The Best Games Where You Can Build Your Own Car

A game mechanic that designers continue to go back to with regularity is the use of cars. Customizable cars in games allow you to trick out your ride, and in some instances, let you get involved in how your car is set up through the ability to change seemingly every part of the rig.

Games with these kinds of mechanics tend to provide hours of entertainment. Sometimes, they’re used to bolster a racing game’s core loop, while other times, the racing part is simply an afterthought. Either way, wrenching in a virtual world is just as fun as it is in the real world.

Updated by Alexander J Pinera on March 30, 2025: It’s always fun to take a look back at all the games that let you live out your fantasy of being a car mechanic. You’re not just building cars, but creating vehicles that come from the bottom of your soul. Whether it’s a paint job or a complete overhaul of all the pieces inside, at the end of the day you can say that the car you made is the perfect fit for you. Here are some games that will let you customize cars to your heart’s content.

20

Lego Island

Building Brick By Brick

Lego games from the 90s were a whole different beast. Lego Island is one of the most memorable as it had fans delivering pizzas, driving vehicles, and building them as well. This includes building two types of cars; race cars and a Jeep.

The building process follows the same rules as a real Lego set. Just drag and drop the piece where it needs to go until you’ve completed the set. Customization options include changing the color of the bricks and adding emblems all over.

19

Lego Racers

Build Your Dream Lego Racer

Lego Racers takes the zaniness of the Lego System era and transforms it into a racing game. With seven circuits and different characters that dominate the racetrack on each one, you’ll need to hit the gas to come in first.

Customization includes using Lego pieces to build your own car. There is no limit to what you can build or which pieces go where. Your car can look like a mess and still win races. With each additional circuit that you beat, you also gain additional parts to further customize your race car.

18

My Summer Car

Summer (Car) Lovin’ Had Me A Blast

You won’t get the most modern or flashy car parts in My Summer Car, since it takes place in Finland in 1995, but to compensate for that, you’ll get incredibly in-depth car-building mechanics, no pun intended.

From switching out wrenches, screwing in nuts and bolts, and whipping out carjacks, all the way to ordering individual parts by phone and assembling an entire engine from scratch, this game will get you pretty close to the real thing. Just… don’t mind the sillier side of the game; you’ll figure that out as you go.

17

Crossout

When Cars Become War Machines

While you can build basically anything you can think of in Crossout, keep in mind that the basis of the game is throwing every player’s custom vehicle into an arena and slugging it out until only one player or one team remains.

So, don’t be surprised if your dream car has more miniguns, armor, or chainsaws on it than you previously intended; better to prepare for war in times of peace, as they say. Well, you could build something stylish, but it’d only be appreciated for roughly 15 seconds until a missile T-bones you.

16

Besiege

Somewhat Avant-Garde, But No Less Fun

Ultimately, Besiege revolves around solving a series of combat-based puzzles, but how they’re solved comes down to the DaVinci-like contraption you end up creating. Once built, you’ll unleash it on strategically placed enemies, like columns of medieval soldiers.

If you’re not very interested in puzzles or the main campaign, however, you can also just tool around in the free build mode or browse and try out other people’s creations. If you find yourself lost in the learning curve, don’t be afraid to tinker around; it’s all about destruction and creation.

15

Mad Max

When Vehicular Chaos Becomes An Extension Of Yourself

Anyone who’s seen one of the Mad Max films knows it’s about cars. The Mad Max game showcases a beautiful open world and fun combat-based gameplay, but one of the most original aspects of its design is the car customization options.

Not satisfied with letting you drive just one car around the wasteland, Mad Max gives you a slew of different body types and the ability to customize and upgrade nearly every part of your vehicle. Since you’re in the car a lot, it feels like you’re really just leveling up a character– it’s a great experience, and people are eagerly awaiting a sequel or a remaster.

14

Automation

Granularity, Down To Every Nut And Bolt

From the aptly named Camshaft Software, Automation gives you the means to work on existing vehicles, tweaking them to be any way you want them– if you’re particularly confident in your design abilities, you can even construct a car from the ground up.

If you’re already a car expert, the game’s commitment to realism gives you a clear advantage: where some games afford you simple customization, Automation will let you seemingly adjust every screw and bolt on your vehicle. After that, you can operate a car company and sell the vehicles you designed yourself.

13

Gran Turismo 7

Find The Perfect Feel And Tuning

The tweaking options in the Gran Turismo series are quite impressive: sure, you can race a car, but the real fun comes with the emphasis on tuning your cars, changing the appearance of the vehicles, and making performance-based adjustments to take your rigs to a whole new level.

You pretty much have total control of your vehicles and their capabilities, and it doesn’t hurt that the whole racing aspect of Grand Turismo ain’t too bad itself. Being able to hop into a car you just fine-tuned and see instantly just how well you’ve done on Turismo’s beautiful tracks is a mechanics’ dream.

12

Grand Theft Auto 5

Flexing On Other Players Has Never Been This Easy

In a game with endless hours of enjoyment to be had thanks to the wide array of available activities, an in-depth customization option for vehicles in Grand Theft Auto 5 is just icing on the proverbial gameplay cake.

You can change everything about your rides and even test them out online to see how they perform. The mod community also helps add additional layers to the game’s car building, even allowing actual name-brand vehicles into the game. After you’ve souped up your ride, the mind-bending races in the online half of the game will be yours to conquer.

11

Need For Speed Underground 2

Don’t Sweat Cosmetics; It’s What’s Under The Hood That Matters

In the street-racing world of Need for Speed: Underground 2, there are all sorts of options for crafting your perfect vehicle. Along with the extensive cosmetic changes you can make to cars in Underground 2, there are plenty of options to be found underneath the hood.

