The Most Customizable Cars in GTA 5 & How to Customize Them | XboxAchievements.com (2024)

There are many things to spend money on in Rockstar Games' GTA Online, whether that's a bit of property, a new vehicle, or just weapons galore. Perhaps one of the coolest ways to spend money in GTA Online though is by taking your super expensive car that you just dropped $2m on, and making it your own. Whether that's adding a spoiler, some armor, or boosting its speed; it's a very satisfying way to spend your hard earned money. Plus, what's more satisfying than a garage full of customised wheels lined up from wall to wall? The answer is nothing.

In this guide we'll run you through some of the best cars to customise in GTA 5 and what options you have at your disposal when it comes to upgrading cars.

The 13 Best Cars to Customize in GTA 5

There are literally hundreds of different vehicles in GTA Online, but these, for all intents and purposes, are our favorite customizable vehicles. 13, in fact, that cover all ends of the spectrum. From super expensive to free. From Xbox Series X/PS5 cars to last-gen cars. These are some of the best cars to customize in GTA Online. It is worth pointing out that the prices below are the standard route prices, i.e. bought from a store, but if you complete some requirements for some cars, you can buy them at a trade price, which is significantly cheaper. Do that, save some cash.

Karin S95

Type: Sports
Price: Free on next-gen versions for returning players / $1.9m
Location: Text message / Southern San Andreas Super Autos

There's no other way to put this, but the Karin S95 is an absolute beast. Since its introduction into the game with the next-gen versions of GTA V, a fully upgraded Karin S95 is actually the quickest car in the game, hitting speeds of155.5mph, which is 19.5mph quicker than the previous fastest car, the Ocelot Pariah. It's basically got an incredibly powerful engine, that out performs every other car in GTA Online. Plus, it's free for returning players and great to burn past the opposition in races. And, you can customize it to high heaven!

Karin 190z

Type: Sports Classic
Price: $900,000
Location: Legendary Motorsport

The Karin 190z is a great car for a number of reasons. 1. You can pick one up for well under $1m; and 2. The Karin 190z has an absolute metric ton of customisation options (over 150!), so you can effectively turn the Karin 190z into a car that really suits your tastes. The sheer amount of options mean that it's as close to having a completely unique car when cruising the streets of Los Santos.

Karin Calico GTF

Type: Sports
Price: $1,995,000
Location: Southern San Andreas Super Autos

The Karin Calico GTF is rather unsurprisingly based on the Toyota Celica, and while it has an incredible amount of customisation options, it can be rather expensive at just shy of $2m (although you can knock half a mill off the base price if you raise your reputation level in the LS Car Meet and unlock the trade price).

That said, it's got over 250 different options, that range from changing its design/liveries to switching out its spoiler or roof, and so on. Boasting impressive acceleration and handling, and with loads of options to truly customise your ride, you can't really go wrong with Calico GTF. If you're asking what car has the most customisation options in GTA Online? Well, the Karin Calico GTF is right up there.

Dinka Jester RR

Type: Sports
Price: $1,970,000
Location: Legendary Motorsport

The 3-door coupe, based on the Totoya Supra, sped into GTA Online in the Los Santos Tuners update. The Dinka Jester RR is a bit of an all-rounder, with great speed, acceleration and solid handling, making it a perfect set of wheels to customise, truly making it your own. With its flashy Fast & Furious design and over 200+ customisation options, the Jester makes for a great car to strut your stuff on the streets of Los Santos. It's a pretty good car for races too!

Dinka Sugoi

Type: Sports
Price: $1,224,000
Location: Southern San Andreas Super Autos

The Dinka Sugoi, a 5-door hatchback, rolled into GTA Online on February 20th 2020, as part of the Diamond Casino Heist update. Based on the Honda Civic Type R, the Dinka Sugoi is a great car if you want to get deep into car customisation. It's a car, as you can imagine with it being based on the Civic, that has some great roof customisation options, some swish looking spoilers, pretty sexy racing liveries and some stylish skirts to kit out your ride, meaning you can jazz the hell out of this stylish 5-door hatchback.

Annis Euros

Type: Sports
Price: $1,800,000
Location: Legendary Motorsport

The classic "Euros" from GTA: San Andreas makes a return in GTA Online thanks to the Los Santos Tuners update.The 2-door sports car, based on the Nissan 370Z and manufactured by Annis, is perfect for drift drivers, and with 200+ customisation options, you can truly make this car your own gaudy masterpiece. With rather an expensive base price, save yourself half a million and buy the trade price version (available with LS Car Meet membership), and use that cash to change the color, the roof, the design, the wheels and so on.

