Storm Automotive - Sentinel (1982)

[DeusExMackia]

I would like to present you with the Imaginary Automation Oscar for Best Taillights Design.

[Madrias]

Back on track with 1978.

New revisions to the hated catalytic converter solved 90% of the problems. No longer robbing 30% of the horsepower, we applied these new three-way converters to our latest car, the Spirit. Our 6 liter engine was used again, with twin turbos and our trusty mechanical fuel injection, giving you 625 horsepower. We think it's a perfectly good reason to ditch that leaded crap and go unleaded.

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Now, our competition would have you believe the lead makes things better, but we've got a 6 liter engine throwing down only 30 horsepower less than their muscle car. Sure, our sedan isn't likely as fast off the launch at 7 seconds flat to 60, but should a sedan be punching even close to a 7.8 liter big-blocked monster? Not just that, but we have 5 seats in our car. Fit 5 people in a muscle car. Try it sometime, you'll end up finding someone's got a gear stick where the sun don't shine.

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Do a burnout through first and second, and you'll find third comfortably holds the power of the turbochargers. At that point, lay into the long-throw gas pedal and bury it in the firewall, because now you're flying. 164 miles an hour top speed, and quarter mile in 14.73 seconds. Not bad for a family sedan.

A few weeks later, we heard that our car was selling well, and we heard rumors of a lot of kids putting posters of muscle cars and a particular sedan on their bedroom walls. We were amazed: Was unleaded really this good? Sure, we're a few octane down from the leaded fuels, but at the same time, we're spinning an unusual engine. In a time where OHV was common, we were holding onto DOHC, derived from our second ever engine design. Could it be that our 4 cylinder engine did something good for us, by pushing us to DOHC?

We'd find out soon enough...

(By the way, I'd love to shout out TurboJ for inspiring me to finally start up my company thread. For reference, here's his thread, starting at the page of the car this one's trying to throw a gauntlet at. viewtopic.php?f=35&t=9873&start=15#p101668 I highly recommend it, and I'm looking forward to seeing how different our 1982 cars are. And no, I'm not looking at your stats while building my cars. I'm doing what I do, and that's make too much power in old stuff.)

I would like to present you with the Imaginary Automation Oscar for Best Taillights Design.

Honestly, I don't think my tail light designs are really that good. Simple, yes, but that's about all they have going for them right now.

[Madrias]

1980. Pharte sent us a request regarding their Caster compact car. They wanted us to "Americanize" the car so it would sell well, remembering the immediate drop of sales of the Bee the instant gas prices returned to something resembling normal.

Naturally, as a partner company, we agreed to make the Caster into something it was never supposed to be. First thing that was done to the poor car was to get rid of the friendly looking front end and make it look a little evil, a throwback to the Demon. We went around the car, simplifying everything so that it could look clean and sleek, at least as much as a compact soft top car could.

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Then it got pushed into the engine shed, where the very underwhelming 900cc powerplant was yanked out, measurements were made of the remaining space, and a decision was made. The 6 liter just wouldn't fit, the 4 liter would fit nicely, and the 5 liter fit, but if someone revved it too hard, it'd smack the wheel arches. We went with the 5 liter and bolted it straight to the subframe. Pharte requested that we do something rather unusual for us with the valve covers, and to paint them racing red. It was decided that it wouldn't hurt performance, and maybe it'd fit the look of the car, and really, it was such a little request that we really couldn't refuse.

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A five-speed stick (kinda standard for us anymore) was bolted behind the engine, an auto-locking rear diff put the power through the rear wheels a little more evenly, and we put 13 inch magnesium wheels under this car. Inside, we've got premium leather seats and a top-of-the-line 8-track player.

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Suspension was another surprise request from Pharte: they wanted us to use their Hydropneumatic suspension under the car, instead of our progressive-rate springs. On this request, we were most interested in trying it. While sporty and spirited handling suffered a bit (the car felt like it was floating on a cushion of air at all times), ride comfort was at an all time high, and the car was really easy and fun to drive. Plus, pulling up to someone at a street light never felt so fun before. With 0 to 60 taking a mere 6.2 seconds, and a 14.33 second quarter mile time in a little shoebox, no one ever expected it.

The car sold ridiculously well. Small, fun to drive, four seats, and a convertible with a 'big' V8 in it. It hit all the high points.

[squidhead]

Too many cars in too little time, bud. We don't get the time for the last design to sink in and you're alraedy sharing 2 more.

[Madrias]

Sorry, was trying to get up to an era where I could actually slow down and settle in. I needed turbochargers before anything could really happen idea-wise. Things will slow down from this point on. Now that I'm in the 80's, with plenty of car designs to work around, and with the main things I needed available (turbos, fuel injection, regular unleaded fuel, and three-way catalytic converters), I now have to plan my designs from this point forward, whereas the previous cars followed a very similar formula. While the previous cars were mostly "Put bigger engine in the same car" or "build a bigger car," the 80's will be where some changes have to take place. After all, while it's profitable to make insanely fast cars with too much power, you can't run a company entirely on that without being on the bleeding edge of technology, and we're not on that bleeding edge. There will have to be some less powerful numbers in our lineup, and as a result, there will be some rather bland and boring cars coming soon-ish.

I can say, though, that once I get AWD, things are going to get very crazy at first, but that's a bit of a way off.

