Seems interesting, but I'm not a petrolhead, so having to design car parts and so on seems too complicated for me. Good luck to the developer, though.

Reminds me of "Detroit" (or "Rüsselsheim" for German players) from 1994, respectively of "Motor City" (or "Oldtimer" for Geman players).

Developer here,

Thanks for the kind words. If you're on the fence, I suggest giving the demo a shot on our website. (*Demo is a couple versions out of date.) There are several assistant designers in the game that ease the design process. These assistants narrow the design system down to 3 sliders per component, using the same functions the AI uses. That disadvantages you from manually making designs, but no more so than the AI's disadvantage. You don't need to know much more than reading numbers and stars. A good portion of our users are not gearheads either. They just like complex economic sims.

That said, even with systems that simplify the design process, the game is too complex for some players. There are many moving parts, and you have to keep them near equilibrium to succeed. I was heavily inspired by a game-breaking bug in Detroit and the limited play time of Motor City. I decided to merge the stuff I liked from both games and add more of everything, more realism, more cities, more events, more time, more designs, more features, etc.

I made the game to scratch my itch, and somehow a community came around it. 12 years later, here I am.

You'll find some elements of both games in GearCity. Even the name GearCity is a homage to Motor City.

Hey, no complaints from my side. I played and liked both, "Detroit" and "Motor City".
So, you taking inspiration from both, and adding to them is fine. :)

(and yeah: I already assumed "GearCity might be a reference to "Motor City"). ;)

Edit: btw - as a developer, GOG grants you a different colour (orange) for your comments.
It makes them "pop out" more. Simply ask them (or PM a blue one).

Funny enough, in Detroit, if you couldn't throw all your money into the bank and then live off the interest for the rest of the game, GC probably wouldn't have been made. I would have made my airline game that I am currently working on. Thanks for the tip. I will seek out a blue one or pester my rep. I'm still getting acclimated to GOG forums.

> Why do so many car companies fail?

Indeed, why so?

So interesting statistics in real life, 1 out of 5 businesses in the US fail in the first year. And 11 out of 12 businesses fail in the first 5 years.

In generic business, it's often capital constraints. Not having enough capital for the type of business, not finding or overestimating a market, or just poor planning of expenses.

In manufacturing, the capital costs of building and maintaining a factory and producing goods are enormous. And in the auto industry, there was a rapid amount of product development, which are a variable expense, and costly. The design cycle on automobiles is around 5-8 years. If you screw up a design, your sales will suffer while you burn money to get the next product line out.

Historically, in the brass era, there were a few thousand car companies in the US alone. By the 1950s, there were around 100-200 globally. Today, there are about 50* active mass-production consumer car companies. Most of those are in emerging markets like China. Although, the electric car boom has brought many more companies since the last time I researched those numbers. In the west, a handful of companies control the vast majority of auto marques.

*Please note that most automotive brands you see are marques of a parent company. I am counting the parent companies as a company and not the marques. I am also talking about major producers. Bouquet manufacturers, startups, and mod brands come and go frequently. They also have a high failure rate but require less capital to start. So they're replaced fairly quickly. Those type of companies are not well simulated in GC at this time.

I remember playing the Amiga version of this game a looooong time ago. I consider it a certified Dray classic already (just like Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance).

Kind of you to reply. I'll keep your explanations in mind and look into the game, and some reviews, and perhaps purchase it at some stage. in the meantime, I'll add it to one of my wishlists.

Often time it is one of few basic things:

I. overly ambitious (Voisin in race cars, spiker the first time around, Aerocar a typical downfall of engineering first economy second)
II. bad timing on investing into some technologies (BMH, British Leyland, Rover)
III. economic downturn (SAAB, Citroen, British Layland) - yes some rather than go fully bust merge or partially sell to someone else
IV. Its just a scam (WeGo, Nikola, i am sure there are oodles more)
V. General mismanagement (oh hi again British Layland)

there are companies like SAAB who spent century in red and managed to make due because they provided invaluable service to whomever owned them, or V

Thanks for the inputs, seems I'd rather start a rocket than a car business.