It's not too sudden, you just shouldn't use all three outdated components at the same time.

You have 15 years grace for each component, after that point you get hit with a 1.2 point penalty. The base line for the car is 0.8, and it increases after 5 years. The sum of all penalties are then raised by the power of 1.2. Which gives you 6 if all three components are woefully out of date. It will increase by 0.3 every year after that.

Originally this was going to be 10 years and worked in more gradual, however there was a lot of push back against it, so it was raised to 15 years, but the formula kept the same. Thus why it's a little stepper

The point of this is to prevent the player from breaking the game by using extremely out of date components.

In short, don't have 3 outdated components at the same time, the system is not designed to let you do that at all. It completely breaks the game from a pricing stand point. At most, you can run 1 component for significantly longer than the 15 year grace period.

A warning would be nice, but sadly, you're about 6 months late on suggestions, the game is getting video tutorials and minor bug fixes before full release. I'm pretty much done with adding anything else in the medium or short term.

That being said, I'll see if I can work in a little increase for the years before your components hit 15. Maybe that will serve as more of a wake up call.

There, I have made adjustments to work it in more gradual. By year 15 though, it is still crippling if you have three obsoletely aged components.

Yeah, I don't mind being penalised for using outdated components, just getting the best car of the year award and then losing all sales in the month after is somewhat weird. ;)