Introduction
I have a lot of ideas for cars to model. Way more than I have time for. And the thing is, once I've built them I don't even drive them all. There are just too many. So what I thought I'd do is build some cars to an intentional standard, and from the ground up, plan that they'll only be driven by the AI.
Thus what we've got here - three cars from the same decade, similar themes, with "LR" style interiors that looks just fine when an AI is piloting it. This let me have an average of 10 days per car, start to finish. A lot more like things were back in 2005 when I started 3d modeling. (some of my more detailed cars took more than a year.)
Installation
Open the 7zip file, drag and drop the content folder to assettocorsa/content/. Uses the same custom driver wearing a hat instead of a helmet as my other mods; if you already have him you can go directly to the cars folder and just add the 3 cars.
Description
Variety in vehicles along several spectrums is still possible, even picking from 1950s American options. These are made by the big 3 car manufacturers (were then, still are):
General Motors - the 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air, 2 door coupe. One of the more iconic cars of the '50s, favoured by racers because, by the standards of the day, it's small and has a powerful V8 engine. Chevrolet is GM's entry-level brand, but the Bel Air package adds plenty of chrome and power-everything.
Ford - the 1957 Mercury Commuter, 4 door wagon. It's long, it seats 9 (with 3 facing backwards in the cargo area), it has unique to Mercury styling where in earlier years it was just an upscale Ford. 1957 was the year quad headlights became legal in America, so they were kludged onto this car halfway through the year, and it shows.
Chrysler - the 1959 Dodge Coronet, 4 door sedan. At the time Dodge was the second level of Chrysler's badge engineering, above Plymouth. Unlike the Fury, it's not prone to kill your neighbours on purpose, but with the sheer length of spikes on the rear fins, they'd better stay away just to be safe.
Altogether it shows what companies were up to in the '50s, American car production was booming and new chassis were being created every other year as the styling advanced quickly.
Physics-wise this has the basics sketched in, but there's limited data about the Bel Air and essentially nothing on the other two so you can't expect that much fidelity. They work okay on tracks where the AI is set up for cruising, which is all I demanded of them.
Credits
Stereo - model, textures, physics
Kunos - soundbank from 427 Cobra. Not ideal but I wasn't gonna hire someone to do these.