There is a surprisingly expansive selection of choices to be made regarding the performance of your vehicles, especially considering that the Need for Speed series is more about arcade action rather than the realistic car simulation that its peers often focus on.

10

The Crew 2

Don’t Be Afraid To Tinker

This open-world racing game by Ivory Tower has a wide scope, putting cars, F1 racers, boats, and even motorcycles on offer for you to control throughout its beautiful sandbox map. In The Crew 2, there are plenty of customization options to add to your car, making it go faster, handle better, and look cooler all the while.

This all occurs on a game map modeled to be a scaled-down version of the United States. While the game initially got mixed reviews, it did turn some eyes onto how fun the open-world concept and player customization could really be when applied to a racing game.

9

Lego Bricktales

Made For Laid-Back Creatives

Unsurprisingly, there is plenty of building to be done in the physics-based bridge-builder known as Lego Bricktales, a game tailor-made for more technical-minded Lego fans. One of the game’s highlights is the challenge of building a car.

There are no brands to speak of and no performance issues to worry about; the game’s core premise boils down to “here are some parts, now make something worthwhile of it.” You don’t actually get to race the car, but the building process is the best part — right?

8

Forza Horizon 4

Keep Testing The Limits

Where do you start with Forza Horizon 4? Are you looking for quick-change options that make it easy to upgrade your car in a flash? Done. Do you want to meticulously pour over every part to create the ultimate racing machine? Done again.

Once you have your dream car, you can create a route around the open world, which is a stunning creation based on Great Britain. If you feel particularly confident in your car-crafting ability, you can choose a difficult route to test the limits of your vehicle’s design.

7

Car Mechanic Simulator Series

Unmatched Realism

Car Mechanic Simulator is the closest to working on real cars you’ll probably get in a video game setting. The core loop focuses on the use of tools to complete repair jobs on cars, upgrade your garage, and restore classic vehicles.

There are over a thousand parts, covering nearly all components seen in a real-life car. Not only can you get replacement parts if something breaks, but you can also choose to fix a broken part if you so choose. There is also a racing sim bolted onto this game for good measure, so you can see just how poorly you put your rust bucket together.

6

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts And Bolts

A Surprising Array Of Parts And Possibilities

While Banjo-Kazooie isn’t exactly known for being a vehicle franchise, Nuts and Bolts is a fun romp for the iconic duo. You spend your time in the game getting vehicle components and blueprints in order to complete challenges within a myriad of worlds.

There are more than 1,600 vehicle component options for use in building cars, helicopters, submarines, hovercrafts, boats, and airplanes. It was critically acclaimed for being an extremely deep creative experience, allowing you to use your imagination to progress through both the levels and hub world.

5

The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom

An Unintended But Welcome Outcome

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom allows you to build zany vehicles that serve a purpose in puzzle-solving gameplay. With planes, cars, boats, and rockets, you have the ability to explore Hyrule at your leisure.

Twitter has exploded with images of the cars you can build, getting to the point that people have even built questionable vehicles thanks to the high level of customization present. Amazingly, you can build functional all-terrain vehicles, which ignore huge rocky hills thanks to the joints present on Zonai cooking pots.

4

Dirt Rally 2.0

Thankfully, You Won’t Have To Clean The Cars Yourself

Dirt Rally 2.0 is a pretty faithful sequel to Dirt Rally, keeping the original’s dedication to driving simulation while adding a few accessibility options along the way. The sheer difficulty of driving on the world’s most famous rallies is eased only by the high level of customization afforded when choosing your car.

Though there aren’t nearly as many options when it comes to visual flair on cars, there is virtually no limit to how fine you can tune the various internal mechanics of your vehicles. If a car isn’t suiting your driving style, it’s easy to pop it open and start messing with knobs.

3

The Long Drive

Forget Zen Gardening; It’s Time For Zen Maintenance

The Long Drive’s version of car building is a little less concerned with creating custom vehicles and a little more interested in keeping your current vehicle in shape. Since your car might not remain in pristine condition over the course of your infinite journey, you can grab parts from other cars or generated buildings to repair your chassis.

Even if your car isn’t in disrepair, sometimes pilfering a nicer engine or a newer set of external parts can improve the performance and appearance of your vehicle, a nice distraction for you as you drift across the boundless, silent desert.

2

Project Zomboid

You’ll Never Take A Functioning Car For Granted Ever Again

Though you may not get the chance to participate in a bit of auto-mechanical mayhem in the early days of Project Zomboid, you’ll definitely need to secure a good car if you plan on living for more than a few months. In the post-apocalypse, you actually need to scrounge for the parts necessary to customize and construct a vehicle in the wake of the zombie uprising.

Though Project Zomboid isn’t strictly a driving game, it doesn’t pull any punches with actual car variety – you can soup up a mascot truck to drive like a Corvette, or more likely, shove the best parts you can into a Honda Civic before it takes you two and half miles and breaks down.

1

Saints Row 4

Get As Goofy As You Want

Saints Row 4’s existing vehicle mechanics shouldn’t be nearly as deep as they are, given how much more efficient the game’s superpowers are for movement, but you can’t really argue with extra content when it’s this polished.

In the Saints Row tradition, you can make your car as goofy as you want while also adding deadly spikes and a ridiculous amount of nitrous oxide. Even the golf carts are customizable, so you don’t have to worry about your version of the president looking like anything other than a complete and total killer.