Greets,

I was thinking about Shadowrun. How wussy the cars are. Most of the SR cars seem to be scifi editions of the Toyota Corolla, Nissan Micra, or VW Golf. Small, short Japanese cars with ludicrous names.

So, I draw out the question where are the cool cars. Where are the lowriders and muscle cars? Where are the Detroit models like the Cadillac Eldorado or the Dodge Charger?

Is Shadowrun really about driving the midpriced Smart car made from near plastic?

The era of steel-monsters that use up fuel like crazy is over in 206+.

The infamous deMarco brothers are working on modifying a Hotspur to meet their exacting specifications. That one aside, the selection of vehicles is heavily limited to 1-2 of each class... something like the Charger might be best represented by the GP-COP or the LS-Modded Honda 3240 Turbo (similar model: the Eurocar Persecutor SE ) out of the Security vehicles section of Arsenal.


Not sure it's gonna take that long... when I started driving about 10 years ago, I remember gasoline being a sliver under 1 USD a gallon. I saw diesel for 4 USD a few days ago.

So-called "cool" cars are eventually going to have to take a backseat to reality - and that reality is that giant cars are just going to be impossible to use in the future (unless somebody invents a v8 engine that runs on the Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future).

As long as there are people who have more money than others there will always be cool cars. The nice thing with old fashioned American cars is that you can actually modify them. There are numerous examples of modern cars that have the same appeal as the old American cars (from Sports cars, roadsters, to luxury saloon cars). Besides, do you really see the appeal of putting two trolls and the elf rigger in the back of a hatchback?

And what about street credibility when you drive in a reasonably priced car?

-Chrysalis

dont you know that big muscle do not run on gasoline? it runs on properly aged whiskey!

beyond that, grab the stats from the westwind or shin-hyung and rebrand it as something more muscle like.

Everyone does remember the one proverb: "Necessity is the Mother of invention!" right?

When oil runs out there will be alternatives. Trust me, there's just too much money to be made.

Unfortunately, there's also a lot of money to be made by controlling the oil and stopping the development of alternatives...

I've had a character or two describe a Westwind as a Mustang or a Charger, and no one really minds or anything. *shrugs* No biggie, either way, as rarely as cars really come up in game.

Well, the authors did leave the upcoming oil crisis out of the vehicle fluff in Arsenal, just stating that cars in 2070 are usually hybrids running on a mix of gasoline and biofuel. And I don't remember there being other notes about shortages or innovations in fossil fuel in SR history. But then I also never read any of the previous edition's rigger books.
Was there anything in SR2/3 fluff?

Bah, whats the fun if ya can't have a car that when you rev it at the stop light the imports shiver in fear and envy!

man gas for 90 cents was not that long ago damit!

You may thank China and India for becoming industrianised nations and adding 2,5 billion potential consumers of gasoline for the 3/gallon prices ...

Anyway, the vehicle selection in SR4 is just sad, depressing and stupid. You'd be off best to convert something from SR3, like the Dynamit,, and use that as a basis for your muscle car.

Of course, the authors and SR4 fanboys will go to great lengths to tell you why a Westwind's stats are more than sufficient for anything sports cars-y you may need.

Or, you go with the times and buy your characters Segway Personal Transporterts, or drone wheelchairs.

and yet the import could very well keep pace or even outperform on the same amount of fuel that the little stop light show consumed

Yeah, that's me. A big ol' SR4 fanboy.

Yeah, you can tell that by how they are all covered in armor plate heavier than most so called "armored cars". Nothing like adding a few tons of weight to improve fuel economy, handling and stability.

In a world as fucked up as the Sixth armoured cars are going to be huge. I remember when my parents were living in Ecuador and my mom was looking for a car, and right on the showroom floor they had an armoured LandRover with a pintle mount. It wasn't a 'specialty' dealership either. Just GM (or some such) Ecuador. When chances are, at some point in your life you will get shot at by a go-gang on your morning commute putting some armoured plating on your car just makes sense. I also expect that this need will lead to a revolution in light vehicle armour. If the armour is some weird carbon fiber mesh between the panels of the door it's not going to add that much weight for a car to have a fairly decent armour value, at least against small caliber weapons.

Of course the first thing we did when we got 4th ed was convert that Humvee from Fields of Fire.

Remember that the items in the main book are generally intended to act as classes of vehicles, not specific vehicles unto themselves. For instance, my "Mercury Comet" is actually a 2070s Nissan Skyline/350Z style coupe, given that I paid to have it modded with turbocharging and speed optimization. Even Arsenal states that the Hyundai Shin-Hyung is ALSO the BMW 400GT. And if that doesn't turn your crank... just make something up!

I'm also gonna inform you all of a little bit of vehicular heresy: top speed generally doesn't matter for runners. Seriously. Most shadowruns take place in a cramped urban environment where there are all kinds of cars and shit in your way. It's great you have a 2070 model Supra with dual turbos and that special Quicksilver fuel package that gives you 750bhp off the line, but you know what?
You're never gonna hit 200mph in Seattle, period. You'll hit someone or something if you try.

