Over time, your designs become stale to customers. When this happens, your buyer rating will decline, and fewer people will buy your vehicle if there are other options. For vehicles, this design penalty begins when the design is 5 years old and increases every year after that. For components, the effects are smaller, but they will penalize your buyer rating starting at 15 years old.

We recommend you replace your vehicle models every 5 to 8 years and your components every 8 to 12 years. With vehicles, you can create new generations. A new generation is a vehicle that shares the same name and legacy as an older model but is a redesigned model. The new generation inherits the vehicle image of the older model and can give you development cost discounts if components remain the same.

See the Research and Development page for information on how to make New Generations.

There is little to no benefit in making a new vehicle generation more frequently than every 3 years.