Tips on making a profitable company?

[HL2 Sniper]

I tried everything the same way Killrob did in the tutorial vid: Fruinia, boosted my own money and so on, but when I go to sign off the project it's always a loss of money. I'm trying to start off with a cheap light (around $12k and under 1000 kg) inline 6 or boxer 6 sportscar but it's a dead end. Any tips on how to turn the tables? Thanks in advance.

[Prasiatko]

Hoestly it's a bit hard in the current versionas whtther the problem is over or under production is obfuscated from us. Do note I've found the first project is often a loss of money due to having to build the factory and tool it. Do note with early sports cars they're is barely any market demand for them so a tiny factory may be plenty, but again hard to tell with current tools available.

[dohf]

For the first car, you do not build a factory, but rather use the starting one. If you have not chosen it but rather built a new factory, that could be an explanation. Also, sports cars and 6 cylinders may be a difficult way to enter, I'd say that would be a small factory. There aren't many customers with much money at the start, the super/hyper/track-markets are tiny or non-existent, and you do not have a way to produce adequate brakes to reasonable prices. Try inline 4 for a start, and a body that allows for different variants and thus, multiple markets. Do not put in safety (only neccessary later), do not use dual overhead cam, no alloy panels on the chassis, any tech that's particularly costly in material or engineering time, has a "no mass production" marker or any needs for something specific in the factory.

Also, after you have build the car, you can see how many shifts your factory is working on the overview (the third column after the car-name, with the watch-like icon at the top). If that goes below roundabout 1.8 for longer periods while your car isn't about to be replaced very soonish, your factory is too big.
Another 3 columns further is the monthly profit on top and in the cells below that are the margins you are selling your cars with. If that has very high percentages for longer periods, you are underproducing.

[Killrob]

Good tips guys! :)

Just note that Limited and No Mass Production flags have little impact at the start of the campaign while running mostly manual labor factories anyway. It no longer (like in LC V2) just applies a 25% or 50% penalty but rather a 50% * AutomationSlider/100 * BaseFactoryAutomation penalty. That means you only get a few percent production penalty in a slightly automated small factory.

One big thing to look out for is the $/PU figure, how much a production unit costs with that factory setup. Try to keep that low!

Cheers

[CUR$E]

After failing several times due to the usual mistakes - want to make either sports cars or premium vehicles - I went successfully the other way.

Starting out of Gasmea I made one Utility Vehicle with two trims: Bus (aiming at passenger fleet) and Delivery (aiming at the delivery markets). With selling into nearby markets I made a good profit, allowing my company by 1970 to have a mid-class sedan/wagon/coupe trim.

Both vehicles used Inline 3 motors with 24kW at start 40kW in the facelift and the mid-class.

Profit for both vehicles is about 50-60millions per month each end 1960s.