There are no garages on this grid. No magic dimension where your car waits in cold storage, no menu you summon it from out of thin air. Your vehicle is a physical object in a physical world, at all times. Park it on the street and it sits on the street. Leave it in a rented slip and it sits in that slip. If somebody hotwires it and drives it to Paleto, then it is in Paleto, and it is your problem to get it back.
You manage everything from the Neural Link (F1), ASSETS tab. That is where your fleet lives: every car you own, its fuel, its body condition, where it is right now, and the buttons to act on it.
Two exceptions to "your car is always where you left it," and only two. A car left in the open for more than 3 hours after you log off gets relocated to a district impound (the grace window below). And a destroyed car can be rebuilt from nothing by Phoenix Corp for a price. Everything else is the real world: found, driven, stolen, chased, recovered.
The city does not babysit your vehicle. When you are near it, it is there in the world like any other car. When nobody is around, the grid quietly puts it to sleep at its last position and wakes it back up the moment someone comes close, exactly where it was. You will never notice the difference: drive up to where you parked and your ride is sitting there.
Because it is a real object, it can be found by anyone, not just you. A car left on a public street is fair game for a thief with the right hands. Want it safe? You pay for safe (see Protected Parking below). That is the trade this whole system runs on: cheap and exposed, or expensive and locked down.
Log off and your car holds its exact spot for 3 hours. Come back inside that window and nothing moved: it is precisely where you left it. Stay gone longer and the grid relocates it to the nearest district impound so it is not abandoned in the open forever.
This is a grace period, not a punishment. You are never penalized for having a life. Your car just moves to a safe lot if you are away too long, and you collect it from there. A vehicle locked in a rented slip ignores this entirely: it stays put for as long as the rental is paid.
Ground vehicles run on slots, and slots are earned through your Ground Vehicles skill. This is deliberate: nobody gets a personal dealership. You make real choices about what is worth keeping.
| Slot | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Slot 1 | Everyone. Your first car from day one. |
| Slot 2 | Ground Vehicles 51 (EXPERIENCED) |
| Slot 3 | Ground Vehicles 100 (MASTER) |
Three ground vehicles is the hard ceiling. Nobody owns more, ever. Motorcycles, vans, trucks and heavy iron all count against the same three. Boats and aircraft do not use these slots: they are gated by renting a marina slip or a hangar bay instead, so a sailor or a pilot does not burn their car slots on a jetski.
What you are allowed to take the wheel of depends on your vehicle skill band, and the machine fights you if you are out of your depth. This is governed by the same skill engine as everything else (see the Skill Matrix for the full access tables). The short version:
| Band | Ground | Air | Sea |
|---|---|---|---|
| NOVICE | Basic cars and vans | Grounded | Jetski |
| STREET | Bikes, SUVs, offroad | Small planes | Boats |
| EXPERIENCED | Heavy and utility | Helicopters | Fast boats |
| EXPERT | Muscle, sports, supers | Everything airborne | All surface craft |
| MASTER | Military grade | Everything airborne | Submarine |
Below 51 the controls are loose and sluggish. At 51 the machine handles stock. Above 76 it feels upgraded under your hands, and at 100 it runs at its absolute ceiling. Try to slide into a seat above your band and you get stepped right back out of it.
Every vehicle you own ships with a live transponder, and it is your best friend. While it is active, your ASSETS tab shows your car's real-time position. Hit LOCATE and the grid drops a waypoint straight onto it. Lost your ride? As long as the transponder is live, you can always find it.
Thieves know about transponders too. A skilled tech (Electronic Warfare 51) sitting in or beside your car can pull the transponder by hand. A decker (Hacking 75) can do it remotely from up to 500m away if they win the hack. The moment it goes dark, your HUD stops tracking live and shows only the LAST place the signal was seen. A stolen car with a killed transponder is genuinely lost until you get eyes on it. Remote hacks that FAIL light the decker up on SecuroServ instead.
Only a real mechanic (Mechanics 50) with an electronic kit can bring a dead transponder back online, at a workshop. Until then, you are tracking a ghost.
An unprotected vehicle can be stolen by anyone willing to work for it. Hotwiring needs Lockpicking 25 or a physical lockpick, and a 30 second hands-on job at the car. Thirty seconds is a long, exposed time to be hunched over someone else's door in plain sight, so theft is a real risk for the thief, not a free grab.
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| ACTIVE | Yours, where you left it, tracking live. |
| STOLEN | Someone hotwired it or killed the transponder. LOCATE shows last known only. |
| DESTROYED | Wrecked or chopped. Only Phoenix Corp can rebuild it. |
| IMPOUNDED | Relocated to a district lot after the 3 hour window. |
A thief can drive your car, strip it at a chop shop (which wipes the plate and destroys it in the system), or just keep it. Every hotwire is logged, and stealing from someone already wanted brings heat fast. When your car turns up STOLEN, you have options: track it down and take it back yourself, post a recovery job on the Fixer Feed and hire a crew, or call Phoenix Corp.
If you want a car that cannot be touched, you rent a protected slip: a marked spot inside a parking structure, a marina berth for boats, or a hangar bay for aircraft. While your vehicle sits in a slip you rent:
You rent a slip from the spot itself (walk up to it, rent it), and you park by driving your car in and parking it. This is your garage in every way that matters, except it is a real place in the world that you pay to hold. Let the rental lapse and the slip drops back to ordinary street parking, exposed again. Boats need a marina slip and aircraft need a hangar bay to persist past 3 hours the same way.
Once your Ground Vehicles skill hits 51, you can summon an owned ground vehicle to your location with /callvehicle [plate]. It comes to you and drops a waypoint so you can spot it. There is a cooldown between calls, so it is a convenience, not a teleporter. Below 51 you go to your car the old fashioned way: on foot, in a cab, or by asking a friend. That skill investment is what makes a wheelman worth knowing.
Phoenix Corp is the automated service that keeps you from being permanently stranded. No NPC, no kiosk, just buttons on your ASSETS tab (and the /phoenixrecover and /phoenixrestore commands). It always costs, and the cost scales with the car, so it is a real decision, not a reset button.
| Service | When | Cost | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| RECOVER | Car is missing, stolen or impounded | 15% of value | After a short delay it reappears at the nearest district lot with its transponder back on. |
| RESTORE | Car is destroyed | 40% of value | It is rebuilt fresh at the dealership, full health and fuel, all your mods intact. Go pick it up. |
Phoenix Corp costs real credits that most street-level operatives do not have. A 5,000 credit runabout costs 750 to recover and 2,000 to rebuild. A Corpo's 100,000 credit showpiece costs 15,000 just to recover. If you cannot afford it, you find the car yourself or you hire a crew off the Fixer Feed. This asymmetry is the point. There is no free recovery anywhere on this grid.
| What | How |
|---|---|
| See your fleet, fuel, condition, location | Neural Link F1, ASSETS tab |
| Find a car | LOCATE button in ASSETS (drops a waypoint) |
| Summon an owned ground car (skill 51+) | /callvehicle [plate] |
| Recover a missing or stolen car | /phoenixrecover [plate] or the ASSETS button |
| Rebuild a destroyed car | /phoenixrestore [plate] or the ASSETS button |
| Hotwire, disable a transponder, park or rent a slip | Walk up and use the on-vehicle / on-slot interaction |
| Remote transponder hack (decker) | /hacktransponder [plate] |