Each player knows a portion of the market demand each round and must make his purchasing and manufacturing decisions based on that. You can fund distributors across the country, but if you don't supply them with vehicles to sell, they go bankrupt, taking your investment with them. Alternatively, you can drop the prices on your cars to try to outsell other players. Or even temporarily improve sales rates at the cost of research. Special action phases are available with the actions provided by the players acting like Henry Ford, Billy Durant, Alfred P. Sloan, and others.

To get money, you need to build cars with your factories, but if you build more than the demand, you lose not only the money spent to make them, but you gain inefficiency costs that hurt you for the rest of the game. As newer models make their way onto the market, they sell first compared with older models. Older factories result in inefficiency costs as time passes, encouraging you to keep pace with technology. Whoever manages their car factories the best over this 4-round game will win.

Automobile is an excellent game for players interested in economic games generally, or even just low-variance, high-knowledge games. If you haven't played before, the demo should be more than enough preparation to play the game.

Because there is some importance to the turn order on turn 1, we will bid for choice of person/turn order on turn one ONLY. This will be optional in the Heats if the majority of the players at the table want to do it (with the default being to use it if there is a tie in choice), and mandatory in the Semifinal and Final. In a randomly determined player order, players will conduct an Amun-Re-/Vegas Showdown-style auction for their role selection in the first turn, bidding cash-on-hand for their choice of role in $10 increments. When each player has bid on a different role the auction will end. The winning bids will be collected into a pool of cash and distributed evenly amongst the players, with any remainder placed in the bank. This last step is to try to avoid disruption of the total liquidity in the game, although so far the bids haven’t gone too high.

Up to 16 players will advance to the Semifinal, or half the field if there are fewer than 32 unique entrants. The Heat Most Wins - Points standard tie-breakers will be used for Advancement, with a GM specific tie-breaker listed below.

HEATS: MOST WINS - POINTS (HMW-P):

1. Most Wins (e.g., total in all heats entered)
2. Total Points – Players earn the following pints in each heat they entered:
   • 1st Place - 1,000 points
   • 2nd Place - 100 points
   • 3rd Place - 10 points
   • 4th Place - 1 points
   • All other places - 0 points
   • e.g. player has a 1st, 2nd, and 4th in three heats: total points would be 1,101
3. GM Specific Tie-breaker – Smallest percentage behind the winner in your best non-win.
4. High dice roll.

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