Rigeli

[t00thPIK]

COSTA Rigeli founded his automotive company in Tuscany, Italy in 2015. Costa grew up on a diet of V8 Formula One in the 90s and his father’s British roadster racing career throughout his childhood. Costa knew he wanted to make sports cars, but he wanted his cars to be something unique. Traditionally, the roadster chassis is fitted with an inline 4 cylinder engine. These engines are often underwhelming in both performance and sound output. It's for this reason that people love to customise their roadsters by putting big, heavy v8 engines in place of the four pot powerplant. Often this comes at a cost to handling and weight distribution because big v8 weigh a lot more than a typical 4 cylinder. With this in mind, Costa's idea was to combine this mentality of putting v8 power into a roadster, whilst retaining the brilliant and fun handling characteristics roadsters are known for. To achieve this, Costa knew that the best way was to design a small capacity, high revving v8 engine similar to what was used in the v8 era F1 cars. In order to maintain good fuel economy and still make good power, a twin turbo system would be utilised and the engine would run on at least 98 octane unleaded fuel. It was important to Costa's vision to make the engine as high revving as possible, to give the car a unique, F1 style scream. The result is the first car produced by Rigeli: The Ventoso.



Edit: I would have liked a little more customisation for this MX-5/Miata style body to set it apart a little. Perhaps if someone makes a more generic and customisable roadster body down the track, I can make it look a little more unique and Italian

____________________________________________________________________________________

Edit 2: As mentioned (again, in an edit) in my last post, I had a mishap with the original Ventoso engine. In the end I started from scratch and now it's even better, so I'm glad for the mishap now.
If you don't want to scroll up and down to compare the old with the new, here are the notable improvements:

+ Longer, smoother power band where power now sits between 190 and 200kw from 7500rpm right up to 9500rpm instead of only reaching it's peak in the last thousand rpm before redline.
+ Big gains in torque whilst sacrificing only 5kw of power, and the torque peak comes on 300rpm sooner than the previous engine
+ Much better engine response
+ Better fuel economy
+ Lower emissions
+ Better reliability
+ Runs quieter (until the bypass valves open of course )
+ Still running a forged bottom end, excluding pistons. Why? because, were this a real car, I would want to avoid "piston slap" when cruising around town at low RPM (yes I know piston slap isn't a "thing" in Automation, at least not yet, but it's a realistic consideration)

Downsides:
- Service costs are up significantly over the previous engine
- Engine size and weight have increased slightly due to the addition of direct injection. DI also contributes to the service cost mentioned above.

Even with service costs and size gains considered, I think this engine is a major improvement over the original specimen. Now I just need to shave a bit more weight off the car's body to try and get it closer to that 1000kg sweet spot!

[Oskiinus]

Ewrythang iz yellaw.
Nice car.

[t00thPIK]

Ewrythang iz yellaw.
Nice car.

Thanks! Yeah, I considered red, but was feeling the fun vibe of yellow.

[UlyG]

Reminds me of what might have happened if Fiat had made a V8 Barchetta

[t00thPIK]

Reminds me of what might have happened if Fiat had made a V8 Barchetta

I didn't know what they were called, but now I've looked it up, I have seen these roadsters before. I don't go much on Fiat's car designs though :\

[strop]

Great, the small v8 is underappreciated! Would make for a lot of fun I'm sure.

The torque curve implies there's a bit of room to move with the turbo and can profile though.

[t00thPIK]

Great, the small v8 is underappreciated! Would make for a lot of fun I'm sure.

The torque curve implies there's a bit of room to move with the turbo and can profile though.

Thanks! Yes I agree about small V8s!

I tried to keep the torque coming on as early as possible and carry through the rev range as smooth as possible. The more I tried to boost it, it seemed to bring up unwanted and strange peaks and troughs through the torque range. I'm still figuring everything out, especially with regard to turbos, as I've only been playing for a short time. I will play around with what I have though as this engine will be the basis for all Rigeli cars in the future.

Thanks again for the feedback

[Lordred]

Wicked little 2.2L V8, I agree that you have an excellent and quite usable power curve going for you thus far. I also like the minimalist approach to the way the body looks, it has a bold look with out being too flashy. But it stands out with its warm, but not too bright yellow.

The only 'semi' constructive criticism I have for you is that given the engine size, going dual with twin tips, the exhaust tips look a little over sized, and the tire profile looks a little low. But those are only personal thoughts.

Keep it up.

[t00thPIK]

Wicked little 2.2L V8, I agree that you have an excellent and quite usable power curve going for you thus far. I also like the minimalist approach to the way the body looks, it has a bold look with out being too flashy. But it stands out with its warm, but not too bright yellow.

The only 'semi' constructive criticism I have for you is that given the engine size, going dual with twin tips, the exhaust tips look a little over sized, and the tire profile looks a little low. But those are only personal thoughts.

Keep it up.

Thanks for the great feedback!

Ugh, those exhausts! I know what you mean. I wasn't confident in the overall simplicity of the cars design. I felt it needed something that stood out, hence the quad tip exhaust. I wasn't sure about it when I did it, and still wasn't very happy once I uploaded it. I agree that they're probably a bit large too, considering. Initially, the exhausts were actually represented by the chrome centred vent I used on the Brighton Motors Super 8 GT, but thought they weren't bold enough. Anyway, I'll definitely work on something different for the 2016 model
The tyre profile is something I didn't change. The tyre size is still 600mm, the rims themselves are 18. Personally, I usually don't go above 17" rims in any car game that allows customisation. 17" is a good realistic balace of rim size and sidewall stiffness, whilst maintaining enough flex that you get good grip under accelleration. Being that the car is made in 2015 though, and every production car seems to be moving to 18" rims or larger as standard for sport models, I figured I'd take the leap. Stupidly, what I did not do was research tyre sizes commonly used by companies like Alfa Romeo for cars like this. I compare the Ventoso to Alfa's 4C (albiet FR layout instead of MR), as it would sit in a similar price bracket. Speaking of, in the real world, I imagine Rigeli would be a direct competitor to Alfa Romeo. I think Rigeli's next car might just be a 4C influenced, mid engined machine as a homage to Costa's love for F1 cars... hmmm

Thanks again, Lordred, I really appreciate the constructive criticism, it's very helpful!

EDIT: Just started work on another Rigeli, tried to use the Ventoso's engine and it wouldn't fit. Promptly began making changes to the original instead of making a new variant because I'm an idiot. I moved everything back to how it was before, now the original engine no longer wants to rev to 9500rpm with all components in the green unless I put forged pistons in. It appears my original setup may have only worked due to a bug.

[t00thPIK]

UPDATE: I made a new engine for the Ventoso after stuffing up the original. See OP for details
Cheers!

[VosNox]

I love the front end, but I feel you could take advantage of the space between your two vents to make a very unique design.

[t00thPIK]

I love the front end, but I feel you could take advantage of the space between your two vents to make a very unique design.

Thanks for your feedback. The front end design intentionally echos Formula One cars from the 90s with the swooping nose flaring out into the front spoiler. For awhile I did try playing around with different grills between the vents, but nothing ever looked as good as the two vents on their own. The front end design was very much a case of "less is more."

For me it's the rear end that I'm not happy with. I will work on another version of this little roadster in the future, as well as a new mid engine platform.