Design Cycles

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 New Generations page for more information.

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

For components, there is no new generation system. The game includes a “Redesign” system to remake your components. The Redesign system loads the sub-components and slider positions of a selected model, but slider effects on final ratings change every year as technology and regulation progress. The result is a new design that uses the old slider positions but has different stats based on the era.

Components have a unique modification system. The modification system will improve the design ratings without creating a new design. The system does not replace the existing vehicle model’s components, but it does have a “Refit Old Designs” checkbox in the bottom to help redesign vehicles with the updated components.

See the Modify Components portion of the Research and Development page for more details.