GTP Cool Wall: 2014 KAMAZ Master 4326 Dakar

2014 KAMAZ Master 4326 Dakar

  • Total voters
    95
  • Poll closed .
I have to be honest and say that I really didn't know much about Unimogs before this thread, @niky managed to make me fall in love in a single post.

It's like having a pet elephant then taking it for a walk downtown.

JMoney689
16.5 Liter Engine! Almost twice the size of a Viper engine!

Doesn't matter how good or bad the rest of the car is; that fact alone makes it Sub-Zero.
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So does that put a train in the ice box? I guess a barge is absolute zero! :lol:
 
The engine is cool because it's stuffed into a vehicle with a somewhat small body. A train is very large, so a big engine makes sense. Here, it makes no sense. That's why it is sub-zero.
 
JMoney689
The engine is cool because it's stuffed into a vehicle with a somewhat small body. A train is very large, so a big engine makes sense. Here, it makes no sense. That's why it is sub-zero.
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Nope. For a truck this size, it's nothing particularly big.
 
JMoney689
16.5 Liter Engine! Almost twice the size of a Viper engine!

Doesn't matter how good or bad the rest of the car is; that fact alone makes it Sub-Zero.
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scania__r580_t580_retarder_air_liter_v8_engine_16_b6x4_2002_1_lgw.jpg


Sixteen liters. Small body. Not cool.

Merlin4.jpg


Twenty seven liters. Off the scale. (Sub zero or seriously uncool, your choice.)

Famine
20 litres? That's cute.
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Meh. Low HP per liter. Lazy engineers. :D [/sarcasm]
 
Regarding the engine. Here it is, the YaMZ-8463.
16.5 L, 850 hp.
uploads%2F2011%2F07%2F201107061032_008.jpg

It's kinda gluttonous (fuel consumption is 100 L per 100 km!), but nobody offered a more reliable engine than this.
Kamaz Master tried using the American 520 hp Cummins engines instead, but they didn't succeed in the race. So the team remained loyal to the Russian engines - they have great torque on low RPM and work good even with low quality fuel.
 
Doodle
I would like to know why. I'm curious.
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Because, and excuse me Famine if it seems I'm trying to speak on your behalf, "coolness" is something very rarely seen in a racetrack. Like I said in my post on the 787B thread, racecars are, usually, nothing but mad excercises un advertisement and engineering, two things that hardly can be considered cool. They're nerdy and only exist to this day because of commercial purposes. 95% of the time, they're nothing but tools for geeks to drool for and for drivers to earn titles and trophies that only matter to them and to said geeks. Coolness, or at least one of the most common interpretations of it, is something you see on the streets, it's something you judge on a parking lot or in front of a cafe. Sometimes it depends on the driver, but in the case of a racing car...all drivers are basically the same: very talented walking billboards who want to win over twenty other idiots like him. Racing cars hardly work on the cool wall. They're either undisputable sub zero legends, think Porsche 917s and Mazda 787B, or, like in most cases, seriously uncool tools for a job without any kind of character.

And there lies my dilemma with the Kamaz. I should judge it according to my parameters for judging racing cars but...it just doesn't cut it. I love it, don't get me wrong, I like that it can't be stopped by a 50cm wall and that it can run on canola mixed with blood...but it's just not sub-zero. It's no DAF Twinturbo. It's no 959.

Seriously uncool, but by God I'd love to drive such a thing across the Atacama!
 
Doodle
I would like to know why. I'm curious.
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You can't drive them.

Well, you might be able to, depending on GT Academy this year, but of all the people who are GTPlanet members, I can only think of three people who could conceivably drive "a race car". I can't come up with any set of circumstances that would result in me driving a Mazda 787B so, for me, it's not a car - it's a static display in a museum or it's an exhibition - and this applies to the overwhelming majority of people. If you can't drive it, you can't judge how cool it is - how on Earth will you know how it feels picking your kid up from school in it? :lol:

That said, I have driven two "race" cars, but they haven't passed through the halls of the Cool Wall yet. Since they weren't road legal I'd probably have to defer to the results-based argument of @TheCracker - and since I "won" in both, kerching!
Slash
What about a street car highly modified to be a race car?
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Modified cars = uncool. Modified cars are for car geeks like us and car geeks aren't cool.
 
Famine
You can't drive them.

Well, you might be able to, depending on GT Academy this year, but of all the people who are GTPlanet members, I can only think of three people who could conceivably drive "a race car". I can't come up with any set of circumstances that would result in me driving a Mazda 787B so, for me, it's not a car - it's a static display in a museum or it's an exhibition - and this applies to the overwhelming majority of people. If you can't drive it, you can't judge how cool it is - how on Earth will you know how it feels picking your kid up from school in it? :lol:

That said, I have driven two "race" cars, but they haven't passed through the halls of the Cool Wall yet. Since they weren't road legal I'd probably have to defer to the results-based argument of @TheCracker - and since I "won" in both, kerching!
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Ah. Ok. That clears things up. 👍
 
Slash
You can modify them to be both.
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Then it's not going to work well as either. You can optomise a road car to work well on a track, but it will be compromised as a road car. But tune it to make it passable as something you could possibly commute in, and it will be frustrating on track. You need the man power, the resources and the depth of knowledge of the Motorsport departments of Porsche, Ferrari or Renault to pull of a decent meld of road and track.
 
TheCracker
Then it's not going to work well as either. You can optomise a road car to work well on a track, but it will be compromised as a road car. But tune it to make it passable as something you could possibly commute in, and it will be frustrating on track. You need the man power, the resources and the depth of knowledge of the Motorsport departments of Porsche, Ferrari or Renault to pull of a decent meld of road and track.
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Touring car muscle.....
 
TheCracker
According to who? The owner/builder?
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Typically, as that's who builds them :lol:


There's absolutely no reason why a car can't be good at both. Look at Miata's. Fantastic on and off the track, even stock.
 
Famine
Actually an MX-5 on the road is quite uncomfortable, uncultured, crashy and stressful - particularly when it gets into the truck ruts on a motorway run.
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I was under the impression that they were actually good. :/

TheCracker
Would their opinion on their car making a 'great' road car yet perfect track car too stand up with a group of experts?
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That depends. No build is the same.
 

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