I pick NY or London for HQ usually (NY if starting that early in century, or London if starting 1950-1980).

First take out a loan. You're going to initially be burning cash for 1 to 2 years.

License 2 or 3 vehicles, and usually a set of components to speed up the pipeline of a native model.

Develop a set of (native) components. When you have a set of ready components develop a model (sedan, compact, or hatchback; pickup ok if in US). Develop more models as budget allows. Once money flows in keep doing that and expand factories. Build only as many branches as needed to sell factory production (I run lines only at neutral quality bias).

I generally recommend following historical companies and vehicle designs.

-Start the game on easy until you get the hang of it. And Base City Map.
-Select an Area in the North Central or North Eastern United States.
-Design a Phaeton with similar stats to an Oldsmobile Curved Dash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_Curved_Dash
-Aim to have the unit price around $500-$700
-Sell the vehicle for $1100.
-Your goal is to have your factories running at full production, with no inventory. If you have spare production capacity, open new branches in cities with more than 500,000 people in them. If you're at full production and are missing sales, increase the price of the vehicle by 10% until supply and demand are nearly equal and production is at full capacity.
-Once you established profitability, take out a big bond and upgrade your factory. At the same time, if ladder chassis is unlocked, design a new chassis, engine, and gearbox for a Sedan.
-Design your sedan using the new chassis, old engine, and new gearbox. And make a trim using the new engine and gearbox.
-You unit price goal should be around $900-$1300 for this vehicle, sales prices around $1500 to $2200.
-With three vehicles, you should now be able to fill capacity again at the factory. Repeat the process by bonding out, building a new factory, designing a new line of components, and then trimming 2 or 3 models out of one.

By 1907-1910, you should aim to have a Sedan similar to Ford Model T in both specs and prices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T

A few reports to help you out, Industry->Body Demand report in the Main Reports. Wealth Distribution Chart accessed by clicking the Graph button next to where you enter the price of a vehicle, and the Buyer Rating Tables, under the Wealth Distribution Chart in the same location. If you can't find the last set of reports, do the tutorials for the Branch windows in the World Map.

The AI seems make cars with better prices then I do. My first car (trying make cheaper car) usually cost 800 - 1000 total cost. Is that correct? I upgrade the factory to more 3 production lines and the cost per unit change very little.

Be careful not to make your vehicles too cheap by using as little sliders as possible, you will get a penalty for doing that. Use the Buyer Rating Tables to see where you're not getting as much points as you should or where you're losing points.

Hello
I usualy start in 1900 by buying 2-3 licences for starting right away to produce vehicles, based on demand and price i can fetch for those licences. Lux vehicles don´t have much of a competition in the first couple of years but they do catch up and developing those is +-expensive.
Since in the beginning i usually can´t meet demand ( i start usually in the US) i sell my vehicles at at an high price. I´m not much a fan of mass marketing an vehicle but it works too.
First 2-3 months i fine tune branches/demand/production than i start to develop my own components/cars.
Usually at 1902/1903 i have 1-3 cars developed, and the parts for in-house production. And Its usualy in the first 4years when i take considerable risks either developing new parts/cars/redesigning factories and or build new ones. Thats usually the time when i get away with it or get "game over", lol.
By +-1907 i usually have production in Europe also.
Btw its usualy around +-1908 that my plan starts to crumble do to established competition. I havent figured out how to counter that yet, lol.
Ps: I play in normal mode so i´m not an expert in this game by a long shot.

Cheers

This is a bit cheesy, but it works very well, if it works. I usually turn all skills except engine engineering to 1 to start with and only use my own designs.
Start in NY. Start designing a pickup truck with ~150 nm torque and decent amount of cargo, almost everything else are dump stats. Hope to get a good military contract to bid on in the first year. Profit. If you're lucky, you can continue bidding on military contracts for a few years but sooner or later your luck will run out and there will be no contracts to bid on so don't rely too much on the contracts. Also, if you don't get any good military contracts in the first year it's game over.
From that, you continue with building a few cars that suits you. Usually starting with a cheap phaeton is a good idea. I try to create a marque quite early so I can build the cheap crap cars in one marque and the quality cars in another.

I did many attempts today, the one that worked the most was when I made 4 different cars before 1907, I got to have 5 millions, 2 factory. In 1908 a world crisis begins and the sales fall sharply.

I created a new generation of phaeton and the sales remained good, but for another cars that strategy not worked. Untill 1914 I already was in financial difficulties.

Today I have try the Jadso72 tip, but also not work with me. The sales just don't grow up enogh.

Tomorrow I will try the tip of Eric and Mimer.

thx

OK a bit more advanced tip then, for those who have problems AFTER the first few years. I think this is from one of the community guides so I take no credit for coming up with this plan, but I can confirm that it works.

I have 6 chassis, 5 engines and 5 gearboxes. Redesign them every 5 years in a rolling schedule. Create new generations of cars every 10 years (new chassis, engine and gearbox) and make a new trim (with new engine and gearbox) once the car is 5 years old. If I can afford it and it's not a cheap car, I use the upgrade feature on the parts once before I start using them. My preference is to start designing parts in december and let the project take 13 months, so in january 2 years later I can upgrade the parts and design a car.

Chassis:
Small - can fit fuelefficient and performance engine. For Phaetons and Microcars and such.
Medium - fit the fuel, performance and eventually power (for compact SUV once that's unlocked) engine. For Sedans and Touring and such.
Large - fit the fuel, power and luxury engine. For the larger Sedans and Town Cars.
XL - Power, fuel and luxury engine. For Limousine, Station Wagon and similar.
XXL - Power engine. For Van and Pickup.
Sport - Sport and performance engine, for Roadster, Sportscar and similar.

Engines:
Fuelefficient - For a lot of cars.
Performance - For coupes, Touring, Fastback and Roadster.
Luxury - For limos, laundalets, town car and other luxury vehicles.
Power - For the different vans and SUVs and pickup.
Sport - For sportscar and supercars, and possibly replacing the performance engine.

Gearboxes:
Just one for each engine.

That way, the parts are shared between several cars that has roughly similar stat importance, and they do get cheaper. I also have a relatively fresh car of each type on the market all the time. I could use 10 chassis since I only replace them every 10 year in each car.

On top of this, as soon as I can afford it, I start building a racing car every year. Just one that could compete in as many races as possible without hampering it's performance (so in the early start, I usually get a car ~1906 and try to use a 10L engine that can compete in all but 1 race). This is usually not economically sound, but it gives a nice boost to the research and image ratings.

Amazing, the Mimer idea works very well !! I'm in 1915 and still get profit selling many cars, and keeping the spend on P&D.

I'm really enjoying the game.

Thx