Remembering Times Part 1

Assalamualaikum, salam sejahtera and greetings!

My name is Mohammad Ali Ahsyar, as a part of Konmei Institution team i would like to share my point of view about the world of automotive, as the world going towards a greener and more environmentally concerned I’d like to refresh our memories to remembering the greatness and histories. The automotive trend as we know now will drastically change, there will be less and less power hungry machine but abundant in efficiently environment friendly machine, yes they will be fast too but ………..soulless………….

Don’t get me wrong, I have no intentions to despise the ne

w breed of machine. As the mankind progress we need to embrace new technologies or create one. It’s a pinnacle of each era to have a breakthrough in advancement of technologies, so as a traditionalist as I can be technologies is a must.

In fact, it’s what makes the world of automotive exciting.

For years my interest in cars, bikes, planes and anything that an engines could be attach to it has been profoundly observed by me. But that aside, let’s talk about car because it’s the main focus of Konmei Institution. The car designs of nowadays are a marriage between past and present or even future, it seems the designer and the manufacturer are aware the importance of continuation of heritage and legacy, it’s what make who they are and who we are. Everyone of us must have a childhood dream car that we lusted and dream of dri

ving one when we grown up, so some car company produce a new car for present generations with added past DNA in their design languages or just reincarnate a new one, it’s a déjà vu on wheels. Most notable is the return of Mini Cooper, Volkswagen New Beetle, Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro, and etc. But car like Ferrari 458 Italia incorporates a new and past together in the designs such as the reemerged central triplet exhaust.

The past greatness always been carried forward, because it contains illusive and mystical value of the generations it roams. The car likes Lamborghini Countach, Porsche 959, and Ferrari F40 is like a dragon in medieval times, burning villages and obliterate everything on its path equal to those car, trying to push the envelope until nothing to be pushed left, to become the best in the history, and rewrites the rules. As from those times, the trends never stop and the worlds are familiar with the terms Supercars. Each generations has their own supercar batch, car created to top one another and bringing wizardry to summon new technologies, some makes a bold moves by legalized race car for road use. From early 90’s to year 2000 many have failed to live up to their hype, some have short famed and some are merely a concepts.

To name a few successful car in the 90’s is 1993 Ferrari F50, 1992 Jaguar XJ200(even though it’s not what costumer hope for), 1990 Lamborghini Diablo(Countach replacement), Bugatti EB110 and the most brilliant of all 1993 McLaren F1…… a true legend. The McLaren F1 it’s a showcase of a man given a freedom and team to design and engineered from ground up without interference of marketing department to build a car set to be the fastest and most technologically advance of its times, with a top speed of 391 km/h set in 1997 without limiter, 1140kg of kerb weight , powered by BMW 6 litre V12 with 627 bhp at 7400rpm, and with power to weight ratio of 559 bhp-per-tonne the car is a landmark. It wasn’t intended to race, but race it has. The McLaren F1 GTR have taken an overall win in 1995 24 Hours Le Mans in GT1 class.

In the year 1997, LeMans and FIA GT saw some new type of race machines… The field is filled with McLaren F1 longtail, Lotus Elise GT1, Porsche 911 GT1 Evo, Panoz Esperante GT1, and my personal favourite Mercedes CLK-GTR. To race these car manufacturer must at least have an equivalent of 2 cars homologated for road use, some has been bought by Sultan of Brunei to added to his collections…. Until 1999 the Japanese are also want a piece of the action too, Toyota enters with TS020 Gt-one, Nissan with their R390 GT1 and also SARD enters the MC8-R. There are also machines worth mentioning such as TVR speed 12 and Lister Storm competing in FIA GT. Supercars wardrobe just getting crampier, for each of the race machine the road homologated machines joins the rank of “not racing supercar” such as Isdera Commendatore 112i, some small numbers of productions car makers and tuners machines.

Some Japanese car makers doesn’t bother about the supercars existents instead they create their own trends. The performance car segments are famous with the rising suns products, to name a few Nissan Skyline, Toyota Supra, Mitsubishi 3000GT, Mazda RX-7 and the brilliant Honda NSX, they also have their own races like JGTC to honed their technologies, the Japanese dominates WRC in 90’s with Subaru Impreza, Mitsubishi Lancer EVO and Toyota Corolla and Celica. Some of the cars even outgunned European counterpart upsetting big names such as Ferrari and Porsche, they’ve earn their respects. The Americans meanwhile playing with themselves in their own backyards, synonymous with muscle car image the brutepowerfuel thirstybadassinthestraightline machines from mid 70’s, they created beast throughout 90’s but precisions and tech are not they strongest points, only Americans appreciate and like to tame the machines. Giants in form of Ford Motor Company is the only one set to best everything in the world, still the GT-90 wasn’t able to be produce for the masses. The big fight is always been between Germans, Italians, and British.

There were the 90’s, the times which Cobain found dead, Operation desert storm initiated, princess Diana dies in Paris Car crash, and Forrest Gump. Car makers spends billions in R&D to produce better products, to win races, to be the most technologically advance, to be desired, safest, and most efficient. The next part, I’ll review year 2000 onwards the decades which supercars genre raising it stakes, car makers power war, and creation of new segments. Until next time….

prepared by: ALIen