Bought the Ford DLC, but no car in the garage? This is how buying cars works in ATS Road Trip!

With Road Trip, American Truck Simulator is changing not only the vehicles we can drive. The way to owning your own vehicle also works differently than the familiar truck purchase. SCS Software has introduced its own Car Dealer , which can be accessed through the in-game desktop.

The most important difference starts even before the actual purchase: Which brands are displayed there depends on which Car Pack DLCs you own. The Road Trip: Ford package released yesterday accordingly unlocks the Ford vehicles for this system. Additional vehicle packages may integrate more brands into the same dealer later.

At the same time, this means that buying a Car Pack and buying a vehicle within your save are two different things. The DLC gives you access to the corresponding models; afterward, you select and buy your desired car in the in-game Car Dealer.

The Ford package offers four vehicles to choose from: the 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback, the 2023 Ford F-150, the 2023 Ford Bronco and the Ford Crown Victoria from the 1998 to 2012 model years. You decide which one will later end up in your garage.

The Car Dealer works somewhat like a digital vehicle catalog. First, you select the desired brand, then you can switch between the available models. The car can be examined in greater detail, and SCS provides information, technical data and specifications for it.

An interesting feature is the ability not only to browse through vehicles individually. There is also a table view, in which the technical data of different models can be compared directly. Especially when more Car Packs and therefore additional vehicles are added in the future, this view should become considerably more useful.

You can also select a color before purchasing. Which options are available depends on the respective vehicle. For the classic Mustang, for example, SCS has prepared several paint schemes inspired by the real model, while modern vehicles have different color options accordingly.

Once the car has been purchased, there are two options: You can drive off immediately or take care of further adjustments first.

For this purpose, Road Trip has its own section called “My Cars” on the in-game desktop. This is where the virtual garage for your cars is located. It not only provides an overview of the vehicles you already own, but also serves as a management and configuration area.

Through “Configure” the vehicles can be personalized further. The available options differ depending on the car and range from paint schemes to various parts for the exterior and interior. Selected cabin accessories are also intended to be compatible with the vehicle packages.

This makes customization somewhat different from the familiar truck configuration. SCS is not simply trying to transfer the truck dealer to smaller vehicles, but is giving Road Trip its own interface and its own process.

In “My Cars”, you can also compare your existing vehicles with one another and sell them again. Anyone who collects several Road Trip vehicles later will thus actually have their own small car garage within their existing trucking company.

The separation of the individual levels is particularly important here. Road Trip is the new gameplay system within American Truck Simulator. The respective Car Packs determine which vehicles and brands you can use. In the game itself, you then buy and manage these vehicles through Car Dealer and My Cars.

The Ford DLC therefore does not simply make four new vehicles available in an existing truck dealer. It opens access to the Ford models within a vehicle section developed specifically for Road Trip.

After purchasing, all it takes is pressing “Drive”, and the ATS world previously dominated by large trucks suddenly becomes a road for the Mustang, Bronco, Crown Victoria or F-150. The familiar map remains intact – only the perspective on it changes considerably.

SCS has also already announced that it intends to continue investigating the configuration options for Road Trip vehicles and may expand them in the future. However, which additional options will actually result from this is still open at present.

Since yesterday’s release, the entire system can now be tried out for yourself for the first time. In the long term, it should be particularly interesting to see how large your own car collection can become when more Car Packs are released and more and more brands join the same dealer.

Which of the four Ford models did you put in your garage first – Mustang, F-150, Bronco or Crown Victoria?