Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 89: The Perils of Min-Maxing

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 89: The Perils of Min-Maxing

In many Automation forum competitions, it is not uncommon to see entries which have deliberately sacrificed stats in one area to maximize those in another. This phenomenon is called min-maxing, and while it seems like a good idea from a certain viewpoint, in reality, this practice is (almost) universally despised for how it negatively impacts a car's competitiveness relative to other entries.

One example can be found in engine design with regards to block and head materials. From around 2000 onwards, alloy-block engines (especially those with an aluminum/silicon mixture as the block material are generally reliable enough for a very wide variety of applications, even for turbocharged engines. However, I've seen plenty of competition entries from this era (and the one immediately after it) whose designers stubbornly refuse to use anything but cast iron for their engines' block and heads. It's immediately apparent that such an approach is generally outdated thinking in the 21st century, since it not only adds weight but also produces more emissions, all other things being equal. Moreover, in later years, the reliability and affordability benefits (in terms of production units, material costs and engineering time) of an all-iron engine compared to an aluminum/silicon one become too small to be worth obtaining.

An example of min-maxing in action. All other things being equal, a fully cast-iron engine (above) in the modern era is somewhat cheaper than one made entirely using alloys such as aluminum/silicon (top), but is heavier and produces more emissions, and is not much more reliable, if at all, thereby making it an inferior choice overall.

Min-maxing can also occur in trim design, as several examples from the dark days of the Kee era proved. True story: my CSR32 entry went all-out on sportiness, with a double-wishbone front end, a viscous limited-slip differential, and a multi-link rear suspension, plus a five-speed automatic transmission. But with too little room in the budget left for a fancier interior, I had to settle for a cheaper standard interior and safety suite. Unsurprisingly, the client was not impressed, and he swiftly ignored it for not being well-suited to his preference for comfort over sportiness.

Mind you, there was an even worse example from that contest: one of the cars submitted, which I shall not explicitly name for fear of embarrassment, sacrificed literally everything for the sake of getting a rock-bottom price, and had a ladder frame, a live axle at the rear, and was powered by, of all things, an archaic, underpowered overhead-valve three-cylinder engine driving the front wheels. Unsurprisingly, it, too, was immediately rejected - but this time, for feeling (though not actually being) too cheap for the client's tastes.

And what about the winning entry from that contest? It followed the KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) philosophy - being built on simple underpinnings (struts up front, and to simulate rear struts on a front-engined car, semi-trailing arm rear suspension) and powered by a transversely mounted four-cylinder engine, driving the front wheels via a six-speed manual gearbox. The costs saved from the relative simplicity of its mechanicals were spent on better interior and safety features - exactly what the client wanted. It therefore came as no surprise that in the end, it won convincingly.

In short, while min-maxing may seem like a tempting way to improve certain stats while still meeting the requirements of the competition you're submitting your vehicle for, it's a much worse idea in practice than it seems on paper. So if you are tempted to min-max somewhere, by all means avoid it at all costs.