Well, after a few months of waiting, I finally decided to get the free demo…and I gotta say, it was worth it! 
I’ve already had loads of fun with the engine designer; in fact, I’ve built possibly a couple dozen different engines over this past week. Although my one significant nitpick is that I can’t seem to be able to design a full car in the demo(couldn’t rotate it to install taillights, etc.), it’s still been a great experience overall, and I will definitely be buying the whole game soon.
Thanks, KillRob, DaffyFlyer, and company for making such an awesome game! I remember playing Detroit and Motor City, and they were both fun to play with, but the scenarios got a little too complicated to work with. And if anyone remembers CarTest, that’s also been a real cool sandbox-type program to play in, but, because it’s a simple DOS program, it doesn’t have the visual awesomeness that this game does; Automation is perhaps the best of the bunch when it comes to this particular genre.
