How to fund? - Starting up

As a startup it is important not to overstress your budget and become more funds. So, the first thing you should do is to use all available options:
Ideally chose a country which is not participating in wars much, like Switzerland or Mexico. Dont chose countries like Russia, USA, UK or Germany, they are often part of conflicts and destruction. Taxes and infrastructure are more or less reflecting things, that will be causing issues once you are a bigger player, but for the start it is quite unimportant to mind.

Once chosen, raise your funds.

• Startup funds - 750K
  
• get a credit, whatever they give you ~70K
  
• get a loan, whatever they give you ~250K
  
• give out bonds, max, maybe like ~500K

As you need to develop engine(s), gearbox and chassis in first, and then build one or more cars with these components, it will take some time, until you have income. So stop all kind of research and marketing, anything that costs something, you could even fire all your factory workers, because for the first 24 to 48 months you will not build much.

How to evolve? - Design Strategy

Even though you want to become a luxury brand, it is a bad idea to start developing horribly expensive things without a name, without a base for success. My path mostly was to go for a cheap engine (line, 3 cylinder, low quality, high dependability, not more than 2,200 ccm, low performance, long lifetime, simple design). This engine shall be base for a very cheap and easy to produce Pickup-Truck.
Take the same parameters for chassis and gearbox.

• Simple and cheap design
  
• long lifetime
  
• huge dependability
  
• 18-24 month development pace

Until this basics are developed, keep costs ultimately low.

Once all 3 parts are developed, build a low cost Pickup-Truck with long lifetime and extremely good manufacturing techniques. Dont hurry as this raises your costs - 18 month.
Additional put your parts into outsourcing. Offer them as components to competitors, and keep your prices as low as you can afford. This is not about luxury. We are setting up a reputation to build cheap, highly efficient and long living military transport vehicles, easy to maintain and to replace.

As soon as your pickup truck is built, try to find a chance to offer to military. Use a shameless low price as offer, like max 20% margin to production costs (dont mind project costs). Then, lets wait for reply.

Once any military has taken the bait and purchased your Pickup Truck, the game starts. MInd, that you dont oversee sheer numbers when offering to military, as larger nations like USA and Russia have a number per month delivery required - and with a startup factory you are nowhere close to fulfill such contracts.
Startup factories usually have like 5 production lines. Dont use more than 4 for production, as you will need 1 production line for component contracts pretty soon.

Sales Strategy (pricing and products)
As soon as the income is stable enough to start evolving you shall focus on the following:

• get at least 10 production lines
  
• get a least a 2-4 production line factory on same continent (10 in Swiss + 2-4 Norway)
  
• open after first contract 1-2 branches per turn, close to your factory
  
• develop a V8-V12 cylinder 9999 ccm high horse power engine, very low weight chassis, and 4 gears high speed gearbox over a 18-24 month timespan. Sell them as component and under license.
  
• develop a high quality sportscar with these components
  
• get into racing with the sports car and ideally WIN races.
  
• keep pricing for sportscar moderate and offer to all racing teams: mind to prdocue some of these cars in spare for end of year orders by racing teams.
  
• Dont forget to fund research departments and increase production lines of your 2 factories.

It shouldnt be too difficult to get some wins in this early phase, as there is few to no competition. But you make a name. As soon as you have dominated 2 racing seasons, improve components and improve sports car to a new generation. Raise price of this one now to expensive. E.g. competitor sport cars cost like 1500 to 2500, yours should be double the most expensive competitor, at least.

Bread (contracts, licensing) and Butter (vehicle sales)

So, you have now 2 vehicles and 6 components. Start creating new components for these 2 lines, dont add any other car (yet). It should be around 1908 to 1910 and you should check over contracts what kind of components are questioned under which parameters - and develop them accordingly. Dont develop quicker than 14 month.

The bigger factory should always have 1 production line for each model you host.
The smaller factory are for components and parts business.
Try to keep the technical level of factories super high! So 1 line can produce large numbers!

As WW1 is coming up soon you will get many requests from military for Pickup Trucks and Vans. Low price offers in combination with long lifetime and easy maintenance = your base for endless income until after WW1.

Your company now becomes successfull and license/purchase requests over outsourcing will increase quickly and become a big base for your futher business, when it is about your Pickup Trucks. Sell many, but cheap.

Your Sports Cars are planned to become the "Aston Martins" and "Bugattis" of your game world. So, raise price. Production costs ~3-5K, selling price at least 10K to 14K per piece. Sell few, but expensive. As long as you win races, they will sell like nuts.

Raise or Struggle with WW1 (military contracts)

Located in 2 neutral countries (Swiss and Norway) WW1 will have few to no impact to your production but grant you lots of contracts from war parties.

Dont invest during war times, and check for bankrupt companies to purchase. Racing will be limited during war and you should simply shut down everything that isnt needed. As you live mostly from contracts and lincenses you can profit from war, while car selling competitors will suffer from less money at customers heavily.

But when war is over money will flood the markets and people will buyy things like sports cars - in large numbers. Be prepared.


Transform to luxury brand (low numbers, high profits)
When your sales start increasing after WW1 you should quickly go through an IPO and get a lot of investment options though fresh money.

At this point of time ~1922 business will increase quickly, and money is easy in the pockets.So, again, raise prices. You can sell your sports cars for like 20.000 to 25.000 per. I have sold even for 100.000 per car in 1927, only to super rich beings.

Hope this helps you :)