Recently I took different approach to building cars and first looked at real cars from particular year and then build something with similar values. While tires are limiting factor I still think it’s too easy to just increase displacement. It comes back to my engine recreation attempts, why invest into quality sliders when you can easily make your engine twice as big? Why use turbo and kill your tameness (I know these will be reworked)? Sure there is weight but outside of trying to get 50/50 distribution (which isn’t really a thing until modern times anyway) not much of a problem. Another issue is on some bodies you can fit WAY too big engines. Over 8L V8 probably shouldn’t fit small hatchbacks. One idea I have is to slightly limit % of engine bay you can use for engine and as years go by and thingamabobs get smaller and more efficient and engine bays more and more cramped that penalty would decrease so you’d be able to make your crazy big block V8 hatchbacks eventually. I also think this might actually help new players since I tend to see 1940-1950 cars with horsepower values you’d see in modern cars. TBH I’m not sure if there is too much point in this suggestion since tires indeed are limiting factor and there aren’t that many interesting choices to make in car design before 80s as it is.
From a car performance standpoint you do have a point, to some degree. If you put in “twice as big an engine”, you will see huge penalties to running costs and fuel economy (rebalanced in the current closed beta, it’s broken in the current public version).
I understand your concern with too large engines in small cars, but that problem will solve itself once your potential customers show you the finger when seeing what running costs such a car would have 
I don’t think we should limit the engine bay size, there are penalties to service costs, etc. already for filling it up, but it’s not that visible yet because there is no one to buy your cars yet!
Did i remember hearing that the remaining engine bay space is going to effect service costs?
Yes, the more empty the engine bay is, the easier the engine is to service.
Sounds promising to me. In a way it will work like my proposition except there won’t be strict hard limits.
This exact thought went through my mind the other day when I shoehorned a 2.5L straight-six into a subcompact body. The next thought was, of course, “boy… mechanics are REALLY going to hate working on my cars.” 
Oh, your Headlight broke? Better remove the whole engine to get to the screws!
Don’t laugh too hard. I used to own a car where you had to remove the battery to get to the driver’s headlamp.
And my current minivan… you have to remove the whole front light fixture to change the bulbs.
Vic that’s pretty normal, you’re lucky you didn’t need special tool to get to those light bulbs forcing you to change them at authorized service station (not a real story but special tools that cost fortune so you can’t fix your car yourself (or in not affiliated repair shop) is a common practice I hear). Welcome to the future I guess.
I imagine the gearboxes will also be reworked so their size reflects the type of gearbox and # of gears therein, and the size of the engine and flywheel? It sucks not being able to fit larger engines into tiny cars because the gearbox takes up 50% of the room and the engine is on one side. I’m not saying the engine needs to be huge, but some cars should be able to fit more than 1000cc transverse when there is room under the bonnet. Half that room is taken up by a 4speed manual gearbox that looks like it could be 10 speeds! 
This is part of why we continue to buy older cars at my house. We own a 1996 Niassan Maxima, and I always bought used cars from the `80’s, even in 2005 when I had a car last. Easy to work on myself and… by today, they aren’t required to pass emissions anymore. So no fixing emissions BS to keep driving em.
If I had the money to look after it properly I’d love a gt-v6 like you have. Now that’s an old car worth having 
A friend of mine in high school back in the…well…let’s just say a while ago, had a 1975 Chevy Vega with a 454 BBC and a manual 4 speed mounted to it. 700lbs of motor in a 2500lb car! He had to modify the front fender wells (and by modify I mean completely remove them) and eventually twisted the car like a corkscrew from torque in a race at the local strip.
[quote=“VicVictory”]Don’t laugh too hard. I used to own a car where you had to remove the battery to get to the driver’s headlamp.
And my current minivan… you have to remove the whole front light fixture to change the bulbs.[/quote]
Lancia Lybra requires you to have two elbows and four wrists to change the bulb in driver’s headlamp. Fortunately for me older Kappa has more space, but it’s still tricky.