Handling and accelleration, on the other hand... that's where you should be dumping your money. Top speed matters a lot less than breaking line of sight and quickly navigating surface streets in Cap Hill and Queen Anne.

That's why you have awesome rides like The GMC Bulldog Step-Van and a wide assortment of motorcycles. Some of them more wussy than others. And you can drop your kids off at school by day, and do Shadowrunning by night!

You mean like how Toyota is abandoning its Prius concept and everyone and their dog has canceled the long term hydrogen fuel cell research projects they have going?

Oh, wait.. they haven't.

There is a buttload of money to be made in this sort of eco-friendly market. Just look at the Prius man (for the love of god) and to see why it isn't as simple as you think it is, look at the Honda Civic hybrid. The prius massively outsells the civic hybrid, despite consistently scoring worse in reviews. The explanation: The Prius looks different, the civic hybrid looks exactly like a regular civic. Honda jumped the wrong way and that cost it money.

People are buying the Prius as a status symbol to demonstrate their eco credentials (despite the small euro desiels being more eco-friendly). But the grim reality is that corporations will make whatever they can profitably sell. Plus it takes a seriously long time to develop a new car, like 5+ years. The envrio cars are only just starting to come into production now that the prius has demonstrated you can make money. Car companies are pretty conservative as R&D is seriously expensive, and if you jump the wrong way you lose billions of dollars, so everyone was happy to trundle along with the combustion engine because it A) Made money and B) Made money (There are reasons C-> Z, but I'm sure you get the idea)

And thats not going to change in 2070. Car companies will make whatever they think they can sell, and are pretty conservative about that.
high energy prices indicate that fuel efficent cars will be all the rage, totally irrespective of what they are powered with.

You didn't specify if you play SR3 or 4. In SR3, it's easy to draw up whatever car you want with Rigger 3 rules. If you hate doing stuff like that, let me know and I'll do it for you.
If you play SR4, then don't ask me, I don't know vehicle stats for it.

It's really not that hard to come up with vehicle stats for SR4, at least if you're familiar with SR3's rules. I've done fairly well just eyeballing it making everything from a Desert Rat converstion to a GiTS style Tilt Wing. At the end of the day it just comes down to looking at the stats and saying 'does this work for my game or not?'



Took me less than 5 minutes. I started at 9:35, ended at 9:39.
*it took longer to edit the table so stuff lined up than it did to actually write the thing up.
*typo on the price.

very comparable to the westwind.

the diff is (using westwind as basis):

-1 handling
+10 "sprint" accel
-40 speed
+2 body
+4 armor
-10000 cost

not sure if the drop in speed and handling would offset the increase in accel, armor and body so much that it should result in a 10000 price drop...

oops, that's a typo. The price should be the same as a westwind.

And you're right, it should be similar to the westwind. The westwind is the "sports car" from the book so having them simmilar makes sense. Why would I base it off a Bulldog or Honda Spirit?

well in that case it should not be much of a problem imo.

I think that, because SR is supposed to be very dystopian, when in doubt, go with the worst case scenario...
It just makes more sense to me...
Hell, you could probably charge you players a ton for gas too...

I just noticed that you're labeling the VW Golf as a japanese car. Tsss....

ouch, didnt notice that one. and Chrysalis isnt even american?!

And just for kicks here's the Armoured Mercedes I almost always make sure my PC's get after they have a bit of saved up.

I actually made stats for about 4 different Charger models, and your stats are almost identical to the stats I had for the SRT-10 I cooked up.
I like Chargers.

This statement got me peeved at first, but then I thought, damn, he's right.

oops, seems i forgot to put a at the end of that one

but yes, the whole thing reminded me of the first fast and the furious movie where they almost made a point of the classical american muscle beating the highly modified modern stuff.

Oh, I thought you were just calling Americans stupid.

Well, to be fair, classic american muscle cars - when tuned, charged, and kitted out - generally will beat the snot out of most modified modern stuff. That's because most modern cars that get heavily modified are high-compression, low displacement japanese cars, or cars that use Japanese engines despite being primarily marketed abroad, such as Acuras, Lexuses, et cetera. I mean, quite frankly, a 1969 Chevy Camero with a supercharger, a modfied powertrain, and weight reduction can and will beat most rice racer cars because it puts out a lot more torque and horsepower.

That isn't to say it's always the case - see Supras, Skylines, the occasional heavily modded RX-8 - but as a rule of thumb, a car with a giant gas-guzzling engine will go faster than a small zippy thing. The entire idea behind light tuner cars is to be able to match the performance of a larger engine without having that engine. Muscle cars skip directly to "enormous engine" because the point is to go fast without modification or tuning. If you do mod or tune that kind of car, it will go stupid fast.

I like muscle cars. But I like the eurocars more, because german engineering makes me smile.

not stupid, but home ground myopic, more often then not, yes.

as in, when one have a nation that supply just about everything the world have to offer, from snowy mountains to sun rich beaches, and where everyone talk one language (ok, there are dialects, and the "odd" community but still), one risk ending up not bothering to look or maybe even think about whats outside the borders unless forced to do so...

