It's intended that this be a bit of a schlocky game. The idea is that it's a satirical American Pseudo-Post-Apocalypse. Media inspirations include things like... Palladium's "Systems Failure" RPG, video games like "Zombies Ate My Neighbors" or "Redneck Rampage", Beavis & Butthead. Kooky conspiracy theories of the last century, televangelists, UFOs, clueless parents, boring suburbia, basically pre-interet. I want there to be room for some Car Wars kind of business, maybe even some other gameplay, but the "game" style play should be more about the rules of the games themselves more than character specific mechanics. Maybe Zombie Bug aliens and Conspiracy Lizard aliens are taking over the country? Who knows. Characters should have flavor that fits with their capabilities, but mostly a lot of folks can try anything. As for the auto-combat stuff, the wasteland between population centers is more dangerous, but there is some old American dream of the open road that entrances some and feeds into the monster-truck style obsession with that in pop culture. Should be a lot of square, lame parents and stuff too. A bunch of cheap messages and old social critique sprinkled in that mostly comes from the '80s and before. The "critique" is as played out and dead as the era the whole thing is mocking for fun.
As for rules aims... Aside from mentioning Systems Failure and Car Wars, I also think about the GDW system as used in games like Traveller: The New Era or Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. I think of Warhammer Fantasy. I think of old-school Traveller. I think of the silliness found in that Gamma World based on DnD 4e. I think about this "funny careers" game idea we had back in the days of High School. Even some PbtA games such as The Spirit of '77 come to mind. There should be some pretty light core rules and a million careers/archetypes/whatever that you make a character using, by slapping a couple of them together. While I'm not super up on Troika, some of the silliness I've seen there may even be in the wheelhouse of what I'm considering.
Still really up in the air. Leaning towards something 2d6-ish.