I agree that the Engine bay sizes need some looking at… Especially transverse setups that have issues with fitting decently sized engines because the transmission doesn’t seem to scale in relation to the engine.
Also the length of some of the 60’s and 70’s bays need to be tweaked a bit to allow a decent sized Inline 6. Or even better, how about making 3 version of a car body instead of 2? For example with the 4door/2Door car from 1970+ I find that the small body is too small to really be a mid size, but the larger one is too big to be a midsize. If you scaled down the small one a bit and added one in between the 2 sizes I think It would allow for much more design options… I really can’t be that hard to scale the existing bodies can it?..
Currently the main problem with automation I see is that the V8 is by far the superior engine for any car. It fits anywhere a I4 does, and can be made cheaper and larger and more powerful while still having as good or usually better fuel economy and a better tameness from the broader powerband. it is superior in pretty much every way, and even the added weight over an Inline 4 tends to be minimal… I’m sure a few tweaks and changes can improve this…
For one thing( sorta off topic), is the game doesn’t seem to account for losses of efficiency from added friction of more complex engines. A 32v 2.0L V8 should be less efficient than a 2.0L 16V I4… Right now it is the opposite… I feel that if this were fixed it would go a long way to improving the balance between V8 and other engines… It seems to me that the fuel economy equations are too simplistic and are mainly based in having better/more Carbs or FI systems and the benefits from the lower octane needed.
Another thing the game lacks any kind of setting for the strength of the Chassis, and I think this is the biggest issue… I noticed the game does track the Rigidity in the stats, but there is pretty much no way of actually modifying it beyond material selection and perhaps some small changes from tech level. I think there needs to be a slider for rigidity that will increase the weight however the further you move it from the original setting the more the weight and production units increase with less benefit. This way we can realistically model the challenges of packing a V8 in a small frame… If the player chooses not to improve the suspension and chassis the V8 car should suffer in tameness and sportiness in a way that heavily impacts its stats.
Also what other factors affect the Rigidity stat?.. I would imagine Torque should be one of the main factors in whether the chassis can handle the engine. Engine layout should be important as well… For example FF Transverse engines would suffer from rigidity problems more so than a Longitudinal/RWD setup… Smoothness might play some small role as well… I imagine a rough engine that is moving around alot more would require better/strong mounting than a silky smooth one…
Sorry I went a little off topic here, but all these factors relate to eachother and the balance of the game in general and to just balance one thing like the engine bay size would just be a bandaid on a larger problem…
[quote=“VicVictory”]Don’t laugh too hard. I used to own a car where you had to remove the battery to get to the driver’s headlamp.
And my current minivan… you have to remove the whole front light fixture to change the bulbs.[/quote]
I must have jinxed myself when saying this, because the driver’s headlight bulb burned out on my minivan last week. And since these things have a tendency to eat the second bulb shortly after the first, I just spent my morning removing both fixtures and replacing both bulbs. 
But back to the topic… Yes, there is definitely some tweaking to be done here. If small V8’s are so vastly superior IRL to I4’s, why don’t we see them all over the place?
A big engine but very well designed can be better than a small engine but bad designed.
Here in Queensland, Australia, the registration system is based on the number of cylinders the car engine has. This makes owning a large capacity 4 or 6 more attractive than the same sized or slightly larger 6 or 8 (or 12!).
The engine configuration friction losses are larger the more complex an engine is but not as much as you’d think…
For example, compare some different real-world engines; different configurations but all are 2L in capacity 
RB20DE (HR31) 110Kw @ 6400rpm and 181Nm @ 5600rpm
KF-DE (Mazda Lantis) 107Kw and 179Nm
SR20DE (S15) 126Kw @6400rpm and 132 foot pounds
3SGE (Gen 3) 132Kw @ 7000rpm and 19.5 Kg/m
Golf V 2L FSi 110Kw
Ferrari 208 GT4 (V8!!!) 127Kw @ 7700rpm
Ferrari 208 GTB 116Kw
From this list a correlation can be drawn that when overall capacity is similar, engine technology and tune are the major factors in an engines power and torque figures, not the friction caused by the design. In my personal musings on this subject I’ve come to the conclusion that the size of the cylinder determines the engine characteristics. So for a given engine capacity, the engine with smaller, more numerous, cylinders will feel smoother but will have the subjective feeling of needing to be revved harder to produce meaningful acceleration.
