Motor Baron

It is January 1900. The automobile is a rich man's toy, the roads are mud, and you have $25,000 and an idea. Seventy years later, will your name be on half the cars in America?

Motor Baron is a car company tycoon game that runs from 1900 to 1970, one month at a time. You make every decision: what to build, where to build it, what to charge, and when to bet the company on something new.

DESIGN EVERY CAR Pick the market segment, chassis, suspension, engine, gearbox, body, interior and build quality. See how working, middle-class and wealthy buyers will rate it before you spend a dollar. As the decades pass, new engines, closed steel bodies and electric starters open up, and buyers move from runabouts and touring cars to sedans, compacts and more.

BUILD THE FACTORIES Start with craftsmen at benches. Move up to machine shops, interchangeable parts, the moving assembly line and powered conveyors. Add lines, keep crews on the same model so they get faster, and decide where to build: near the buyers or where wages are low.

SELL COAST TO COAST Sign dealers across 12 regions of America, from New England to California. Set their margins, keep them happy, and ship cars where the demand is.

BEAT 26 RIVAL CARMAKERS Rival companies launch new models, cut prices and chase the same buyers. Watch the market, find the gaps, and win the segments that matter.

RACE FOR GLORY Enter hill climbs, reliability trials, road races, beach speed trials and endurance tours. A win in the newspapers sells cars. A breakdown in front of the crowd does the opposite.

LIVE THROUGH HISTORY Panics, the Great War, the Roaring Twenties, the Crash, the Depression, wartime army contracts and the postwar boom all reshape your market.

RUN THE BUSINESS Borrow from the bank, pay your taxes, hire bookkeepers, sales staff and market researchers, and fund research into engines, lighter construction, reliability and comfort.

GO PUBLIC List your company on the exchange, pay dividends, split your stock, buy shares in your rivals and take them over.

LIVE LIKE A BARON Spend your personal fortune on a forty-room mansion, a steam yacht, a private railroad car or an island. Or give it away and put your name on libraries, hospitals and a university.

ALSO

Discovery signals