I’m not sure why, but I’ve been on a “simulator” kick lately. I just finished Crime Scene Cleaner, my girlfriend and I played Cooking Simulator together, and now I’m playing Car Mechanic Simulator. They’ve been especially easy to play because they keep popping up on GamePass.

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I’ve always been into cars, but it’s relatively surface level. I once told a friend that my affinity for automobiles is “wide, not deep”. I’ve always admired the variations in body style and design, and learned a little bit about different types of engines and other minor stuff under the hood. I try to go to the car show every year.

But that’s mostly it. I’ve never done any deep-dives into the inner-workings of cars, nor did I ever have much hands-on experience. When I was like 17, I installed a new head unit in my car with no oversight using just electrical tape and ingenuity. I actually managed to get it to work and had it installed properly.

It took like 4 hours, but it worked and looked good (I even replaced the panel so the new unit fit in seamlessly). I showed my uncle — an actual mechanic and car-restorer — who said just using electrical tape was a fire hazard. He took it out, fixed it, and put it back in all of 5 minutes. I then realized I was out of my depth.

I Still Loved the Idea, Though…

I think a lot of what I like comes from the customization, too. I grew up with the Fast and the Furious movies, and really love the original trilogy before they really went off the rails (yes even — especially, actually — Tokyo Drift). Something about the endless amount of options to make your vehicle unique, and the earned-not-bought respect it can bring really gelled with me.

I always thought that maybe one day I’d have the discretionary income, time, care, motivation etc. etc. etc. to buy my own car and upgrade it myself. But that day hasn’t come (yet). I’ve had to suffice with video games like Need for Speed, The Crew, and more; along with this one, Car Mechanic Simulator.

I saw this game as an opportunity to take a deeper dive into the workings of cars without having to go out and buy a project car myself. And while I realize you can change engines and make different upgrades in the various racing games I’ve played; I don’t really look in to what I’m adding to the car. I simply look at the information that tells me that the car is becoming more powerful, and compare parts based on the speed, acceleration, etc. increases.

I don’t, however, look at what the various parts are called, or what the specifically do, or where they might be installed. So while I do have a slight frame of reference, this is an opportunity to get my virtual hands dirty.

Early Struggles & Frustrations

In the beginning, the game is pretty overwhelming. The tutorial doesn’t give you much information, and interacting with the cars and making the choices you need to make can be a bit confusing. Maybe it makes more sense using a mouse and keyboard, but felt a bit convoluted playing with a controller on Xbox.

Most of the time, when you’re interacting with a car, you press ‘Y’ to open a radial menu to access whatever tool you need at the time. And tools are buried inside sub-menus, which you have to remember. It’s mostly fine and easy to get used to, but there are times where I’ll press ‘Y’ to instinctively open a menu, but the action required pressing ‘A’ to select. And oftentimes when I tried to go back with ‘B’, it would exit the whole menu I’m in, rather than going back one level. Again, as you play you’ll get used to what menus you need to dig through to find what you need, but it’s not very intuitive.

I suppose when I went to spend skill points for the first time, I would have seen that there was an upgrade for something that I’d never used, and go looking for it. But even then, I’m inferring. I don’t mind figuring things out in video games — hell, I prefer it most of the time — but I wasn’t looking for a puzzle game here, I was looking to fix up cars.

This game’s premise is kind of niche, and I feel like they expect you to come in with some prior knowledge of what different things are supposed to do. But at the same time, if you’re an actual mechanic and you want to, say, work on the types of cars and engines you may never get to in real life; this might be unfulfilling.

“Story”

There’s a bit of a story mode, or more accurately, there are “story missions”. Some of the clients (they’re labeled “Story Order” and are at the top of the list) have more context behind them detailing why you’re fixing the car. For example, there’s the initial customer who sees that there’s a new shop open and wants to help out; there’s the family who was about to leave for a road trip when they discovered their car won’t start; there’s the kid who crashed their dad’s car; and there’s the aspiring influencer who wants to build a brand around a car (that you actually build). They’re interesting and add flavor to the game, and gives you reasons to keep progressing. 

You can only take one story mission at a time, but there are always cars that need fixing. They’re in varying levels of disarray, and each one is only available for a certain amount of time. You also have access to increasing amount of available customers as you gain levels, and you can accept as many non-story orders as you have parking spots available.

You start with 4 spots — a lift bay, a spot at each one of your garage doors outside (adding 2 more), and a spot next to the garage perpendicular to the other cars. Once you buy the second lift bay, a car can also sit there — so you ultimately get 5.

Gameplay

When you select a car to fix, you’re shown problems as if someone brought a car in to a mechanic. It’ll list things like “brake problems”, “knocking in the engine”, and “having trouble shifting”. You have to go in, find the problematic parts, and replace or fix them. You can open the hood to look at the engine, or lift the car to look at parts from underneath; and most parts can only be interacted with from one orientation or the other (even if seems like you could reach it).

