Design cars and engines from the ground up
Automation is an automotive design simulator covering vehicles and technologies from 1946 to 2020. You get comprehensive engine and car design tools: shape, cut, re-shape and adorn thousands of car bodies with a wide variety of lights, mouldings and other parts to achieve the style you want. On the engine side, nearly all common layouts are possible, from a large, powerful V12 to a small, efficient inline-3. The goal is to turn your ideas into real, buildable designs rather than just sketch them.
Run a car company in Campaign Mode
Campaign Mode starts in 1946 and puts your designs into a deep simulation of the automotive industry. You build factories and equip them with the facilities and equipment they need, research cutting-edge technologies, and market your cars to dynamically-simulated market demographics. Smart engineering and business decisions are what separate an industry leader from a footnote in automotive history. The cars you sell can be exciting enthusiast machines or the literal wheels the world's economy rolls upon.
Play together through exports and the community
Automation lists Online PvP as a Steam feature. Beyond that, the one-click export tool sends your creations to BeamNG.drive (sold separately), where you can drive, race and crash them yourself. The Automation Test Track is co-developed and featured in both games, so you can compare lap times against Automation's AI and your friends there, and share creations in the BeamNG.drive Mod Repository. The community also runs a variety of community-designed and led competitions where cars are evaluated on styling, performance and other traits.
Before you start
Automation is in Early Access, so expect the game to still be changing. BeamNG.drive is sold separately and is required if you want to export and drive your cars there. The game is moddable, with hundreds of free mods available on the Steam Workshop from a large community of 3D modellers.