Market Failure, Engineering Triumph
The Corellian Engineering Corporation's YT-490 series of light stock starfreighters are today almost unheard of in the galaxy, having been rapidly overshadowed by the later YT-1300 series. Freighter historians mark it as CEC's one true failure in the light freighter market. It could not carry as much cargo as its predecessor, the YT-350 (with which it shared a basic spaceframe configuration and, as such, a strong resemblance), and its eight axial fusion turbine engines, coupled with a central fusion reactor for operational power, made a temperamental, hard-to-maintain replacement for the YT-350's admittedly underpowered four-ion-fission-thruster array and decay-chamber reactor. The extra bulk of the turbines and reactor did increase the YT-490's sublight speed at the expense of reduced cargo capacity, but sublight speed was hardly considered important for a stock freighter by the buying public. Additionally, in sharing the YT-350's spaceframe, the YT-490 also shared its elder sister's biggest disadvantage, a somewhat unwieldy wide-and-thin shape which had problems fitting into the smaller docking bays of the time. (Today, with bays having been expanded for the newer-standard 500-ton freighters, this is no longer a problem at any but the oldest, most ill-maintained spaceports.)
The few 490s sold, for the most part, served out their operational lifespans uneventfully and were scrapped after a century or so of service. The type never achieved the stubborn immortality of the long-since-outmoded YT-1300 series, and was more or less extinct by the mid-21st century.
Still, a few examples do remain. Serial number 490-6062, which became the One-Hit Wonder, was a scrapyard derelict when Corwin Ravenhair and his parents found her - engines and computer systems removed, hull incapable of maintaining pressure, lacking power systems or even cockpit windows. The spaceframe was solid, though, and the people who remade 6062 knew a solid spaceframe was the only component they couldn't beg, borrow or steal elsewhere.
So it was that the One-Hit Wonder took her present shape, with new turbines of the same type as those that drive the Viper starfighter, a power converter/reactor set from a wrecked YT-2400, computer systems salvaged from a decommissioned Centurion starfighter, and a hyperspace motivator intended to drive a ship five times the mass shoe-horned into place, reducing the ship's small cargo capacity even more. Her resurrectors weren't concerned about reductions to cargo capacity, for the One-Hit Wonder was never intended to become a freighter again.
Now, thermocoated in glossy black and gleaming silver, the One-Hit Wonder serves as the personal transport of a young man who just happens to be a god, carrying him on his missions across the stars (which, nowadays, mainly involve visiting his sister at school on Jeraddo). Despite this rather mundane mission profile, the ship is equipped for a great deal more, because Corwin and his parents all know that, when you're a member of their extended family, trouble tends to find you whether you're looking for it or not.
Follow this link for a special image gallery showing the evolution of the One-Hit Wonder's design.