An items amount of degradation is shown by how rusty it looks, and that goes for everything. Even things that seem like they shouldn’t be “rusty” to be bad like spark plugs, or things that physically can’t rust like rubber bushings still show a “rusty” look to show damage and wear. It’s certainly helpful, for the layman like me, to be able to quickly see what may or may not be a problem. But I understand if someone found it a bit lacking.

You select the part to remove it, and most parts are screwed in so you have to hold the button (in this case ‘A’ on Xbox) in order to unscrew the item. And if the car’s in bad enough condition, the screws themselves will be rusty, too. So you have to us WD-40 DW-04 to loosen the screws. And, naturally, some parts are under other parts, so you have to take them out (and put them back) in a particular order. It’s a lot of finding the next part, selecting it, holding the button to (un)install, and repeating.

Fortunately you don’t have to memorize the order, as you can’t cover something that hasn’t been installed yet, so that’s nice. And you don’t have to keep track of screws, so that makes things much easier than they would be in real life. Overall, it’s a very simple process, but can be incredibly tedious.

There are a couple exceptions to simply holding the button to dismount and replace a part, that I think are pretty cool additions. With the shocks, after taking the shock off of the car, you have to take it to the Spring Puller in order to separate the spring from the shock itself. And once you’ve fixed or bought new parts, you have to re-assemble the shock at the same machine.

Similarly, tires need to be taken off of wheels and rims and put back on at a Tire Changer. There’s even a neat animation that goes with it that’s similar to how it’s actually done. It doesn’t line up perfectly, but it’s nice. And you also have to balance each tire individually with the Wheel Balancer (and quick minigame) before you can add it to the car.

It’s not super often that a wheel or shock needed to be replaced in order to complete a car; but it was fun when I did get to interact with those. And I got to use them even more when I fully restored cars to 100% parts.

Finding the Problems

Like I mentioned earlier, you’re not given a ton of information on what exactly you need to do to each car. You’re told the issue the customer is having, and you have to go find the cause of that issue. You are shown, however, how many parts need replacing on each car. And there are often additional tasks that need to be completed like refilling the fluids (brake fluid, coolant, oil etc.).

With the Normal Orders, you typically only have a few parts to replace. But the storyline cars have tons. You can see the number of items that need to be replaced when you look at the cars information page (which you find in the car’s radial menu). It shows a list of parts, but most of them show “Part Not Discovered”, and you’ve got to find them on the car to reveal them in this list. Once you’ve installed a part with a sufficient percentage, you’ll get a star next to the part showing it’s complete.

There are ways to reveal some of the parts before just diving in to the engine and taking it apart. There’s the Test Track, where you drive the car through a series of tests to check it’s steering, engine, shocks, and brakes. And there’s a few tools, like the Electronic Multimeter and Compression Tester that may reveal information for you. They’re not always useful, though. It was a pretty common issue that a couple of the tools wouldn’t work because they relied on running the engine, and the problem was that the engine couldn’t be started. And, obviously, you can’t drive a car on a test track if you can’t start it.

Maybe there’s an easier solution than what I was doing, but by the time I figured out how to get the engine started, in those scenarios, I had pretty much figured the rest of it out anyway. The aforementioned “Examine” feature helps a bit, too; but still doesn’t reveal everything. The worse-off an area is, the more red it is, but it didn’t necessarily reveal the specific part needed. I found myself using that more just to farm XP than to actually figure out what was wrong with each car.

Truthfully, the most reliant/efficient way to figure out what was wrong with each car was to dive in (and with a little learning along the way). Instead of using the tools, I just tried to find the quickest way to get to the problem areas. If it was a transmission problem, I started to immediately check the gearbox (making sure to remove the starter from the engine bay side first — ugh, that was annoying). If there were issues starting the car, I started looking at the fuses and spark plugs. Some were a bit more obvious, like “suspension feels loose”, so I knew exactly what to check.

Engine Problems

Engine problems were a little more complicated, but I kind of came up with a system. I’d check the usual cam shafts and tension rods and gears. But if none of those jumped out, I started checking the pistons from underneath through the oil pan. I found that the rust goes all the way down, so I could quickly check there to see if the piston was the issue, rather than taking apart the entire engine top-down.

That said, there are Piston Rings in with the Pistons that you can’t get to without removing the Piston itself — and you can’t remove the piston itself without essentially taking apart the rest of the engine. That was the worst. Now that I’ve taken apart, and put back together several engines, it’s less daunting. But at first, when I thought I just had to find a couple things to fix so I could make a quick profit, I got incredibly frustrated having to take the whole thing down to the studs.

