Writing about a fantasy world that includes exactly zero cars on an automotive site may be a little ridiculous, but for some reason I keep doing it. And with Game of Thrones coming back this Sunday, why should I stop? So let’s try this: if the important Great Houses in the upcoming season were translated into cars, what would those cars be like?
http://jalopnik.com/5896787/the-ca…
Now, I already did something about what real cars would be best suited for each house before, so this time I want to just straight make things up. I want to try to take the essential character and traits of each house and try to imagine what those might be like if translated into the hard metal of car-hood.
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I picked the five houses and/or groups that seem to be most likely to be important in the upcoming season; if your favorite House-car isn’t here, then, dammit, I think you should imagine your own, draw it, and stick it in the comments.That’s pretty much the whole reason why we do this on the internet instead of just mailing you pamphlets, after all.
Technologically, I’m imagining these cars as something that could be built in our world, today, no problem. No magic, just pretend cars based on pretend groups of people in a pretend world.
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So let’s pretend.
House Lannister
The Lannisters are best known for their extreme wealth and power. So their car, the Lannister Leopulance LX550 needs to be a blinged-out overdone luxury barge.
The Lannister house isn’t exactly what it once was underneath, and relies a lot on its past glories, hence the retro-ish design like the crazy Mitsuoka coachbuilt cars that come out of Japan. Mechanically, I’m imagining a somewhat outdated but still impressive drivetrain, like a big 5.5-liter straight-eight driving the rear wheels.
Comfortable, fast, showy, handles like a boat. Like the love child of a Lincoln Town Car and Phyllis Diller’s Excalibur.
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House Targaryen
Above, the Targaryens—the house of exiled princess-turned-Khaleesi Daenerys Targaryen—were weird. Powerful, sure, but weird. They had dragons, they had strange silver hair and violet eyes, there are hardly any of them left, but once they ruled everything.
Their car has to be impressive and deeply strange, so I’m imagining a long, streamlined, rear-engined, cab-over luxury limo-sized streamliner.
The name, Dracar, comes from the Valaryian word dracaris which seems to mean “shoot fire,” at least based on how it’s used on the show. I’m thinking there’s an inverted-V10 engine at rear, just to be super-weird, and the view from that huge domed windshield has to be impressive.
It’s clearly dragon-inspired, because it kind of has to be, which also explains that segmented dorsal upper central fin.
Think of this as sort of a cross between a Tatra T87 and Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, the Disney version, at least in general look.
House Martell
The Martells are from Dorne, which, in the Game of Thrones universe, seems to be a sort of Mediterranean/Middle Eastern/Desert stand-in. As such, if the House was a car, it would have to be some off-road sort of car, something at home blasting across deserts.
The Dornish are also known to be an exotic, passionate people, so this thing needs to be fast and fun, too. The Dornish Motors Duneserpent 300DE is all that, with the DE standing for ‘dual engine.’
The four-wheel drive system is similar to what our world’s Citroën used for the 2CV Sahara, with an engine at each axle. The 300DE uses two flat-six motors at each end, for a potent 12-cylinder beast. This thing is fast and very capable, with a high ride height and a very rugged design.
They’re sort of hedonists, too, so above the rear engine is a good-sized padded area for lounging or boning or whatever, and I’m not even sure you can order it with a hardtop or side glass.
Oh, and that snake decal on the hood is a very popular option.
I think there’s going to be a big Greyjoy/Iron Islands story this season, so even though they’re not really a power player, I’m including them here.
They’re from islands, and are a seafaring people first and foremost; if they were a car, it would have to be amphibious. Which this is.
I also always got the impression that they weren’t always the most financially prosperous House, so this is a sort of amphibious shitbox, decent on water but crap on land, like most of the Ironborn.
It’s a three-wheeler, with a steel hull and a fiberglass cabin. It’s got a below-decks-mounted 1.2-liter inline-three. Picture the Krakabout DX (the LX one has chrome trim and a heater) as a Reliant Robin smashed into a rowboat.
The Night’s Watch
There’s no way the Night’s Watch won’t be important this season, what with all those scary ice-zombies and shit lurking around. The Night’s Watch is a no-nonsense organization with a very specific, militaristic job to do. And if they were a motor vehicle, all those traits would be the same.
I’m imagining a tracked vehicle, to get through all the snow and ice. I think the Blackcrow Carryall 4G11-T would be a sort of truck, reversed from how we know them, with the bed up front.
The rear would be a sort of small troop carrier, heated, with a bit more open cargo at rear. There’s a snowplow up front, too. It’d have some kind of big diesel engine, maybe an inline-6 laid on its side, under the bed, driving front and rear tracks.
This thing looks useful!
HBO really needs to do at least one episode that includes these cars. Just have them in there, don’t make a big deal about it. It’d be fun, if only to watch the internet go batshit with rage about where the hell these stupid cars came from.
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