Pfister Comet Safari

Type: Sports
Price: $710,000
Location: Legendary Motorsport

Is there a more iconic vehicle in GTA than the Porsche 911-based Comet? Well, how about the Pfister Comet Safari, a weapon variant of the classic car that dropped with the Doomsday Heist update in 2017. Being a weapon variant of the Comet, the Comet Safari actually comes with some really interesting customisation options like roof racks and front spoiler mounted lights (including the option to mount a machine gun). It's also fairly cheap (although no trade price) and you can armor the sh*t out of it. What's not to love about an armoured Porsche 911?

Bravado Gauntlet Classic Custom

Type: Muscle
Price: $615,000 for the base car + $815,000 to upgrade
Location: Southern San Andreas Super Autos for the base car / Benny's Original Motor Works to upgrade

There's just something really cool about upgrading a muscle car in GTA Online. Sure, you can do something simple like change the color here and there with the Gauntlet Classic Custom, but what you really want to do is purchase to one of the cool liveries (the shark mouth is an especially cool one) as well as getting a sick exhaust and then getting a hood that exposes the engine. Then, and only then, will you feel like an ultimate badass.

Bravado Buffalo STX

Type: Muscle
Price: $2,150,000
Location: Southern San Andreas Super Autos

The Bravado Buffalo STX may be a touch more pricey than the Gauntlet Classic Custom (coming in at just over $2m), but this classy 4-door muscle car, based on a Dodge Charger, comes with some great front bumpers and intercoolers, that can give it a really cool look and feel. As far as muscle cars go, the Buffalo STX is fast, with great acceleration, solid brakes and decent handling. Plus, you can add armor to it, weapons and even control it from outside the car with Remote Control Unit! It's basically a Bond car... if Bond drove American muscle cars.

Benefactor Schlagen GT

Type: Sports
Price: $1,300,000
Location: Legendary Motorsports

The fairly cheap (when compared to the competition) Schlagen GT is a bloody lovely looking car, based on the Mercedes AMG GT, that while doesn't offer as many customisation options than other cars, the 75+ options are pretty dang good though. With some jazzy liveries, great range of spoilers and some cool sunstrips to add, you can make the Schlagen GT into something your friends would be jealous of. Plus, who doesn't want to cruise around in a Mercedes AMG GT lookalike?

Invetero Coquette

Type: Sports
Price: $138,000
Location: Legendary Motorsport

Strapped for cash? Jealous of your friends spending millions on sweet rides with tons of customisations? Want something cheap and gorgeous? Well, how about getting yourself a Invetero Coquette - yup, the classic Chevy Corvette based car that made it debut in Grand Theft Auto IV - and customising the heck out of it. At just over $100k, the Coquette comes with some really neat looking hoods, bumpers, fenders and skirts. Sure, there are no liveries and you can only change the color, but you can definitely make it look cool as heck for well under $200,000!

Vapid Dominator GTX

Type: Muscle
Price: $725,000
Location: Souther San Andreas Super Autos

More of a Ford Mustang person than a Dodge Charger person? Does the Buffalo STX not tickle your fancy? Then try out the Vapid Dominator GTX then, introduced into GTA Online via the Southern San Andreas Super Sports Series update back in 2018. There's a lot to love about the customisation options of the Vapid Dominator, from the ability to customise the fender and the grills, but perhaps the coolest aspect is being able to apply a vanity hood, which shows your engine (something else you can customise too!) through the perspex portion of the hood. Also, we love the fact you can apply mud guards to it too! Very cool! If you want even more customisation, its sister car, the Dominator ASP has the most customisation options in the game at 285! And you can even customise the interior to impressive levels in the ASP as well!

Maibatsu Penumbra FF

Type: Sports
Price: $1,380,000
Location: Southern San Andreas Super Autos

Based on a second-gen Mitsubishi Eclipse, the Penumbra FF hit GTA Online as part of the Los Santos Summer Special update back in August 2020. While driving around in a Mitsubishi Eclipse might not sound like the most desirable of things in the world, the sheer amount of customisation options the Penumbra has might turn a few heads. You can change the sunstrip, the splitter, the spoiler, the skirt, the roof, the plate styles, the mirrors, the livery, the hood, the seats, the exhaust, the front and rear bumper, and more, each category with a ton of options. While the base car isn't exactly stylish, you can definitely turn this one into the belle of the ball.

