Introduction
It feels like more than the two years it's been. At the end of 2019, I ran a short poll on Race Department. I had a short list, half a dozen racecars I'd like to make. After anonymizing them by series/class to avoid everyone voting for the Ferrari, one very persistent user voted for the Ferrari about 50 times anyway. Too bad. I chose the runner up. Can-Am series, group 7, unlimited power. A 1966 Chinook Mk. 2. A Canadian-manufactured car in the "Canadian-American" series (though that was more about the track schedule).
Installation
Open the 7zip file, drag and drop into assettocorsa/content/cars.
This mod requires Custom Shaders Patch for the cphys extension and for shaders not shipped with the base game. This is to support more accurate rear suspension. If you haven't tried it, you really should - it's a fairly painless install, and with the bells and whistles disabled, it'll make your game run better than the original.
History
Documentation is a bit sparse, but here's my understanding: In 1964 or 1965, the Fejer brothers, of Toronto, Ontario, built the Mark 1 chassis, essentially on the template of a Mclaren M1 - they share cast parts, such as the magnesium wheels & suspension uprights, as well as the general frame layout, with front and rear double-wishbone suspension. The exterior design is alleged to be based on scaling up a Chaparral 2A toy car. It went well enough that they took what they had learned, refined the design a bit to increase downforce, and made the Mark 2 available for sale, while also updating their Mark 1 to use the same parts. In 1966 to 1967, three chassis were entered in the US Road Racing Championship (USRCC), and Canadian-American Challenge Cup (Can-Am). It's likely one of them further evolved into the Mark 5, which had a fully redesigned body to once again keep up with aerodynamic evolution.
These three known cars are the #33 Mark 1, run by the Fejers themselves, #1 Mark 2 and #5 Mark 2. Their liveries (as well as a variant on #1, since the car got repainted) are included. None of them were especially successful at the time; the best you can say is they qualified and completed some of the races they entered. There are some signs that other chassis were built but never raced, but these three all existed in period simultaneously.
To the degree reasonable given the minimal data, this mod represents the car as raced in early 1967. Five fictional liveries that could have been seen at the time are also included, to diversify a larger field.
Performance
Powered by a small block Chevrolet engine, mounted to a very small tubeframe chassis and running on the tires typical of the series at the time, it's very much a straight line rocket. Long braking distances and throttle control are to be expected. Crude front and rear splitters stop it from having outright lift at speed. Historical lap times are of limited value here because for the most part they are extremely slow - either the drivers were unsure of their cars, which to be fair had a roll hoop that did not extend above their head, or they were nursing it around equipment concerns. This leaves a lot of question marks about exactly how much power they made at the time, so in compromise, these have enough to comfortably go faster than any historical lap time, but not enough to easily win the races they entered. It's a few years older and thus a good number of seconds slower than the Lola T70, but it is historical fact that they shared a race course.
At the time race tires were still tread printed, although this doesn't mean they're good in the rain - modern tire groove technology has the advantage of a lot of knowledge there. Look on the bright side, there's not enough grip to overheat them.
Acknowledgements
Stereo - 3d model, textures, physics, ...
Ryno917 - skins
mclarenf1papa - physics polish, tire expert
Gary Paterson - driver animations
Kunos - audio from the Shelby Cobra 427
Race Department - I appreciate you folks hosting my mods for all these years.
Epilogue
This Canadian sports prototype has been a long time coming (I miss you, Gord). I build these cars because I enjoy the work, so if I'm enjoying something else more, I try not to feel bad for putting one project aside for a few months. That said, I'm sorry it took so long to reach the light of day. It's been very nearly finished, for over a year.
And so on to the donation plea. I will first say: I'm comfortable, I can afford to spend hundreds of hours a year on free hobby work to share with the community. Keep your money if it's hard-earned. However. I get offered paid work, which is sold to sim racers or not public at all. Donations for my free mods let me be more selective about which of those jobs I do, spend more time making more free mods. I appreciate the people who donate.
I have a donation incentive. As said earlier, McLaren has a largely equivalent group 7 car. If I reach a moderately ambitious donation goal, I will commit to releasing a McLaren M1B to be a companion to this car.
As a trained mathematician it was too tempting to create some complicated formula for the goal. The bottom line is, if 100 people send me $5 or more, it'll happen. I'll track progress in the support thread. Sneak preview, thank you for reading all the way to the end:
P.S. skin template (wireframe & Ambient Occlusion texture) included in skin_template subfolder.
