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And now, it's time to say goodbye.

It's been a fun eight years with GTA Online on PC. I've had a lot of great times, learned a lot of new things, and made some irreplaceable friends. Being able to share all of those experiences with the world through this blog has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I'm grateful all of you were there to enjoy them.

Who knows? Maybe we'll all meet again in Grand Theft Auto Online 2: The Search for More Money.

Until then, take care.

If you ever heard the Liberty Bell March playing in the distance in a public session, it was probably this Future Shock Bruiser shunting across Los Santos. This was a vehicle I had passed over for quite some time until the passengers in my Scarab got fed up with being thrown out of its bed and I was pressured to try the only other Arena vehicle with four seats. To my surprise, it had just as much composure as the imitation Mercedes that it was converted from and felt like an actual limousine, instead of a limousine body grafted onto a box truck frame. It was easy to drive and easy to fly, unlike the Scarab and Imperator, and more than one of my friends mentioned that they found it genuinely relaxing to be bounced across the sky in it. Having dreamed of a job as a limousine driver, those compliments meant a great deal to me.

The radio in this Comet Safari was permanently stuck playing Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" on repeat. I love regular cars with lift kits and off-road modifications, and the Comet Safari nailed the look while also being a complete blast to drive. Getting this car fully kitted out, complete with inaccessible colored interior, made me feel like I had gone back to being a kid playing Rock 'n Roll Racing.

I don't care what anyone says. Sure, it had broken textures on the wheel arches. Sure, it had poor customization. Sure, it wasn't a proper AMG wagon. I loved the Streiter. It was a damn good car and I'm tired of pretending it wasn't. It handled well and it was impressively quick for a four-door off-road capable car. A station wagon is a station wagon, even if it's based on an obscure customized version of one, and I adored the Streiter just like any other station wagon and drove it everywhere I could regardless of the haters.

When the Gunrunning update was released, it was easy to overlook the humble Half-Track. You wouldn't think to drive this old truck over fancy materiel like the APC and Insurgent, but it was later discovered to be the ultimate counter to infantry because it had a completely bulletproof windshield. Like a bombproof Armored Kuruma, you could shoot out of it, and others couldn't shoot into it. This made it perfect for routing griefers who had dug themselves in deep and breaking their spirit. As a player who never touched hacking utilities, nothing made me smile more than being called a hacker when using a vehicle like this.

My Imani Tech vehicle of choice was the Granger 3600LX, and I owned two of them to cover both bases. This one was driven fairly often, and it was given the missile jammer as well as an OEM Sable Metallic paint job. Being more understated than the other cars with jammers made it great as a "leave me alone" vehicle. Nobody wanted to mess with this hippo.

I knew I was getting old when I started getting a hankering for a Sandking. Way back when I started playing, I had a Sandking XL that I took out now and then, but in the years that followed I learned more about trucks and came to realize that the Sandking SWB perfect for me. I didn't want fast or flashy, I just wanted a big comfy Hank Hill truck to drive around, and the SWB delivered with a soft suspension that still allowed it to go rock climbing and have fun now and then. The fact that I'm not into crew cabs and had to drive an uncomfortable Home Depot single cab also likely contributed to my acceptance of extended cab as the superior configuration. Now if only they weren't so expensive in real life.

The Stromberg was one of the few vehicles in the game that could be described as heroic. It was built for undersea travel, but saw most of its use as an Oppressor killer and even stayed relevant well after the Mk II released because brainless riders and the game's poor coding allowed the Stromberg to bypass their countermeasures. Many players switched to the Toreador for bike hunting, but I stuck with my handsome Stromberg because of its superior protection against bullets and because the passenger was magically able to phase their arm through the window to use drive-by weapons. My best friend and I had good synergy, and he was quick on the draw with the flare gun which made our Stromberg practically untouchable to Deluxos and Oppressors. More often than not, teamwork came out on top when it came to GTA PVP.

I bought this Guardian in 2015 because "haha big truck go vroom" and it was my faithful companion all the way to the very end. It's been through several paintjobs, several battles, several parties, and it's got the forced modded license plate to prove it. The Guardian was always the bringer of good times because it was a fast, capable vehicle that any number of people could stand on as it drove, well after the seats had been filled. Before things like CEO Buzzards and dedicated anti-aircraft weapons were added, we used to use them as makeshift air defense technicals by having someone stand in the back with an RPG or missile launcher. The game itself eventually gave a nod to this behavior, adding a mission in which you transported armored combat suits on the back of a flatbed truck where the strategy was to ignore the flatbed entirely and use a Guardian. The prevalence of explosives eventually pushed the Guardian out of a combat role, but it never stopped being the life of the party whenever it came out of the garage, with crewmates and randoms alike partying it up in the back. The Guardian was a vehicle I had a very special kinship with and it's one of the things I will miss the most.

