It should be noted that the Griffon Mk IX might not be the first time the good people at Sunrise Motorworks have drawn on the styling of a classic Earth car of the 20th century for the outer shell of one of the Griffon line. That's simply not knowable for sure in 2410.

The reason this is unknowable is because the Griffon Mk VIII never appeared. It was planned for the WDF's 300th anniversary celebration, which would have been held in 2292, but of course the Fun Stopped several years before that and suddenly it was not particularly prudent for a major Salusian automobile manufacturer to be commemorating the Wedge Defense Force, much less building special cars bearing the name of its most roundly despised founder. All that had reached the public's ear about the Mk VIII before Sonset were vague rumors and a few numbers.

Rumors persist in certain circles that the Mk VIII prototype was actually completed in secret by certain diehards within Sunrise's black-ops division, the Special Projects Group, but the company always denied it, and as of the recording of Road Film (With Fighting), no trace of such a machine had ever been found. What it would've looked like was a closely guarded secret - it was meant to be a surprise for the car's namesake at its unveiling, as were its predecessors - and after 2288, nothing was ever heard of it again.

Previous Griffons varied widely in their format and style, though. Just look at the ones we know about from previous stories: the Mk I was a psycho supercar, the Mk II a luxury ultracoupé, and the Mk IV a high-precision autoduelist's weapon (the Stig has one in The Sandero Affair). Given that precedent, the Mk VIII might've been almost anything. Members of the sardonically named Sunrise Griffon Non-Owners' Club do love to speculate about it, even in the 2400s - all the more so since the Mk IX's number acknowledges, for the first time since 2288, that it had ever existed...

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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