producing 92 horsepower was pretty weaksauce for an offroader in 1990, but I was clearly wrong.

A 2.3L Inline 6 with 92hp is pretty weak/common, for Europe or US, but not in this 1990 African eco competition. However, as performance of the engine hardly mattered (we are talking economical here) it didn't favor your car, but probably made it unnecessarily more expensive. Indeed going for a smaller cheaper engine would have helped. The polymer would surely have helped to make it cheap and environmentally more resistant, but these things you of course didn't know/realize when you made the car. Also I wouldn't go for such a set-up in every challenge from now on btw, the important thing is to carefully consider what is important and what not for any challenge and then devise a plan how to get there. Whether it will top-notch luxury cars, fast sporty vehicles with turbos or cheap simple cars as in this challenge, it is all a matter of carefully making a plan and sticking to it to bring out the best.

Also it is in not true that these were the best cars in every situation. There were cars with more power that were stronger or cars with even better comfort ratings, but overall considering the rules and the aims of this challenge these were the most economical and best value for money and offering some extra that made them an exceptional good package deal.

[Packbat]

@Tycondero: Mmm, I gotcha. If I were roleplaying this, I think I'd probably still go with the same decision, being as Packbat Auto Works would want to be able to sell a better-appointed version of the same car with a higher-compression version of the same engine stateside, but as a competition entrant I was simply working off of bad assumptions.

[SeriousSimon]

Romanov is not very pleased with the outcome of this competition, the expectations were higher for our overall solid Rodina. As a conclusion from this, we must admit that our 4x carburettor is outdated and will not be used anymore.
Congratulations to the other participants for making better cars!


(Of course, in 1990, maximum sports cars or the infamous Trabant were using polymer bodies, realistically, which is one of the reasons why I didn't use it, but it was available and therefore totally legitimate to use it.)

[NormanVauxhall]

Congratulation to all the winner. If I knew that the environmental was SO heavy weighted I should have asked to use the classic Znopresk polymer body.
Oh well, I wasn't expecting a good performance however.

At least I'm in front of Ardent

[Tycondero]

If I knew that the environmental was SO heavy weighted I should have asked to use the classic Znopresk polymer body.

Next time I will enclose the exact calculation for such stats as these. Anyway what I did was I used the following calculation to determine "value for money"

"Value for money"=Total production cost/(total reliability + environmental resistance). All other stats were used independently. For each stat (value for money is thus 1 stat in this case with three components) a normal distribution was made which gave each participant a score between 0-1, depending on where the value was in the normal distribution curve. This value was then weighted and all the scores were then added together and multipied by 100 to give the final overall score. The total weight of the "value for money" was 27% of the overall score, which was indeed a heavy weight in the overall score.

[VicVictory]

At least I'm in front of Ardent

One of these days!

[Tycondero]

Here are the final results of the top 3, announcing the winner.



Der Bayer's BAM P1100 A

Congratulations to Der Bayer for winning this competition, but the difference between him and the 2nd position occupied by harizvet1's Infinity Motor QX 10 1.8 was only 0.59 points overall, which leaves a huge gap between them and the 3rd place in this competition.



So what made the difference ultimately?

The Infinity Motor and the BAM P1100 are very evenly matched in terms of value for money, the Motor is however much better in fuel economy and scored big points there, but the P1100 is a bit better in service cost. The P1100 is slightly better off-road and is slightly more practical. Also the P1100 scored more points in drivability, comfort and safety, while the Motor scored better in prestige and sportiness. However, drivability, comfort and safety counted for more than prestige and sportiness and that is were the P1100 finally overtook the Motor in the score. This is probably due to the more advanced suspension, automatic gearbox and more safety features of the P1100 for a very similar price.

I hope you all liked this challenge and please feel free to discuss the results. It has been at least a wonderful experience for me to host such an event.

[SeriousSimon]

So basically, with a polymer body and a really good economy, the chances of winning this were pretty high.

I liked mainly the idea behind the competition and it was fun to participate in it, thanks to Tycondero and everyone who thought the same way.

[Oskiinus]

Congratulations Der Bayer!
Tycondero, may I ask you how can you do such a good picture?

[TrackpadUser]

If you open the console (~), and type "HideBuildings()" (cap sensitive and don't forget the brackets), it will give you a black background.

After this, using photoshop or GIMP, you can more easily remove the background and paste the picture of the car on a background of your choosing.

[strop]

Additionally, if you turn FXAA off before using the HideBuildings() command, you'll be able to save the image as a transparency, which makes it easier to paste the car on whatever background you please (but at the cost of aliasing).

[Der Bayer]

Yay, I never expected to win this challenge! Thanks for hosting, I'm looking forward to more!

Would it be possible to see a spreadsheet with the scores per category? It would be interesting to see how much points we gained and lost in the various categories.

[Tycondero]

Yay, I never expected to win this challenge! Thanks for hosting, I'm looking forward to more!

Would it be possible to see a spreadsheet with the scores per category? It would be interesting to see how much points we gained and lost in the various categories.

Ok, here is the detailed score list for the top 3, the other entries are a bid too much to show as it will be a lot of work in order to get that displayed nicely in my current spreadsheet. The total score is the sum of all the parameter score x weight (not displayed). Overall score is 100x the total score.