How to Customize a Car in GTA 5

I know what you're thinking... you've seen the options, now you're asking yourself "where can you upgrade your cars in GTA 5?" As it stands with GTA Online in 2022, car customisation is no longer confined to just Los Santos Customs and Beeker's Garage. While those two are still viable options to upgrade vehicles, players can now gain in-house customisation options (usually by buying a specific property and doing a series of missions) which unlock exclusive customisation options. Also, it should be noted that some vehicles, like the Opressor MK2, require a Terrorbyte, which in turn needs a nightclub. But if you want to customise cars, Los Santos Customs is still the easiest option.

How Can you Cutomize Cars?

In GTA Online there are tons of different customisation options for players to decorate their car. Some make the car sexier, some make it faster, some improve the handling, while others improve the durability. Each car in GTA Online has their own options as well, so it might be worth taking heed of what we said above regarding customisation options. For instance, some cars have liveries, a lot do not. Some have interior customisation options, others do not, and so on.

Here's a rundown of the more general categories of customisation and whether they make a difference to the performance of a car.

Paintwork

Paintwork customisation has come a long way in GTA games in recent years. In GTA Online players have a plethora of options at their disposal to make their cars look exactly how they want. They range from the simple, like choosing the colour options (i.e. the actual colors of the car), to the slightly more complex, like what finish you want (like chrome, matte, metallic or other). Choosing your paintwork is more granular than that too, like primary colors, secondary colors, what color you want the trims to be and so on, and so forth. And if all else fails and you can't decide, you can even whack a livery on your vehicle if there are livery options.

Wheels

The subject of wheels and tires in GTA has changed a good amount over the years. Originally in GTA Online you could change the rims, make the tires bulletproof and what not, but thanks to the Los Santos Tuners update, now players can install low grip tires on their car too, should they want to do some drifting or what not.

Also, it's worth noting that "off-road" tires do have more grip than the "high-end" tires. So, while you're looking for some custom rims, try and work out how you'll spend the majority of your time, whether that's doing races and becoming the ultimate racer, or dodging cops while driving off-road.

Chassis

A number of cars in GTA Online have chassis customisation options available to them, usually in the form of a roll cage. The roll cage itself has no recognisable tangible benefits in terms of performance. It does look pretty cool though, so if you're not bothered about performance, and want to apply a fairly unique look to your car, if they have a roll cage then invest in this.

Engine & Brakes

As you'd expect, the engine and brake upgrades in GTA Online have genuine positive effects on the car. The higher the level of the engine you apply, the higher the top speed and the better acceleration it will have. Similarly, the better the brakes on a car, the quicker it will come to a stop. Both the engine and the break upgrades can be applied to all cars in the game. So, naturally, you're going to want to invest heavily in these two upgrades, especially if you're looking to get involved in the street races. You can effectively turn cars with a decent engine with a fairly solid top speed, into something that can effectively be described as a beast.

Armor

While fitting a car with armor in GTA Online will have zero impact in its performance, what it will do is prevent your car from taking on excess damage. That's absolutely important because when a car in GTA 5 takes enough damage, it will negatively impact the vehicle you're driving and its stats. With armor, that means you can take more damage from collisions before the vehicle is negatively impacted. So, yeah, actually very important in the grand scheme of things.

Spoiler

A significant number of car models in GTA 5 have the option to install a spoiler on the back of the vehicle. Installing said spoiler on a vehicle will actually improve the downforce of the vehicle, which results in better grip and thus, better cornering. It must be noted though that while this applies to the vast majority of spoilers, it does not apply to the stock spoiler of a car (AKA the one attached to the car by default and at the top of the list). Anything below the top option will result in a traction bonus, a bonus that doesn't change from spoiler to spoiler, regardless of the size.

Suspension

Originally in GTA 5, suspension didn't really make much of a difference to the handling of a car, however, since 2019 and beyond, Rockstar Games introduced a series of cars which actually benefitted from lower suspension. The lower suspension drops the center of gravity of the vehicle, which as a result improved the handling by giving the traction and stability a nice boost. However, it should be noted that the lower you are to the road, the more likely curbs, debris and uneven roads will affect you should they come across your racing line. If you're a good racer though, then look out for the lower suspension options on these new tuner cars and such.