The Japanese Power Pact [FINISHED]

[mer_at]

Long wheelbase and steel everywhere (adds to safety AND comfort)

[RaduST]

i think i'll have a go at this one.

[Pleb]

@strop: Anything goes as long as it is 2002 tech year and it follows the restrictions in the OP!
(And yes, any engine placement is allowed as long as it's RWD)

I will check entries when I'm back at my PC this afternoon.

[mer_at]

Mars Engineering enters the Competition with the ME Beutelteufel.

[nialloftara]

That's a jaw dropping sideview.

[HighOctaneLove]

Assuming I don't fail scrutineering this is my entry...

Presenting the Bogliq Arigato R!!!

JPPHighOctaneLoveBogliqArigatoR - Rev0.jpg (82.85 KiB) Viewed 4533 times

No idea where it'll place but this thing's so Japanese it virtually runs on ramen!

[strop]

Alright, I won't be ashamed to say I took a long time to tune this entry, mainly because it's another replica of a Japanese car I really really love: the immortal, unique Mazda RX-7!

To be precise, I took the base of an FD3S Spirit R (Type A) and worked from there. And yes, of course we don't have rotaries, so no 13B-REW twin turbo for you! Instead I tried to recreate similar outputs using a 1.8L i6 turbo, but of course since we use 80s turbo tech, there's like this huge torque boost and all of a sudden 314Nm arrives down the pipeline so erm, yeah. -18.5% engine penalty to tameness, ouch. Also, because of the engine size, the engine revs more like somebody swapped for a high revving tri-rotor motor, but the exhaust note is pretty close and I still haven't tired of manually testing the engine so I can hear it rev.

JPP-Strop-Mazda RX-7 FD3S Spirit R (Type A) JP Autosalon Build-1.png (771.72 KiB) Viewed 4522 times

As you can see, I've tried my best to maintain the placement of the stock fixtures and faithfully recreate the sexy tail light array. However, I will reveal now that the rear has a wide body kit on it as the rear wheels are kind of... fat. So it's not 100% stock but hey, since this is one of the most widely modded cars ever, there's all kinds of body kit for all kinds of trim!

JPP-Strop-Mazda RX-7 FD3S Spirit R (Type A) JP Autosalon Build-2.png (752.39 KiB) Viewed 4522 times

For the most part, aside from some pimped out seats, the car actually got the Sparco treatment, so is 35kg lighter than the original, while running a relatively more aggressive setup. It also has more downforce than expected, so top speed has been reduced, but it goes around corners quite well, while still being comfortable (enough). Other things that weren't quite to spec included the brakes, but differences are minor and mainly due to my inability to create a car with 50:50 weight distribution.

Testing took place almost solely on Mt Haruna downhill. Despite having a measly 276hp and weighing something like 1175kg, it will run the touge faster than the vast majority of the BSLL contenders (take that, Kristina! )

(Many thanks to Felgen and Pleb for their mod parts used in this build. Without modded parts, it wouldn't even occur to me to try and recreate so many of the cars now possible.)

[Pleb]

Dude! THAT looks amazing! I'll go over the pending entries this afternoon.

[strop]

So I couldn't help but follow up from the RX-7 (my real entry). Pleb has kind of stumbled upon my favourite kind of market: Japanese tuner cars, because cars from before and after the power agreement were by and large extremely amenable to modification (and there was a lot of cheeky engineering going on).

So I couldn't help myself and went back to the AE86 idea, before Pleb clarified that it required tech year 2002. I assume this means I can't make a chassis from 1987, so this is a joke non-entry. (The side effect of using a chassis from 1987 is that while the chassis is cheaper, it's much harder to work with, there's less trim options, and you need to sink more into getting the same buffs for comfort and safety. So the following car has a luxury 80s system... I wonder if that means it has a multi-stacking cassette tape deck )

For this build I decided I would pay homage to one of the most obvious pop cultural automotive icons of the early noughties, thanks to a combination of the breakthrough of manga and drift into mainstream consciousness in the West (the two not at all coincidental). Takumi Fujiwara, of Initial D, drove a panda liveried Toyota Corolla AE86 Sprinter Trueno to many (increasingly unreal) victories on the midnight touge. In so doing the trusty 4-AGE got quite a few upgrades over his teenage years. Subsequently, the trusty AE86 has featured in many many racing simulations since, from the arcade drift games based directly on Initial D, to actual simulators.

Also, these cars are by and large modded like crazy, most of the examples you will see on the road today are probably not stock! So I saw no reason to keep anything much stock on my example either. In went the wide-body kit, the 80s wing, the splitter. Running fat sporty semi slicks, interior buffed with a pretty robust rollcage, and panels... replaced with really flimsy plastic. Then I went and took the 4-AGE block (i4 81x77mm), kept the dimensions and valvetrain but buffed up a lot of the internals and exhaust. Given how well tuned it was stock, in 1987 tech year I had enough difficulty even getting it to match stock specs! But pretending that I had revisited the car in 2002, power was increased... significantly (and cheaply, because I wished to keep the fundamentals the same and didn't turbo it).

The result: a car that would technically pass the regulations (except for the 1987 chassis), and, for an NA car, is only maybe 1-1.5% slower than my RX-7 on most... technical... tracks.

Trueno.png (920.7 KiB) Viewed 4513 times

Yeah, it's unfortunate that the rear looks so similar to an FC3S given the tools. Perhaps that is why I went so nuts with the lettering pack (with many many thanks to pyrlix and kubboz for making it possible!)

AE86-1.png (455.61 KiB) Viewed 4513 times

It was sadly impossible to convincingly emulate the panda livery, but I managed to sort of get the strips in. And the array is somewhat in the right place, just a bit off due to the awkward morphing of the body.

AE86-2.png (792.59 KiB) Viewed 4513 times

Also, yes, those box flares, this body wasn't 100% intended for an '87 Corolla, but still, hopefully the resemblance is good enough!

[TheTom]

Now that others have showcased their cars too, i think it's about time i display mine. This is the 2002 AMW Swallow. It carries the japanese spirit more than any other Austrian car. Also, it carries enough equipment to make you safe and comfy even when you're abusing its 3.0L NA Straight Six which feeds its 275hp to only the rear wheels.

[nialloftara]

For the sedan crowd here is the Centauri (sold as a CPV for the Japanese market) Apogee.This is it's GT Turbo trim and as such it's power comes from a 3 liter turbocharged inline six. Equipped with aluminum heads fitted with dual variable valve timed overhead camshafts and 4 valve per cylinder this engine fully realizes it's potential, spinning 276 horsepower and 281 foot pounds of torque to the rear wheels through a 6 speed gearbox.

[np1993]

I am having issues hitting the comfort milestone. Any pointers? I have max sound insulation, premium interior +1 quality and comfort tuned brakes and can't seem to break the 29 mark. I am building a 4 seater coupe

[mer_at]

Try 2 Mufflers and Standard Air Intake?

[np1993]

Try 2 Mufflers and Standard Air Intake?

good call, straight pipes might not be very comforting :-p

[np1993]

Well Ladies and Gents here is the 2002 Sake Drift!

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JPP np1993-Sake drift - Rev0.jpg (84.95 KiB) Viewed 4459 times

JPP np1993-Sake drift-3.png (794.61 KiB) Viewed 4458 times

Featuring more air dams then we know what to do with a a wing borrowed from a boeing 747.