Awww. That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Besides, German Cars tend to be very highly motorized. After all, you still can legally drive 250 kph (155 mph) on most German highways. And it's always a good thing to have some reserve. Most cars have a chip that caps top speed installed, but getting rid of these is rather easy. And that's sedans I'm talking about, not sports cars.


To be fair, Americans DO have to brush up on Spanish by now, if they plan to get around in California, New Mexico or Texas. But yes. Most Americans have little experience outside the states. It's an expensive travel too, though, and they simply have but one truely foreign nation around them (Canada not being counted, as it's very similar to the US, culturally). And flights to Brazil are already too expensive for the average American. Besides, as you said, they have everything at home, so why bother with weird foreign languages?

Just because, as a European, I am used to passing though four different language zones (six if you count Badenian and Bavarian as a language, not a dialect, which, considering the cloeseness of scandianvian languages, would be feasible) only to get to Rome, doesn't mean everyone thinks the same way. Chinese, for instance, don't get out much either (and have everything they could want at home), so that's not an attribute only Americans excel in.

true, but the chinese are not that outwardly active in marketing their way of life so to speak...

hell, apple was dragged to court here in norway over behaving as if us consumer laws applied iirc.

isnt there a saying, when in rome, do as the romans?

They don't? Um ... they do! They just don't in the western hemisphere.

And yes, in Europe (and India), American influence is prevalent. Not in Asia, Africa or the Middle East, though.

heh, i stand corrected i guess.

Sorry to drag everything off topic. My fault.

meh, no biggie. better that then having some topic nazi of a mod roll over the thread, shredding it to bits.
and yes, i have seen it happen on different forums...

Tell me about it. I bought a BMW 325i last week (a car I have wanted for about 10 years) and it's not like the car's super sporty or anything...but I still have to consciously keep myself from speeding every single time I touch the accellerator. The paddle shift system probably doesn't help that, though, because I feel like it's taunting me.
I do wish we had the german "safe speed = as fast as you can drive while still being in control of your car" rule. But god knows a "use your brain" rule would never fly in the US.

It does make me wonder, though... Being a world in which robot pilots are the norm for getting around, and a central switching system is often controlling all the traffic, does Shadowrun actually have a speed limit? I've never played with it having one, but mostly that's because it's a horrible world and the cops have better things to do than pull over speeders that might kill them suddenly.


This is immensely true. I keep getting surprised that people in Washington don't speak Spanish, because I grew up in California and just took it for granted that people would know some.

thats only for a small part of the autobahn iirc...

The older parts in West Germany usually are without any speeding restrictions, but the former comies have in larger parts kept their 120 kph cap. Not that any car safe for the pursuit Wartburg could go any faster anyway.


Heh. Last time I was in the states (Hawaii, Big Island and Oahu), the empty highways (especially in Big Island) taunted me to just, well, drive as I would drive in Germany, attracting a following of a couple of cars who propably figured that, as I drove insanely fast by their standards (my usual safe cruising speed is around 160 to 180 kph, depending on the car's motorisation and curvyness of the road) that they figured I must have some sort of early warning device against speeding controls. Took me some time to understand that, as Hawaiians usually drive even more passively and peacefully than Americans generally do (and that already is, to me, very passive).

What helps keep Germans alive while driving at 100 mph, usually not within safe distance, is how rigorously driving school is here. Basically, you train driving for about a year, spending around €1700 to €2000 (roughly $3000 to $4000) on lessons, various theoretical and practical tests and permits - which is damn nescessary to keep the death count low among young drivers (it's still fairkly high, though).

Our roads are much more difficult to travel than american roads are, as they usually follow ox car trails bukilt for slow moving ox carts, not cars going at around 100 kph (the standard allowed speed on non-Autobahn roads). Usually, those roads are flanked by trees, which is a nice tradition but also makes getting offroad a very deadly experience.

American roads are, compared to that, easy to travel. I remember very well a lane called saddle road on Big Island the car rental clerk warned me not to navigate in any circumstance, as it was populated by car-crushing tanks, impossible curves and generally a death trap. I had to take that road, though, to make it back in time, and did so first feeling slightly scared - but in the end, I know much more difficult roads (basically, the same terrain difficulty, but with drunk East Germans coming in from all possible directions and criscrossing boar packs and whatnot) back home. But without my very expensive and thorough training (whcih in fact includes a course through back-country roads where you have to go pretty fast, much faster than would be safe) I would indeed have found this very challenging.

So yeah, we get by with our free speed = right below the point where you lose control of your vehicle rule, but it does have it's price. Also, most Germans make French look like timid drivers. I often get the feeling some people confuse their car with some sort of iinsanely fast tank - they just come at you at 50 kph difference, and if you cannot get out of the left lane in time, you're done for (nearly, usually they bare so that they JUST won't hit your rear bumper and flash and honk angrily).


Well. Rigger 3 Revised says there is - and it's enforced via GridLink. Non-Gridlinked vehicles are tracked by automated surveillance systems, and their holders identified by license plate scan/transponder signal and fined accrdingly and automatically. If you ask me, that makes people with transponder scramblers free to screw around as they wish, so long as they don'*t cause anyone harm, as the cops have more urgent things to do than harrass the occasional wage slave who really enjoys his BMW sports car.