It doesn't fit into the development model of car companies at all. Typically you have a 3-4 year development cycle for cars. Within that period lots of stuff happens, from getting contracts with all the suppliers, developing all the individual parts (often from scratch, if a different supplier than the previous one was chosen), integrating that into the cars and testing on the road.

After that a car is pretty much seen as completed, it will go into the factory and to the customer and probably get minor updates and fixes during the first year. However development already starts for the next model. Data and information from previous cars won't help you that much, since the systems in the new car will often be very different (as I said, most things are developed externally and from different suppliers, reuse is limited).