Keep in mind too that back when this game was played, cars were much more configurable than they are today. Yes you can order cars with different things, but you don't get the granularity of choices like you did back then. That would make the game harder to set up.
Prior to the 1988 model year (for at least GM and Ford cars), the main way you ordered options on a factory-ordered car was individually selecting options. That means, if you wanted air conditioning but did not want cruise control, you didn't have to order a package with several other options just to get air conditioning (or any other option you wanted).
Yes, car makers have been doing this for some time. At least as far back as the 1960s, there were groups that bundled minor convenience and appearance items together to make building cars easier and save the customer money (by not having to buy separately) and – as their names implied – provide more convenience, appearance and protection for their cars.
I guess Chrysler Corp. was one that really jumped into the fray first in the late 1970s/early 1980s with Easy Order packages such as Basic, Popular and Luxury packages. Each of those groups had ascending groups of options based on what people most ordered, with the Luxury Package maybe containing the most "luxurious" options of the time like power windows, power seat and cassette player for the radio. This must have worked, as by the late 1980s, Ford and GM were doing the same thing.
Which, in turn, reduced the number of individually available options for vehicles. The main options were bundled into these option packages (such as air conditioning, AM/FM stereo radio, tinted glass and rear defogger in one package; those options plus intermittent wipers, cruise control and tilt steering wheel in a second, more expensive package, and so on). Individual options were now limited to basically seating configurations and upholstery, wheel covers and tires, maybe a premium luxury item (such as a compact disc player for the radio or a power-operated sunroof) and a few other items. Often, the only way you could get something like air conditioning – before that itself began to become standard equipment in most cars – was to order an option package.
Point: It's Optional was a victim of its time, and I believe that with the way car makers make optional equipment available today, the game would clearly not work.
It was a fun game for the 1970s and early 1980s, but when car makers began different marketing strategies for optional equipment – i.e., grouping equipment into option packages as the bulk of their optional equipment lists – in the late 1980s, the game became outdated.
Brian
P.S.: Not related to this discussion so much, but more to the point of the marketing option packages ... I recall reading a new car magazine that included a letter from a reader who was upset over the option package way of marketing options. He had wanted to order a new car (IIRC, a Toyota Camry) with only air conditioning, tinted glass and maybe an AM/FM radio, but was upset when told by his salesman that the only way he could buy the car was by ordering an option package with other items he absolutely did not want (likely, power windows and other electrical equipment he may have thought might need expensive repairs later on) and would in his opinion needlessly increase the price.