As the twilight years began, this Future Shock Dominator came to represent everything I loved and stood for in GTA. On the surface, it was a benign little car, looking like a plain old S197 Mustang with AliExpress lights stuffed in the grille. But as I mastered the shunt boost, this car became a thing of beauty that could go anywhere and everywhere. It spoke to my heart, calling out the young child who grew up renting Blaster Master every weekend and making me fall in love with a jumping vehicle all over again. It had everything I wanted in a car, combining the speed and handling of a muscle with the mobility of a motorcycle and a skill ceiling that ensured there was always something new to learn, from how to rescue a trapped sale vehicle to how to drop straight down into a car meet from a thousand feet up. The funniest thing is, I absolutely hated this Dominator at first, and thought that techno-beehive on its back was the ugliest thing. But then I test drove one and discovered its incredible stability in flight, and it was like seeing the beautiful woman beneath the ugly glasses for the first time. Every time I popped that tombstone off for a drive, it was like uncorking a bottle of fine wine. I drove this car up until my very last day in Los Santos and nothing will ever replace it.

Finally, we have the three Craftybikes: past, present, and future.

The Ruffian was the first motorcycle I ever fell in love with. It was cheap, it was fast, it was good-looking, and most importantly, it was an amazing stunt bike. The Ruffian was the perfect machine to pop my stunt cherry on after migrating from GTA IV and San Andreas, as it could vault over just about anything simply by popping a wheelie into it at speed. It was on this motorcycle that I began to earn a reputation in our crew as a stunt biker, and the curious triple headlight that came with it from the factory was one of the first things to tip me off that vehicle customization in this game was not entirely as it seemed.

About a year and a half into the game's life on PC, the FCR 1000 was released to a great deal of fanfare. Many of my crewmates flocked to the FCR 1000 Custom for its old-school military style, but as I drove my unmodified one for the first time, its modest appearance and weighty handling caught my attention and never let go. In this often-overlooked bike, I found a wall-climbing animal with a tight suspension that gave it huge air from curbs and bumps, a field that the Ruffian left me longing for as I continued to hone my stunting skills. More importantly, it had only one seat, which cleanly solved the dilemma of curious people wanting to see my prowess firsthand, not knowing that having a second rider absolutely crushed a motorcycle's performance. Spending a lot of alone time with this bike was what really kicked me into high gear with GTA bikes and got me thinking about how they could be used with other creative projects.

Five years later, the Reever appeared on the scene to become the champion of all the game's motorcycles. It delivered a host of customizations, impressive stunt potential, and speed that was nearly unmatched, all in one bike. Many of its owners customized theirs to look futuristic, myself among that number with my low-gripped spare, but the circular headlight and fairing inspired me to shape my primary Reever in the image of my old FCR 1000, which had long since taken on a life of its own by that point. The Reever kept me company as we all began to go our separate ways and wind down, and it was on this bike that I rode off into the sunset, just as the Ruffian had brought me into this lawless town nine years ago.

Memes and vitriol over the original Faction persisted well after its release, so perhaps sarcastically, the Faction Custom Donk was added to the game, a vehicle which was positively guaranteed not to get hung up on curbs. It incorporated many of the mods from the earlier Faction Custom while also tipping its hat to a famous part of car culture often neglected in video games, and with a little creativity, it could represent an even more niche segment: mud boggers. Instead of the backstreets, I threw some fat tires on my Donk and took it cruising around the mouth of the Zancudo River. Paradoxically, it even offered an experience similar to an actual 4x4 because raising and lowering the hydraulics would alter its gear ratios and grip akin to shifting between 4-hi and 4-lo. Appearances can be deceiving, and the Donk was certainly deserving of its chrome.

One of the Everon's parents must have been a monster truck, because this arctic Hilux clone certainly behaved like one. It crawled over absolutely everything, and it was shockingly fast on the roads, able to bring its trusty coolers full of booze to anywhere on the map in a matter of seconds. It used to be painted in that flat gray that was all the rage on Tacomas until I threw F1s and low grips on it for kicks, at which point it needed to look a little more flashy and I was able to brew up that sweet flag on the roof by color-matching the livery with true black crew paint. This truck was really good at turning heads, especially those of its whiplash-prone passengers.

The Imani Tech vehicles were another attempt at curbing the menace of the memebike, and one of the vehicles selected for a makeover was the humble Granger, in the form of the Granger 3600LX. While many players adored these vehicles for their missile jamming capabilities, they also had another trick up their sleeve in the form of a remote control unit, allowing you to drive your vehicle from across the map in complete secrecy. This made the Granger 3600LX ideal for covert counterattacks, as when it was modified very modestly like this model, it wouldn't attract attention and could blend into traffic effortlessly. Over and over, griefers would drive right past it as it was seemingly waiting at a stoplight, only to get run down while running for their next toy. Then they'd pull out their rocket launcher and bounce rockets off of its armor, or pull out their minigun and realize at the last second that there was no driver to shoot. Isn't technology grand?

