Car Company direction/attributes?
While Toyota makes everything from Pick up trucks, Luxury Cars, Compacts, to Powered wheel chairs, and it would fair well to the “Buyers Engine”. Some credit should be given for staying with in the focus of your company “direction”.
Such as BMW which tends to focus mainly on Performance and Comfort and have a smaller lineup, they are successful for staying with in their targeted means. Building a company like that in game should be just as rewarding as building a company that makes everything. I’m also borrowing a concept seen in the popular Android game, “GAME DEV STORY” (Strongly suggest buying that game btw)
Sub brands
To add to my last idea, If you have a focused company, the ability to develop a new sub-brand or even acquire another competitor should be added as well.
Magazine reviews and rewards
Building an awesome car and seeing the stats in green and getting sales might be nice, but can be somewhat sterile.
If you build a really good car, it should be mentioned in a magazine review, If it’s good enough maybe even a full article or grab the front page of a popular car magazine. And of course If your car is outstanding and your lucky you might get “Car of the Year”… Same goes building a bad car, you might be featured in an article related to over-priced cars or cars with poor build quality… etc. etc.
Military contracts
Maybe your company is told that the military is looking for a new vehicle of some sort and that you have 14 months to build, test, and submit your product. (You would be given parameters and standards in which the military wants you to build), and when the the time comes you submit your prototype and it gets reviewed compared to the other prototypes and if it wins the contract, then you have to make sure to keep up with production and quality standards
** Defects, recalls, aging technology, discovering problems in a design**
Just like in the real world, cars get bugs or personalities, or a particular model year might be prone to a certain recall or quirk
Company facilities and expansion
Again, somewhat borrowing from Game Dev Story. Hiring more employees and increasing departments to cope with production demands and allowing for higher technology & development would be nice complexity in the game. Such as, Hiring a bunch of under-qualified workers will be cheaper but ultimately less beneficial to development, as is, Hiring over qualified workers/designers/testers would yeild great benefits but at adsorbent cost.
Marketing/Sales
Targeting the right consumers and advertising to them should yield more profits and faster recognition, where as,marketing a car or brand name to the wrong consumer base will hurt the company. Also the forms of marketing and advertising should be on different levels, such as in the beginning you might only be able to afford magazine ads, later on when you have the money you can afford a super bowl commercial, etc. etc.
Racing Pedigree
As we know with most brands, Racing is a Big part of marketing. Expanding your company to have a Motorsport division and R & D would be nice as well. Meaning you can develope side projects such as being offered to compete in a particular catagory of racing, but first you have to develop a car that weighs said much and has this much power, yadda yadda, again you would have to hire a racing manager and the lot. In the end building a car that performs well will work as powerful advertising and boost consumer sales, and yet again, consecutively losing at Bathhurst will ruin buyer faith in your brand as far as sports cars go.
Sound systems
The quality and time spent on a cars sound system is obvious to audiophiles and professionals alike. Not that many stock systems are full range or amazing quality, but everybody knows a car or two that from the factory had a crappy sound system in it. Being able to choose how much money is spent on the speakers and components, to hiring someone to test the quality, to being able to expand your company’s facility to include a sound testing lab (similar to the racing facility) would be a nice addition to the game element. (Plus it would add yet another variable into the end product)
Body design
Maybe depending on the size of the company you build, designers you’ve hired would suggest a body (a generated body) to choose from, as well as being able to Custom build the body with in the custom editor, although an expert mode could be implemented where the more you tinker with the body in order to get the shape and look you want, the more money it costs the company, thus meaning too much time spent trying to get everything perfect would drive the end unit cost of the car up.
I have plenty more but I’ll type the rest at another time
<3