Hey everyone - I'm new to these boards (Well, not really.. I'm a reformed lurker. But aren't we all?)

Anyway, as my introductory post, I'd like to propose a creative exercise; That's right: Pimp my limo (Shadowrun style, ofcourse).

Now you may be wondering "WTF" or possibly "What is he smoking?" Well the answer is, silly person; I don't smoke!

A bit of background: My character is a vehicle-expert/auto-mechanic who loves to party. He's also a skilled car thief and shadowrunner. (and and ork, but that's just because orks>all). Our last mission involved a prison break-out followed by a high-speed police chase (I told everyone I was creating a distraction so they could escape - but really it was just for fun). Unfortunately, theres a lull in the action while we lie low for a while. On the up side, I have a huge wad of nuyen from completing said run. Being the problem-solving ork that I am, I figure I'll just entertain myself by stealing a limo, and, well... pimping it.

My ideas so far:
-Bright yellow paint
-Hydrolics
-Rip out those back seats to make room for speakers and skylights (And, of course, make it a convertable)
-Neon lights
-Very very shiny rims (Spinners, perhaps?)

Note that I never said my character had particularly good taste .

My intention is to roll up in my ridiculous limousine next time a Johnson wants to meet us at some exclusive club and start blasting "Roller coaster of love" (Just for fun mind you - I'd of course claim it was some other sexy ork when we met to discuss the run).

Finally; the question: How do I go about pimping my ride 2070 style? In other words, what kind of nifty and remarkably excessive technology can I put on my (soon to be) ride?

Well, you could have the whole thing covered in electronic paint so that you can display any kind of pattern or moving image on the surface that you like. That's probably a good start.
Chuck in a stupidly-oversized holographic hood ornament?

I'm reminded rather strongly of the episode of Monster Garage where they turned a limousine into a Fire Truck. One of the key changes was a water cannon that hydraulically lifted out of the sunroof. That or a more lethal variant seems like appropriate pimp-age for Shadowrun.

Some kind of beamburst set-up front and back.
Oh, and line the seats with funky fur from some weird magical critter, of course.

My friend and fellow poster mdynna is making rigger addaption rules for SR 4.0. I think what you could do in the mean time is find the price of modern day equivalents and divide the cost by 5 (ie the $ to conversion). So in the example of your car:

Paint job: $1000 => 200
Hydrolics: $2500 => 500
Neon ligths: $100 => 20
Rims: $150x4 => 30 x 4
Mod: $2500 => 500
Speakers: Take from book (pg 325)

This is just a rough guestemate but this is what I would do.

Wow, lots of responses; and I'm loving the ideas so far

Added:
-Electronic moving paint (Purple flames maybe?)
-Holographic hood ornament (Still not sure of what though)
-Beamburst lasers from the grill and possibly beneath the sides
-Big fuzzy dice (How could I forget something so basic?)

My only concern with the hydraulic lift cannon is space, since I intend to turn the limo into a convertable (the back portion) and I was wanting to install a sunroof in the cab, so I could sit atop the car and wave at my adoring fans (How could they not be adoring??)

Although... some sort of weaponry *would* be nice, seeing as how it's a stolen vehicle and someone might take offense... hmm... Possibly something less obvious would be a good bet.. in case I need a hasty getaway from jealous cops. Something along the lines of an oil-slick maybe, or obscuring fog.

I just gave myself another idea: Fog machine! (Would go great with the beamburst.. AND I could crank it up in case I need to make a break for it.)

And those prices are very helpful, TBRM.. I think my GM would hate me if I made him come up with costs for all this stuff . Are those the costs of parts+installation or just parts? (Because I'll be doing all the work in my own private garage)

Keep the ideas coming! (Also, is it possible to make a stolen car look legit, i.e. make it broadcast some sort of fake ID number? And if so how would that hold up in 'higher class' areas?)

You need some mini-blimps with loudspeakers and those beambursts with the ruthenium polymer paint job (on the limo) acting as a big screen for whatever porno music video you're streaming. Switch the hydraulics for mechanical arms attached to the wheels and go-go-gadget on that ass. Obviously the rear is a fold out spa with drone back massagers (it's just a hot tub when closed up). Then you need to install a portable Spam Zone generator, where you lay waste to the mortal AR world with your army of mad clowns and hot ork chica icons.

[e] Also, converting today's costs into nuyen is more or less 1USD = 1¥ - or it was in all the previous editions, did they change that? I know 5$ UCAS = 1¥ in 205x, and maybe in SoNA, too, but that's a whole nother story.

Yeah, it needs to make a splash in AR as well as IRL.
But as mentioned above, and you could easly spend $20,000 on just modding that puppy out.
I mean hell, for an Sr3 tuner car I left a line "¥10,000 for various physical, electronic and AV mods."

Heck in 2070 it could broadcast sim to actually 'make' people like it!

What about AROs? You could have it overlay a shimmering purple dragon gouting flames and filling the air with "Ride of the Valkyries" to anybody looking at it in AR. Particularly effective to those with active PANs.