On top of the Piston Rings, there were a few other parts I had to constantly keep in my mind otherwise I’d overlook them and spend too much time searching. Rubber Bushings, Cam Gear Caps, Rod Caps, and Wheel Hub Bearings are all small, seemingly inconsequential parts that will often be the very thing that needs to be replaced in order to complete the job.

Solving the Issues

In order to solve the problems that the car has, you have a few options. You can buy a new part to replace the affected one. You can replace broken parts with parts that you’ve taken off of other cars (if they’re sufficiently not broken). Or you can fix the part and put it back. You have to spend skill points to unlock an upgrade the ability to fix parts — plus not all parts can be repaired — so you’ll end up buying parts most of the time.

When you find a part that needs replacing, you can add it to your shopping list. Then you run to the computer to buy the part, and head back to the car to install it. There is a tablet you can buy, though, that allows you to quickly access the shop from the radial menu (or, on Xbox, by pressing ‘X’). In order to add the part to your shopping list to find later, there’s a corresponding button you can press when you’re either looking at the item itself, or just the spot where the part goes.

Unfortunately, though, you can’t add parts to your shopping list from the car’s status menu. When digging through the parts, it can be a bit of a guess-and-check. I would often take off a part that looks like it could be one of the one’s that needs replacing; then head back to the status menu to see if that, in fact, was a correct part. Repeating the process until all of the parts have been discovered.

I think this definitely could’ve been handled better, especially because there’s no real rhyme or reason to which parts may need changing at any given time. There could be parts that you remove that are in worse shape than one in the list — but it won’t need to be replaced.

Shopping for Parts

When buying new parts for the car, I found it easier to just add the needed parts to my shopping list as I came across them. After repairing anything I could, I’d begin to put the car back together; and whenever I came across a part that I don’t have a 100% replacement part for, I’d quickly add it to the shopping list, pop in to the shop to buy the part, back out of the store, and install the part. When I only had a few parts to replace, I found myself just taking pictures of my TV so I had a list I could reference.

I also found it disappointing that I couldn’t see how many of each part I already had in stock. The only way I could figure was to manually count them and keep a record yourself. Overall, I would much rather be able to add all of the parts to a list quickly and easily, buy all of the parts in one go, then head to the car to put it together knowing I’ve got everything I need (and nothing I don’t).

Other Improvements

In addition to fixing/replacing the car’s parts and body panels, there are expansions to your garage that can be bought in order to upgrade cars in different ways. There’s the car wash, where you can clean up the exterior and interior of the cars (though the animation is pretty much the same for both — they just get sudsy for a while). There’s the paint shop, where you can apply a variety of colors and paint styles. This can also be upgraded to include additional paints and eventually a couple of decals. There’s also the “Test Path” calibration room and the Dyno where you can test your owned cars’ horsepower and further customize the tuning.

I will say with the dyno, I had a helluva time figuring out what to do (though this was partially user error). When you bring a car into the dyno and try to tune it, it tells you that the car needs a custom gearbox in order to be tuned. Fine, I’ll buy one. The only problem was, I couldn’t find it.

The “Tuning Shop” has a bunch of parts with increased tuning, but no custom gearboxes. I checked periodically over the course of fixing like 3 cars, and it just wasn’t there. Turns out, there’s a whole separate “Custom Gearbox Shop” separate from the other “Tuning Shop” section. That was frustrating — and I ended up submitting a couple cars “incomplete” because I wasn’t able to tune a car like the mission called for.

Once I did get a custom gearbox installed and was able to mess with the tuning, I was again lost. I have no idea what the ratios are, or what they should be, or how they work together to maximize output — I have literally no frame of reference for this at all. So I just made it up.

I noticed that my top speed was seemingly going up the lower I made the ratio. So I just set it to 0 to see what would happen. The car wouldn’t move at all. I ended up just searching for a guide and found one that said to basically follow an Aston Martins configuration, so I did that. I still don’t know what any of it means, though.

Upgrades and Skills

Upgrades

I touched on it earlier, but there are upgrades that you can get in this game, too. You can make your “Examine” faster. You can make unscrewing, mounting, and unmounting parts faster or increase your walk speed. And even unlock the ability to repair parts so you don’t have to buy entirely new ones each time.

Repairing

Repairing parts is interesting. You unlock a room off the side of the garage (which looks like it should be the convenience store part because there’s pumps outside for some reason, but I digress). And in the room are several tools and desks, though each one is either a “Repair Table (Parts)” or “Repair Table (Body). Each “tool” does one or the other. There are two exceptions in this room — the Brake Lathe, which fixes brakes; and the engine builder, where you can build your own engine from scratch.

