- Primary Subject: Fictional Car Rosters in Racing Games
- Key Update: Racing games with fully invented cars sidestep manufacturer rules on damage and approvals, from Burnout and Wreckfest to indies like Pacific Drive.
- Status: Evergreen
- Last Verified: September 18, 2026
- Quick Answer: Many racing games use fictional cars because manufacturers restrict damage and require approvals, so studios invent lookalike brands they fully control.
MotorStorm almost made this list. Sony filled the series' paddocks with invented rally trucks, buggies, and big rigs from the first game on.
Then a Scion iQ rolled into MotorStorm RC in March 2012, a free promo for PS Vita owners in North America. Sony billed it as the first and only licensed vehicle the series ever carried.
One promo car breaks a clean run. Rocket League, a game about hitting a ball with a rocket-powered car, licensed the DeLorean and the Batmobile.
Driver: San Francisco carried 125 real cars, though the original 1999 Driver never put a badge on anything. The studios that kept their rosters invented had better reasons than a thin budget.
Manufacturers decide exactly how their cars are allowed to break
A veteran racing developer laid out the terms to Jalopnik in February 2023, speaking anonymously. The roof can never be damaged. The driver cell always stays intact.
Damage models go back to the carmaker for approval, and when one brand is stricter than the others, the game scales every car down to match it. He called it playing to the weakest link.
Chris Smith, game director on the 2019 GRID reboot, told Traxion in 2021 that his team couldn't destroy Ferraris, Porsches, or Corvettes "because their cars don't do that in real life."
Car makers rarely outright refuse damage, he said. They ask whether it's realistic, and whether their car would genuinely crumple that way.
Race cars get more latitude, which the Jalopnik source credited for the heavier damage in Assetto Corsa Competizione and iRacing. Road cars get none, and publishers have little reason to push.
The same developer pointed at Gran Turismo, which sold for years without meaningful damage and suffered nothing for it.
Asked how Bugbear gets away with the pileups in Wreckfest, the developer's answer was short: "They can do whatever they want, yeah."
Every car in the game is invented; most are loosely modeled on something real, and Wreckfest 2 kept the approach when it hit Steam Early Access on March 20, 2025.
Rockstar's supercars match no car that exists
Approving a botched apex is one thing. Approving a getaway car is another, as Car and Driver put it, which is why Grand Theft Auto has never carried a licensed vehicle.
Theme kills more deals than damage does, and it's the same reason Toyota's road cars haven't appeared in a Need for Speed since the 2015 reboot. Rockstar's answer is the composite.
Grotti, Pegassi, and Obey are invented badges, and TopSpeed's breakdown of GTA VI trailer footage found a supercar wearing a Ferrari 488 Pista nose and an SF90 Stradale tail over the side profile of a Pininfarina Battista.
At a glance, it reads as a Ferrari. Up close, it matches no Ferrari ever built.
The biggest vehicle case went the game maker's way
The law has been kinder to that approach than the licensing meetings are. AM General sued Activision over the Humvees in Call of Duty.
On April 1, 2020, Judge George Daniels of the Southern District of New York ruled for Activision, finding the vehicles protected expression under the Rogers v.
Electronic Arts filed first against Textron, owner of Bell Helicopter, asking a California federal court in January 2012 to confirm it needed no license for the aircraft in Battlefield 3.
The two sides settled in August 2013 and never made the terms public. Neither fight involved a car, and each ran more than a year. Drawing a Grotti costs considerably less.
Invented brands still point at real ones
BeamNG.drive splits its garage between makers that each stand in for a real one. Gavril covers Ford and Chevrolet, Ibishu covers Toyota, ETK covers BMW, Civetta covers Fiat and Lamborghini.
"Our goal in BeamNG is realism and simulation over everything," vehicle lead Jared Samuelson told Traxion. A soft-body model that folds roofs and snaps axles is exactly what the approval process exists to prevent.
art of rally uses names instead. Funselektor's September 2020 release hands you the Esky, the Meanie, Le Cinq, and Il Gorillona, and anyone raised on old rally footage can decode all four.
Criterion worked the same way on Burnout before moving to licensed rosters for Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit in 2010.
The Legendary Cars pack, released February 19, 2009, brought in a DeLorean stand-in and an Ecto-1 lookalike with "We Listen 2 U" down its side.
A licensed roster didn't save Blur
Bizarre Creations' Blur and Black Rock Studio's Split/Second launched days apart in spring 2010, both arcade racers built on combat. Blur carried more than 50 licensed cars. Split/Second's cars were all invented.
In the NPD month they shared, Split/Second sold 86,000 copies to Blur's 31,000, per figures reported by MCV/Develop, though Blur had only five days on shelves in that window.
Blur reportedly finished near 500,000 units. Activision closed Bizarre Creations in 2011, and Disney shut Black Rock the same year. Real badges changed nothing about where either studio ended up.
Indie racers skip the license by default
An approval loop built around notes on roof deformation assumes staff and months that a two-person team doesn't have.
Tim FitzRandolph's Walaber released Parking Garage Rally Circuit in September 2024 with a grid of class stand-ins like the Tatsugi Zippi and the Alta Forte-Z, and a DX expansion followed in April 2026.
Ironwood Studios built Pacific Drive around the Radius Motors station wagon, a blend of 1980s woodie wagons that players took to calling legally distinct. Game director Seth Rosen has talked about giving that car a soul through its quirks.
Funselektor's Over the Hill, co-developed with Strelka Games, swaps rally stages for off-road trails in vehicles with an unmistakable vintage Land Rover look.
The free Steam demo passed 200,000 downloads and peaked at 5,954 concurrent players, Traxion reported in June 2026. The full game is due on Steam in the second half of this year.
None of them has to send a damage model anywhere. MotorStorm made the exception once, for a Scion iQ, and Toyota wound the Scion brand down in 2016.
The only licensed car the series ever carried now wears a badge that no longer exists. The invented trucks parked around it still belong to the people who drew them.
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