The repair cost for a vehicle includes all the parts you buy while that car is in your Workshop, even if those parts are never put on the car. This can make it seem like you're losing a lot of money when you sell the car, but you've still got those extra parts so don't sweat it.
To make the most money buying and selling cars, try to buy cars that have a good number of parts. Repairing parts is easy (hey, you're a mechanic) and cheap, but buying new parts can be expensive.
Shop at the Junkyard! You should always check the Junkyard for parts before going to the catalog.
A good strategy is to always buy top condition parts if you see them in the Junkyard. If you don't, someone else may come along and snatch it when you need it. You can save a ton of money this way.
With the Service Pack 1 Update applied, the Junkyard can fix up those totally busted parts. If you've got a black part, scrap it. Then you can go to the Junkyard and find that part on the shelf; only now it will be in red condition, which you can repair.
You can't see the entire car, but you can see what the other bidders are doing to get an idea of what a particular car is worth.
Don't start bidding right away. See how badly everybody else wants the car.
Placing bids will drive up the price of whatever car is on the block.
The other bidders at the auction like to see custom parts.
The other bidders especially like to see completely assembled regions. If you do nothing else when you fix up your cars, put all the parts there!
If your car is on the block, and it looks like you may lose a lot of money, you can outbid everybody else. If you win it, you'll only have to pay a fraction of your bid to get your car back. It may end up saving you some money.
The Dune Buggy and Indy Car become available when you reach the "Mekada" skill level.
You will progress through the following sequence of skill levels as you play the game:
Learning, Novice, Handy, Expert, Mekada
The highest skill level is Mekada, and you reach it when you accumulate $120,000 in cash.
(Note: The Mekada skill level is renamed to "God-Like" if you haven't installed the updates.)
By law, Mekada must obtain permission from the vehicle manufacturers before we can use their cars in Gearhead Garage, even if we don't use the names of the cars. "Trade dress licensing", as this is called, is a time consuming and often expensive process. Additionally, some companies have exclusive contracts with other game developers making it impossible to use their cars.
Our marketing people are working hard to bring you as many cool cars as possible, and we appreciate your suggestions.
There were VW vehicles in early screenshots of the game, but they were removed because Mekada was unable to obtain permission from Volkswagen to use these cars. Update: There are also some 3rd party VW models circulating which were contributed by the community, but which are neither supported nor endorsed by Mekada.
Probably not. Creating car models for Gearhead Garage is a very difficult and tedious process. The game was never designed for people to be able to create their own models.
However, IF you have a copy of "3D Studio Max", and IF you know how to use it, and IF you have a lot of time and patience, then maybe you can. You will also need an unsupported tool called "SpecEd" to define the part dependencies and create the .CAR file. This is NOT for the timid or faint of heart!
The only documentation is what comes in the ZIP file. There is a forum called "SpecEd" where you can get help from other users, but DO NOT e-mail Mekada with questions or bug reports about SpecEd. We do not have time to support this... sorry!
1. If the file ends in ".zip", you need to get a program called WinZip to unzip it and extract the ".car" file.
2. Open Windows Explorer, and copy the ".car" file to your cars folder (where the other ".car" files are). Most likely this will be "C:\Program Files\HeadGames\Gearhead Garage\Data\Cars".
3. Start the game and go to the Auction. Click "Skip" a few times and you should eventually see the new car.
If you can't figure out how to do this, find someone who is experienced with computers and show them these directions. They will know what to do.
If all else fails, try asking in the message forum. Do not e-mail Mekada about 3rd party models. We didn't make them, so we won't know what's wrong! :-)
There are several web sites out there that list erroneous cheats for Gearhead Garage ("big dog", ","small cat", ","money", etc.). These cheats are BOGUS. They were probably submitted as a joke. If you see these cheats listed on a web site, e-mail the webmaster and let them know the cheats are fake.