Cars help your Henchmen move around the map faster and therefore complete jobs, tasks and actions more quickly.
Vehicle Age[]
The age of a vehicle determines its general speed and reliability:
- New car: These are generally faster and more reliable
- Used car: These are generally slower and less reliable
- Broken down: You can't use these
Vehicle Type[]
The type of vehicle defines any special attributes:
- Sports car (right): Provide the fastest speed for moving round the map
- Armoured vehicle (left): Reduce complications (eg. being ambushed) when carrying out tasks and actions
- Normal car (centre): A basic vehicle with no special attributes
- Wagon: A utility vehicle that you don't know how to hot-wire
DLC[]
The armoured car and new style sports car, as shown in the image below, require The Japanese Incentive add-on.
Obtaining vehicles[]
There are two ways to get a vehicle....
- Buy one at the Car Dealer (new or used; random type) or Auto Shop (only new; sports or armoured)
- Steal any parked car (increases heat, normally results in a used car)
Note: It seems that stealing a car that was already stolen doesn't cause further heat increase (although we could be wrong about this!)
Upgrading vehicles[]
If you've got a newer vehicle, click on it and instruct one of your henchmen to "Start" it.
If they are already in a new vehicle, you might have to tell them to get out of their old one first...
To ditch an existing vehicle, get your henchman to drive somewhere (getting them to establish/construct a building, or buy a weapon, or burgle a residential property will get them in to their car), and then click on the car they are in and choose "Get Out". After a while they'll park up and exit the car.
Finding vehicle age and type[]
Any parked car that you steal is almost certainly an old car.
Alternatively, while one of your henchmen is driving their car, you can click on it to get an idea of it's age and type. You'll see something like the following:
- "Used car driven by...": An old normal car
- "Sports car driven by...": A sports car (new ones are longer and have spare tire on side)
- "Armoured vehicle driven by...": A armoured vehicle, old or new
There doesn't seem to be any way to determine if an armoured vehicle is old or new.
Tips[]
Some interesting things to do with cars...
- You can hinder the enemy's ability to do drive-by shootings by stealing their parked cars from near the enemy hideout (: When clicking on them you'll see descriptions like "Underboss car" or "Muggers car".
- Armoured cars are best suited to Hitmen; Sports cars are best suited to Masterminds (who get additional speed boosts for certain types of work)
- Cars can actually reduce the speed of door-to-door burglaries because henchmen need to return to their car between each burglary
- Avoid irritating car breakdowns by upgrading your Auto Shop