I’ve personally driven a 2L Inline 6 and numerous 4 cylinders of around the 2L mark and this has broadly been my experience in real life conditions. All my data is subjective so feel free to flame me on any bits you don’t like/agree with! 
[quote=“HighOctaneLove”]
Here in Queensland, Australia, the registration system is based on the number of cylinders the car engine has. This makes owning a large capacity 4 or 6 more attractive than the same sized or slightly larger 6 or 8 (or 12!).[/quote]
These are both good points… We have yet to see how the varying registration taxes affect our ability to sell cars…
[quote=“HighOctaneLove”]From this list a correlation can be drawn that when overall capacity is similar, engine technology and tune are the major factors in an engines power and torque figures, not the friction caused by the design. In my personal musings on this subject I’ve come to the conclusion that the size of the cylinder determines the engine characteristics. So for a given engine capacity, the engine with smaller, more numerous, cylinders will feel smoother but will have the subjective feeling of needing to be revved harder to produce meaningful acceleration.
I’ve personally driven a 2L Inline 6 and numerous 4 cylinders of around the 2L mark and this has broadly been my experience in real life conditions. All my data is subjective so feel free to flame me on any bits you don’t like/agree with! [/quote]
Good points again, although I would add that some engine configurations are smoother than others… For example a 2L I6 would likely be smoother than a 2L V8 because the Inline 6 has perfect primary and secondary mechanical balance without the use of balance shafts. I4’s will always be a bit rough regardless of size because they don’t have overlapping power strokes. Even with balance shafts they won’t be as smooth as an I6, or V8 for that matter…
I also agree more or less that the added friction from say a 2L DOHC V8 doesn’t cause it to lose power compared to simpler 2L DOHC I4, however it should affect the fuel economy more than It does in automation…
Currently the fuel economy calculations seem to be mostly based on the fuel system components, and how low you can get your RON requirement. This means that the more carbs(or more barreled) you throw on an engine the better fuel economy it gets. Later on its a little more balanced with less options on fuel injection systems but still the most fuel efficient engines always seem to be V8s…
This problem is also compounded by the fact that not only will that V8 have better fuel economy, but it will have a much better torque curve and thus the car will have a much higher tameness… What this will lead to is small V8’s being the economy car engine of choice in automation.
A good comparison for fuel economy between 2 similarily powered and weight cars would be the Lancia Thema 8.32 with its 2L 32v DOHC V8 to a Saab 9000 with the 2L I4 turbo… Both based on the same Chassis, but the V8 Thema gets a fair bit worse fuel economy. (17.5L City VS 12.3, 9.2 highway VS 9.0)… Even the later 9000 Aero with 10 more hp and 300cc’s of extra displacement over the Lancia got better fuel economy.
There aren’t very many other small V8 engined cars out there, so more comparisons are hard to make…
Kind of not my point, though to touch on what you just said… in game calculations may be somewhat broken for small V8’s. Case in point: the TU class of the 1967 ITA competition I just finished running. EVERY engine displaced between 1996 and 1999 CI. There were I4’s, I6’s, and a pair of V8’s. One of the V8’s managed to put out 10% more horsepower than the closest inline competitor.
And their fuel economy is also pretty sick.
But the point I was trying to get at is this: you can shove a 2.0L I4 in a small engine bay, or a 4.0L V8. If, from both a power and efficiency standpoint, the V8 is that vastly superior to an inline configuration, why don’t we see 3-4L V8’s powering small cars? Or even a 2.5L V8
Answer: you don’t, because that’s not how it really works. And notice how that’s borne out with the 2L engine comparisons above. The only V8 listed is an exotic.
which then comes full circle to the original point of this thread, which is:
In order to simulate the sizes of (transverse) 4-cylinder motors that you see in production over the past few decades, the engine bays need to be larger.