[squidhead]

Why didn't you start in mid 70's and fill in the early years as you felt like it?

[Madrias]

Because I didn't think to do it that way, honestly. That, and a lot of my engines are carry-overs from years long gone by (trying to avoid my usual problem of building a new engine family for every car) and I didn't think to go and create all of my engines first and then see what I could fit into cars that were more appropriate.

As mentioned, I will be slower in new releases. I'll also likely have breaks in continuity due to needing a break from the old cars.

[findRED19]

I enjoyed reading about Storm Automotive. And I agree on your point about engine families, that's part of why I haven't created my company's origin story yet. I really liked your 50s to 70s designs too. Keep up the great work!

[Madrias]

1982. The automotive industry marches ever onward, and technology has pushed engine horsepower limits ever higher. Technology has also provided a few answers to how to get that power down to the ground.

Now, to start with, the Storm Duke was mostly meant, originally, to be a comfortable and rather tame family cruiser. Five seats, comfortable interior, cassette player, huge amount of cargo space, everything you could want in a wagon. But, the gearheads in the engine department wanted nothing to do with tame. They'd just discovered ball bearing turbochargers and multi-point electronic fuel injection. They talked to the drivetrain department, who figured out something from the Ascender light-duty 4x4 truck, as well as a solution to the roughness of the auto-locker rear differentials. They both told the interior team that the seats may need a little extra padding to the buckets to hold the driver and front seat passenger in their seat.

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The end result was an all-wheel-drive, twin-turbocharged 6 liter V8-powered monster. With geared limited slip differentials front, center, and rear, power made it to the pavement through all four of the 215mm wide tires. This wagon has 758 reasons to be pulled over and arrested, and all of them are hiding under your right foot. With a 0-60 time of 6.2 seconds and a top speed of 172.8 miles per hour, we considered, just for a moment, that maybe we shouldn't release this to the public. Then we all remembered that horsepower sells, and something this crazy, this violent, would sell rather well. Sure, the 13.93 second quarter mile time isn't as fast as some other cars out there, but no one would look twice at a simple station wagon until after it's blown the doors off of their car.

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Of course, this strategy would pay off, but we had to consider this technological leap wisely from now on. While it could be hilarious to make super-high-powered cars, it wouldn't be a sustainable market. One of two things typically happens if you do that: Either you end up selling to a customer base who won't use it for what it was built for, or you end up killing all of your customers in horrific speed-induced accidents. We'd need to consider our new technologies wisely, perhaps... geared toward safety?

[Madrias]

1982. With AWD being something we now understood, it was time to test the market, a hard test between two great cars, identical in every way, except one difference. One car would be RWD, like everyone expected, and the other would be AWD.

The design teams talked for almost a week about what kind of car it should be. The body team wanted to do a big four-door car, the engine team wanted to try something new for a change, the suspension and chassis team were content to do another unibody with double wishbones, our interior team wanted to do something comfortable, and our lawyers were mentioning that we should seriously consider something with "less than 300 horsepower" to "keep the insurance companies happy."

So the naming board got to work throwing darts at a bunch of bits of paper stuck on a poster of a car from some small Japanese car company and landed the name Sentinel.

About a week later, the engine team called a meeting (rather unusual for them) and unveiled what they'd been working on.

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Once the shock of the meeting wore off (usually, an Engine Team 'meeting' was mostly "let's go chat by the water cooler" and nothing serious like this), we looked over the new engine. With six pistons, a turbocharger, and multi-point fuel injection, it looked simply stunning. The power sheets were set down neatly on top of the blue-painted valve covers, and the figures were impressive, though not shocking. 280 horsepower, which made the lawyers happy. The body team seemed happy, because the engine would fit, though it was a little bit of a squeeze. The suspension team seemed okay with it, as the weight wasn't that much. The interior team was indifferent, having already planned to put a luxury interior in whatever was built.

A long while later, the two cars were built, though there were two differences instead of the planned one. When asked about it, the Drivetrain team simply mentioned, "We tried to kill some of the wheel spin in the RWD model with a geared limited slip. The AWD one doesn't have that problem, so we left it with open diffs."

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The two cars sat next to one another, and we all spent time picking at every little detail. Eventually, we all agreed to just test drive the damn things and quit staring at them. The automatic transmissions were flawless, smoothly picking through their four speeds to find just the perfect gear for the situation. The Hydropneumatic suspension ate up the bumps (and we majorly owe Pharte for their technology on that front) and the soft seats made it quite comfortable to drive around.

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After putting about four-thousand miles on each car, each of us came to our own conclusions on which car we liked more. We handed both cars over to the test drivers, and they came back with a set of arbitrary numbers detailing what they liked about the cars.

Both cars sold rather well. More AWD models were sold, though the results were a bit skewed because someone put a geared limited slip diff in the RWD model, making it more expensive than the AWD one.

[TurboJ]

By the way, I'd love to shout out TurboJ for inspiring me to finally start up my company thread. I'm looking forward to seeing how different our 1982 cars are.

I just read through this thread again after we did the transmission deal and I must say I like your cars. Also I'm flattered that my "crazy stuff" Patriot cars
inspired you Nice to see another muscle car -style manufacturer here. And usefully one that has some sanity applied! We at Patriot are always striving
for the ultimate craziness so we are happy to see someone hasn't completely lost it! This way we can preserve 'Murican muscle for a wider audience!