Unlike the Oppressor Mk II, the original Oppressor came to be a widely beloved vehicle. It got a lot of hate when it first released for being difficult to hit, but it was balanced by having a steep learning curve and later got its wings clipped by the Stromberg. Once its malignant successor and other overpowered vehicles were released, the griefer crowd moved away from the Oppressor entirely and it was able to begin its real career as the flying stunt bike it was always meant to be. We all loved to try and make it up Maze Bank, glide from Chiliad, airdrop it from the Avenger, and tear around urban airspace with it, but randoms would always see the bike icon and assume you were looking for a fight or trying to grief cargo, and then everyone would get dragged into a brawl. Life was much better once the Oppressor finally joined the Deluxo as a comfy vehicle.

The Gauntlet Hellfire was a perfect recreation of the Dodge Challenger and encapsulated everything about what made the Chally so great. It was big, it was fat, it was loud, it was fast but not the fastest, and it didn't care, because it had style. It was a true American muscle car and one of the last of a dying breed. This one was my main, out of the two Hellfires I had, and I left the crazy styling to my red drifter while doing this one up to look like an R/T Scat Pack in Plum Crazy. Someday I hope to own a Challenger like it in real life, but until then, at least the Hellfire was there for me.

My search for a fun, fast, and comfy convertible came to an end with the Comet S2 Cabrio. For reasons undefined, this coupe was much faster than its hardtop variant, and MR layout meant that it lived to be thrown around corners. It even had one of those cool active spoilers that popped up once it got up to speed. This beauty needed to be treated with respect, so I gave it my best shot at Porsche's OEM Ultraviolet color and tried to keep the mods as clean as possible.

I felt like a lot of people slept on the Stratum. It wasn't the fastest thing around, and nearly all of its mods were locked to the car when you got it, but it also had extremely forgiving handling as well as RWD-biased AWD, so it knew how to have a little fun and it was deceptively sure-footed on the dirt. It was basically a budget Sultan and it's great for a street car. The 40/60 AWD made it a perfect candidate for low grip tires and it drove like an absolute dream with them, capable of ripping long drifts before snapping back into control on demand. While it was under the glitch knife, it was also given the lip, spoiler, badges, and rack, along with a set of F1s and some vivid paint to really press that over-the-top '90s style. It just goes to show that not all of the game's street cars are worthless filler.

Life Protip: If you are ever lost in the desert and dying of dehydration, call up your Scramjet and launch it into the air to find the nearest body of water. This thing would introduce you to pools in neighborhoods you didn't even know existed. When it wasn't being a four-wheeled divining rod, though, this car was awesome. Once you know how to cancel boosting and manipulate all three axes, you could do all sorts of crazy tricks. The missiles are almost a complete afterthought, though they did come in handy if you felt like taking down a memebike by pretending to be the Demon Lord of the Round Table.

The Nero struck me as a very comfortable car. I knew they were all just video game polygons, but it just looked so plush, like you could win a race with it and then take a nap in it. That level comfort and accessibility without sacrificing speed was something I appreciated about Bugattis in general. The hardcore drivers all went for the Benny's custom because it had marginally better stats, but I was happy just chilling with my cloud car and its cool spoiler. Even its name gave me a warm fuzzy feeling, as it reminded me of a certain computer program that I alluded to with a CDBURNER license plate.

My first Hakuchou was a legend in its own right, but this one made me feel like I had been visited by an angel. When glitches to put low grip tires on all vehicles came out, my instinctual reaction was to test them on motorcycles. Some were definitely better than others, but the low grip Hakuchou stood head and shoulders above every single one. Due to a quirk in how the game engine handled bike traction, it didn't peel out or slide, but rather developed a much heavier feeling when steering and a much, much lower gear ratio. So, while it took a second to get going, it became bar none the fastest land vehicle in the game while remaining remarkably smooth and deliberate. Other bikes like the Reever and Gargoyle could hang with it, but they bounced like jumping beans in the process, while this new Hakuchou could easily reach 170+ MPH on demand while staying just as composed as it was when doing the speed limit. It immediately became my primary vehicle and I was absolutely enamored. The fact that such a hidden gem, known to maybe a dozen people, was buried in this plain old motorcycle from 2014 made it feel like an "ace custom" from some old anime or video game, like Char's personal Zaku. I rode this motorcycle day and night until it was pried from my hands by the devs when they officially released low grip tires for every vehicle and quietly nerfed the speed boost gained from them, calling this angel back to the heavens for good.

