Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 156: A Simple Solution

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 156: A Simple Solution

Recently, I challenged myself to make a car whose exterior design had a grand total of 25 fixtures in total, as a submission for a forum challenge limiting entries to 100 fixtures or fewer. This time, I used my CSR121 entry (the '94 GEC GS2 Turbo, an old build from an earlier version of Automation that has since been rendered obsolete by various game updates) as inspiration, but decided to reimagine it with a far simpler design (on a new, hugely improved version of the original car's body set) to comply with my chosen fixture limit. The resulting car, the 1992 GEC G2S Turbo 2.0, is shown below.

The GEC G2S Turbo 2.0 is a more minimalist reimagining of my CSR121 entry, built on similar principles.

The G2S Turbo is powered by a 200-horsepower turbocharged straight-four driving the rear wheels via a five-speed manual gearbox and a limited-slip differential, but we're here to discuss how I managed to squeeze just 25 fixtures into the design (which was actually quite coherent, by my own admission), not to explain its technical specs and performance stats. I used 9 fixtures at the front (2 wipers, 1 grille, 1 mirrored indicator repurposed as a fog light, and a headlight cluster comprised of 5 mirrored headlight fixtures), 4 fixtures on the sides (1 fuel filler cap, 1 radio antenna, 1 mirrored door handle, 1 mirrored side mirror) and 12 fixtures at the rear (5 mirrored headlight fixtures for the taillight clusters, 1 centrally mounted headlight fixture for a rear reflector, 1 taillight fixture for a central third brake light, 1 rear-mounted license plate, 1 exhaust pipe, and 3 body moldings - one shaped and placed like a small rear spoiler, another as an exhaust pipe cutout, and the last one serving as a license plate holder), for a total of 25 fixtures in all.

Overall, I liked how well this one turned out - even more so than my first submission for this challenge, with was entered in the 10-fixture category, and in hindsight felt very crude by comparison. The next most difficult category (which required a maximum of 25 fixtures - there are also categories for cars with up to 50, 75, and 100 fixtures, respectively) felt more suited to my skillset, so I chose that one for my second submission. After looking at the G2S a second time, I reckon that its exterior design could easily be developed further into a more highly detailed build with more fixtures, possibly even incorporating a fully 3D interior (which the base model does not have). For example, adding front and rear badges, as well as a front license plate, and some additional body moldings on the sides and front (if I choose not to install any functional aerodynamic fixtures) would only require five more fixtures in total, bringing the fixture count up to 30. Even so, I am happy with this build, especially given the fact that the original GEC GS2 required 29 fixtures - four more than the G2S shown here.