I haven’t built an engine from scratch at all, just repairing the ones already in cars. And in order to fix the brakes, you just put them in the machine and wait. But in order to repair the other parts, you get to play a little minigame. You’re shown several bars in green, red, and gray; and an arrow travels back-and-forth along the top of these bars. You have to press A to stop the arrow on top of a green bar, failing if you do so on top of a red bar, and being able to try again if you get a gray one.

It’s a fun addition to be sure, but I do wonder if they could have made it a bit more interactive for those who want to be more hands-on with their repairs.

Not every part can be fixed, unfortunately, so you will have to continue to buy parts. You can unlock the ability to repair “higher level” parts. But in all honesty, I have no idea where the part level came in. I can’t find any indicator of what level an item might be and whether or not it’s fixable. And after going through an entire bout of repairs — with my repair skill maxed out — I still end up with broken items in my inventory. Again, little information. I do know that you’re not able to fix body parts until the top level of the skill.

Cleaning out Your Inventory

In order to get rid of parts, you can either sell or salvage them. Selling them nets you a small amount for each part, and removes them from your inventory (which is the important thing). And salvaging items give you a special blue-symboled currency (I can’t seem to find it’s name) which allows you to upgrade parts to better qualities.

Upgrading individual parts gives power benefits; but like repairing, I don’t know what is or isn’t salvageable. I’ll have a bunch of broken parts in my inventory (still, after having repaired everything available) and I’ll try to salvage them. I’ll go through the bout of that and check my inventory, and there’ll still be broken items. I just don’t understand.

Personal Cars

On top of fixing up other people’s cars for various reasons, you can also acquire cars for yourself. Theres the junkyard you can explore; there’s an auction house where you can bid on cars to try to get them at a reasonable price, which is pretty cool because they use the gamertags in your friends list as auction opponents; and there are barns whose locations you can find in chests that you receive for completing story missions.

You can visit these barns and see what cars happen to be forgotten about, and if you like one (or more) you can buy them. There’s also “junk” scattered around the barns, with random miscellaneous parts that you can buy (this is also true for the Junkyard).

You bring cars back to your shop, where you can make the same fixes that you can do to other cars, along with additional upgrades to make your car unique. There are more “custom” looking options for each car that you can apply instead of the default options. And you can install custom upgraded parts that add additional power.

This is where a lot of the fun for me is had in the game — buying an old forgotten beater, restoring it into something badass, upgrading it to make it mine (and, frankly, to have the best parts) and test them out. So far, I’ve only gotten a couple-hundred horsepower and a top-speed of about 180. I’ve got a long way to go.

Phase 3: Profit

This is also the best way to make money that I’ve found — flipping the cars you find in the barns*. I’ve done full 100% to the clips restorations about 4 times now, and have made a significant profit each time. I’ve also added more and more custom parts each time — wondering if the price of the custom part outweighed the profit from it — but in fact it was the opposite. The more I spent on the car, the more I got back.

The car’s handling is just… awful, and the touchiest move to either direction sends the cars into a tailspin. I actually ended up reading some forums to figure out how to fix it; and the best way people said was to use slick tires. But even then, I couldn’t maintain control enough to complete a full lap. I don’t love that, but truthfully, I prefer straight-line tests anyway. So, for me, it wasn’t a huge deal. But I could see how it would be for someone.

The Cars

There are quite a few types of cars in Car Mechanic Simulator, but none of them are licensed car brands (unless you buy the DLC). That said, you can pretty clearly tell what most of the cars are supposed to be — Like the FMW… I wonder what that is 🤔. It’s not just I.C.E engines, either. There’s an electric car or two thrown in there as well to keep you on your toes. And like I mentioned a bit earlier, there are quite a few engine options in this game.

I’m not as familiar with engines, though, so I can’t really differentiate them. I’ve kind of shied away from that aspect because I’m so unfamiliar and have just been rebuilding cars with their proper parts. I’d like to get into engine building and seeing what else is available but the lack of information is holding me back. I don’t want to spend most of my credits building something that I can’t use because whatever car I have or want isn’t compatible or something. So, I’ll tackle later when I’ve got more CR and the cost is inconsequential.

Conclusion

Overall, even though it’s a four-year-old game, I’ve still been really enjoying playing Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. While the lack of information was often frustrating, it was still interesting playing around in engines and under cars. And it’s very satisfying taking an old clunker into a show-worthy masterpiece.

Since starting this post, I’ve found an old Lambo Morena, and I can’t wait to get my hands on that V12. Maybe this is where I try my hand at building a new one. Either way, I definitely recommend this game if you’re interested in cars at all; but be forewarned, if you’re already a bit of an expert, you might find this lacking.

Have you played Car Mechanic Simulator at all? Let me know in the comments what you think about it; especially if you have any handling tips.