You don't need spinners... you need Pimpstar wheels.

As for weapons... the last guy I knew who had a limo put one of those Fields of Fire mortars in the trunk with an autoloader, and kept it loaded with laser-guided mortars. The weapons he carried (a Browning Max-Power and an MP5-TX) had their laser sights swapped out for laser designators.

He'd park the limo somewhere near whatever was going on, and if anything went seriously wrong, he knew he could always call back to the limo's computer to pop the trunk and lob a round towards his current location (he had GPS and mapping software built in, to let him arc it over buildings if he had to). Then he'd haul out his sidearm and point it at his target, laser "dot" visible.

Nothing like watching this dude in a suit square off with an armored car, fire his pistol once, and having the entire car suddenly turn into a roiling ball of flame as an anti-armor mortar strikes it. There were a couple of NPCs who badly wanted to know what he was loading in that thing, as he calmly tucked it back into it's shoulder holster.

gigantic chrome tusks in front of the grill.

Seriously... my buddy Chuck and I came up with the idea for these about 3 years ago. We wanted to use LEDs to get Tony Montana's head on our rims, as the ultimate pimpage.

Fast forward to a few months ago, and some other yahoo's selling our idea. It was freaky

You are I believe a competent hacker, the DMV ant that tuff a nut to crack.


Vehicle ownership is a function of records in the DMV.

Edward

Either fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror... or a chandelier.

You haven't watched enough of John Carpenter's Escape from ... movies, then.

You'll certainly need a wackeldackel. It's the puppy version of the dancing elvis figure.
(sorry, haven't found a better picture)

Just to nitpick, ruthenium polymer could simulate Pimpstar on the rims. However, I'd think you'd want to cover the wheel wells with vehicle. This would better allow invisible operation, since wheels are difficult to keep painted (obviously, having hydraulics allows you to sit flush with the ground, minimizing shadow).

Yes I was thinking that. Although ruthenium polymer wouldn't glow at night, would it? Any, what the hey. Pimping a ride like this isn't about practicality or subtlety!

Ruthenium polymer basically turns a surface into high defination television; so it can show Mr. Ed even in the middle of the night. It's scanners that allow it to make your car "seem" invisible by recording the world around you and displaying it in the correct position on the painted object.

Why wouldn't it? It has to be able to give off light to be able to replicate the background behind it...

To replicate it perfectly, yes. But I didn't think that stuff was quite at the 'make me completely invisible' level yet. I guess I'd thought of it much more as a kind of electronic paper technology: still potentially damn good for camouflage if it's linked to image sensors, but only in the way that a Chameleon is good at camouflage. That beastie matches the background, but it doesn't glow.
Still, even if I was right about that I guess there'd be nothing to stop you making it semi-transparent and then having a light-emitting layer underneath.

I always figured that for things like standing near a light source, you'd pretty much *have* to be emitting light, not just be reflective.

Well not necessarily. Take natural camouflage, like- oh... dolphins or something. The light source is above, so they evolve light-colored bellys. They don't need to emit light for that to be a good camouflage.
At any rate, I'm still probably wrong about SR ruthenium polymers. Was just explaining my reasoning is all.

To make a plane nearly invisible from ground at night, you have to illuminate it. A little bit . Else it would be darker than the the sky, and therefor easy to spot.

Um no. Not easy to spot. Not at night, even if it's painted bright pink! (EDIT: though a navy blue would be better than black, admittedly)
This is all a matter of degree. I'm not saying light-emission wouldn't make for much better camouflage, just that you can get pretty good camouflage without it.

Yeah, but there's ways in which that breaks down, and for ruthenium polymer's intended environment, those are pretty big ways.

Dude in a suit jogs across a field. In the background of this field is a bigass concrete wall, with spotlights sweeping it (think a prison). If the ruthenium polymer emits light, he's fine. If it just turns the color of whatever's behind it, he's going to make a bigass dark gray silohette against that wall for anyone looking "through" him at it.

Well yeah. But are we saying that a ruthenium polymer Chameleon suit (p316), even if it can emit light (and I concede it probably can) gives perfect invisibility, or even Predator-level invisibility?
I'd assumed it was quite good, but not quite that good. It's only -4 to perception, after all. Equivalent to a guard with normal vision spotting a perp through heavy fog, not equivalent to trying to spot the perp in total darkness.

It was much better in SR3 (beyond blind fire!). But like you said above, one could always put photovoltic below the ruthenium polymer to make it glow if the GM ruled it did not.

This has reminded me of that daft invisible car in Die Another Day.
You know. The one that Bond hides behind.

Witness: SR3's ruthenium polymer, if you were willing to put enough into it, could get you something like a +12 on visual perception checks (blind fire was only a +. I have a feeling the chameleon suit is intended to not go quite that far for balance purposes.

It's also got noticeably more armor built into it than you could really get with ruthenium polymer from SR3, since ruth poly knocked half of the armor value off whatever you put it on. The most common build I saw was Light Security Armor (with Security Helmet) modded with ruth poly, which ran about as good as a plated armor vest.