How to install FiveM cars: add-on vehicles on your server, step by step

Installing a FiveM car takes two minutes when you know what matters and two hours when you do not. This guide is written for the second case. If you do not have a server yet, start with how to make a GTA RP server. It walks the whole path once, with the files that are actually needed and the places where things usually go wrong.

Add-on or replace: the difference that decides everything

A replace vehicle overwrites a GTA car. The Adder then looks like your new model but is still called adder, and every player with an Adder in their garage suddenly drives something else. An add-on vehicle comes with its own spawn name and leaves everything else alone. On a roleplay server there is no reason to use replace. Everything below is about add-ons.

What is inside a vehicle resource

A finished FiveM car consists of two groups of files. The first group is the model: a .yft with the body, usually a second _hi.yft with the high detail level, and a .ytd with the textures. The second group is the meta files that tell GTA what kind of car this is.

• vehicles.meta: name, class, type, seats, which handling line applies and which textures.
• handling.meta: mass, acceleration, brakes, traction. This is where the driving feel comes from.
• carvariations.meta: colours, kits, liveries and whether sirens exist.
• carcols.meta: tuning parts, light patterns, siren lights.
• vehiclelayouts.meta: only for vehicles with unusual seat layouts such as motorcycles or trucks.

Step 1: Create the resource

Inside your server's resources folder, create a folder named after the car's spawn name, no spaces, lower case. The model files go into a subfolder called stream, the meta files into a subfolder called data. This layout is a convention, not a requirement, but it makes every later look into the folder easier.

5mc_rs7/
├── fxmanifest.lua
├── data/
│   ├── vehicles.meta
│   ├── handling.meta
│   ├── carvariations.meta
│   └── carcols.meta
└── stream/
    ├── 5mc_rs7.yft
    ├── 5mc_rs7_hi.yft
    └── 5mc_rs7.ytd

Step 2: Write the fxmanifest

The fxmanifest.lua is the resource's business card. For a car it needs three things: a note that everything in data ships as a file, and for each meta file a data_file line that tells GTA what kind of file it is. The stream folder is found automatically.

fx_version 'cerulean'
game 'gta5'

files {
  'data/*.meta',
}

data_file 'HANDLING_FILE'          'data/handling.meta'
data_file 'VEHICLE_METADATA_FILE'  'data/vehicles.meta'
data_file 'CARCOLS_FILE'           'data/carcols.meta'
data_file 'VEHICLE_VARIATION_FILE' 'data/carvariations.meta'

Step 3: Start it from server.cfg

Every resource has to be started. Add it to server.cfg with ensure, ideally grouped with the other vehicles. If the folder sits in a category like [cars], the resource name is enough; the bracketed folder does not matter for starting.

# Fahrzeuge
ensure 5mc_rs7
ensure 5mc_g65

Step 4: Test it in game

Restart the server or type refresh followed by ensure 5mc_rs7 in the console. In game, spawn the car with the spawn name from vehicles.meta, for example via your framework's admin command or the /car command of an admin script. The spawn name is the value of modelName in vehicles.meta, not the file name. Both should match but do not have to, and that is exactly where the most common mistake lives.

The five most common mistakes

1. The car does not appear. In 9 out of 10 cases modelName in vehicles.meta does not match the .yft file name, or the data_file line for vehicles.meta is missing in the fxmanifest. The server console usually says nothing, the game just stays silent.
2. The car is invisible or glows pink. The .ytd is named differently from the .yft, or txdName in vehicles.meta points to a different name. Pink is the colour of missing textures.
3. The car drives like a shopping cart. The handlingId in vehicles.meta finds no matching line in handling.meta and GTA falls back to a default. Both names must match character for character.
4. The server reports the resource could not be started. Almost always a typo in the fxmanifest, for example a missing comma in the files list or a wrong path.
5. After the fiftieth car, players crash or vehicles vanish. GTA has hard limits for vehicle data, and badly built models with huge textures fill the memory faster than good ones. The only cure is quality: all LOD levels, textures at 2K instead of 4K, no interior with 800,000 polygons.

Performance: why LODs matter more than polygons

A FiveM car does not need few polygons, it needs the right detail levels. Up close GTA draws the full model and swaps it with distance for L1, L2, L3 and finally the VLOD model, which has a few hundred polygons. If those levels are missing, the client renders the full body even 300 metres away. Ten such cars in a car park and the FPS drop for everyone driving past. That is why free conversions from racing games cause so much trouble on busy servers.

Debadged: the part many people overlook

Real brand logos on a public server are a risk. Car manufacturers protect their marks, and Tebex and cfx.re respond to complaints. A debadged model has the logos removed or replaced with custom ones. The car stays recognisable, the server stays clean. If you buy cars, make sure that is included; if you convert yourself, do it before the model goes on the server.

What a vehicle from the 5MCustoms shop looks like on arrival

Every car from our shop ships as a finished resource in exactly the layout above: fxmanifest, data, stream, all LOD levels, debadged, with its own handling. You unzip the folder, write one ensure line and you are done. Liveries for factions are built in 5MC Forge, the tool our MLOs and clothing come from as well.

Justin Beil

Founder of 5MCustoms

Justin has been building FiveM servers, vehicles and scripts for years. 5MCustoms is the framework that grew out of it. What you read here comes from practice, not from a product sheet.

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