I have achieved consistency, consistently bad but also consistently nailing my optimum price, hey at least I have something. Next challenge maybe I’ll stop over engineering my cars and actually pick a target group rather then just building quirky cars.
Idea for the next challenge - how about year 1940? See how many variations of one bodytype can we make? 
Good lord, making a track day car from a small factory and not going broke… That’ll be a challenge for the ages. I don’t even think “down force” was a thing back then!
LOL, nope. People still didn’t really understand how a wing on a plane worked yet let alone how to put one on a car.
Hm, I’d prefer a real test of the new calculations first. But I guess the very early years will come, no matter how many body types there are. It’ll be more like a fun challenge then I guess.
Here’s some news for the hard-limit-fetishists: 
I got an idea how cars can be penalised for not being sporty/prestigious/comfortable, … enough in a specific target group. I name it the “floating hard limit”. It works this way: Each stat is checked if it is lower than a group-specific threshold which directly comes from the weight of the stat in that group. If it is higher, the penalty factor for the overall score is 1 (no penalty). If it is lower, the penalty factor gets a value between 1 and 0, depending on how much too small the value of the stat is. If it is way too low, the factor and thus the overall score will be 0 and the car will not sell in that category. The factors of each stat are multiplied.
The threshold is made that way: For each percent of the weight of the stat, a certain minimum stat value is expected. So higher weighted stats need to be higher than lower weighted stats in order to not get penalised.
So we all get what we want: Cars which are unrealistically bad in one stat for a specific group will not sell. Still, if they are not too shabby, they will only be penalised. And I don’t have to balance any hard limits. The thresholds can be scaled with one single coefficient (i.e. the minimum stat value per percent of weight). This is probably necessary because stats are lower in the earlier years than in the later years in general.
Here’s how the results of CTC #3 would have looked like with the new penalties:
abload.de/thumb/_customersbxo42.png abload.de/thumb/_customers_sharecmqi7.png abload.de/thumb/_participantsvroso.png abload.de/thumb/_pie6mrjj.png abload.de/thumb/_profitswir69.png
What do you think? If everything seems to be alright, I will launch the system in CTC #5 (not the current one, that would be unfair to the people who sent in their cars already).
Interesting number shifts, but I think I’d have to see how the affect a second set of data (CTC4) before making a judgement on it. Obviously, you’d run the official results for CTC4 as they are submitted now, but it would be interesting to see how these changes would (unofficially) alter the results of the current contest.
I will post the results of CTC4 with the new calculation after the challenge has ended.
Why wouldn’t you put it in CTC #5 
? Even if there are some problems these can always be fixed for CTC #6 and it’s not like system is absolutely perfect as it is (if anything why did you make this in first place ? ).
If you say it is shit I won’t implement it. If you say it is an improvement compared to before, it’s worth a go. I always think that what I do is awesome so I better ask for your opinion. We have the possibility to do a first check with old results, so why not use them and already find some problems?
Under the “new” rules I lost sales and placing, but the sales were more realistic in terms of who should be buying the car.
I think they should be implemented, perhaps as suggested above, use them on CTC4 as secondary results and then for real in CTC5
You have to remember that these entries were made for very different sales model in first place so I wouldn’t really worry that your car did worse than in official run. It won’t be a real test until people try to tailor their cars specifically for the changed model.
Actually I’m happy with the results really as the extra sales were in markets I didn’t aim for and realistically didn’t make sense.
My market share in each category changed (slightly), but my overall sales did not change a bit in the “hard limit” calculations.
My standing went way, way up with the revised formulas. Naturally, I approve.
I’ve lost money compared to the previous calculations, but seems more balanced that my car sold less in several area but rules in the cheap market and in the transport. I think this new calculation system should be in for the CTC#5 and to be tested in parallel with CTC#4 to refine it.
Great work!