You'd think a big, spiked behemoth like the Future Shock Cerberus would have packed some serious firepower, wouldn't you? Nope. You and your passenger each got nothing but a dinky flamethrower that barely reached beyond the chassis and couldn't singe the wings off of a mosquito. In fact, the Cerberus' weapons were more prone to damaging itself than its aggressor, and you couldn't even switch to handheld weapons as a backup. Nevertheless, it still looked totally badass, especially flying through the sky at the hands of someone who had mastered the shunt boost.

Sasquatches were a common sight among friends and crew, because a giant jumping monster truck is something everyone can enjoy. I went with the Apocalypse variant, because the Future Shock was a little too weird, even for me. Strangely, GTA monster trucks were never much good at crushing cars, typically pushing them around and occasionally toppling over instead, but at least the Sasquatch could jump on top of them like Goombas. I wonder if it was a subtle metaphor for IRL monster truck shows moving away from car crushing and shifting to racing and stunt-themed events. As long as I can still BUY THE WHOLE SEAT BUT ONLY NEED THE EDGE SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY

The Wastelander was such a goofy thing. It was used in scripted missions as a vehicle transport, but there was no way to actually transport vehicles with it in regular gameplay, so you were just left with this oversized hauler that took up two lanes. When we pulled it out of the garage, it was usually to ford one of the western rivers or to bring an obnoxiously huge vehicle to a car meet.

Sometimes I thought about buying a Technical just for the fun of it, but I could never justify the purchase, because I didn't need it and the Insurgent did everything it could do. Then the Technical Aqua was introduced, which solved the dilemma cleanly. Once it was in the water and not getting the barrels hung up on streetlights and pieces of geometry, it was a good time. The game really could have used more things to do in the water on the main map.

Most of the special vehicles that came with the Import/Export update were used to test and try out new features on cars, like the Phantom Wedge's plow, or in this case, the Rocket Voltic's jet engine. This car was literally just a Voltic with a rocket engine installed in the back. It took a little while for it to recharge, but back then, we didn't care and just had a good time with it. Even after newer and better vehicles with rocket boosts were released, the Rocket Voltic still had a niche in baiting griefers hiding in passive mode into taking a ride and being forcibly ejected without a parachute 400 feet above the ground.

To this day, the Ruiner 2000 remains the single most expensive land vehicle in the game at 5.7 million GTA-bucks, or 4.3 million with the trade discount. That's on top of the 2.5 million you needed for the office and warehouse to store it. All those millions didn't really seem worth it until years later, when it was discovered to be one of the best ways to bully Oppressors. The Ruiner 2000 was nothing special by today's standards, with only eight missiles, a jump function, and a parachute, but owning one opened up access to the Fully Loaded VIP job. Fully Loaded gave the player who started it a unique Ruiner 2000 with infinite missiles, Mobile Operations Center armor, and immunity to missile lock-on, in addition to turning off police for everyone in the session for 20 minutes. Seeing those two words pop up was like hearing Gabriel blow the trumpets, and every crew member in the session knew it was time to bring about the griefer's personal Götterdämmerung.

The last Ruiner in my collection is this one here. The ability for muscle cars to wheelie was added to the game a few years after it came out on PC, breathing new life into the class by adding a traversal option, so I needed a Ruiner that didn't date back to 2015. Much more care was put into its appearance, with true white crew paint, glass t-top panels, and a drink in the cupholder for that extra lived-in touch. It was my daily driver for quite some time and eventually retired to a place of honor next to my nightclub's office, where it could still be part of my GTA life up until the very end.

One of my all-time favorite IRL cars is the Ford RS200, a 600HP monster masquerading as a quirky '80s grocery getter to the untrained eye. GTA paid respects to its Group B origins with the GB200, and the conversion was pretty darn faithful. It was a little pokey at the top end because it was released during the developers' obsession with "advanced" handling flags that only served to hamper performance, but that didn't stop me from throwing it down the dirt roads and beaches all day.

The Brawler was another obscure off-road sports car that only a game like GTA would feature. It was based on the Local Motors Rally Fighter, a lifted limited-production car powered by a Corvette motor. It was just as fast as its real-life counterpart, but in a twist of fate the Rally Fighter is likely much safer to drive as the Brawler was infamous for having brakes made of gas station toilet paper. You needed a co-driver to watch the trail well in advance or you'd be parking it in a ditch, which was a fate worse than death in the dark ages of 2015, well before the ability to dismiss personal vehicles was added.

Sometimes you just want a truck. The Caracara 4x4 was added to the game well after the original Caracara failed to sate demand for an F-150 Raptor, and it was an apology well accepted, with great aesthetics and capability. I'm not really a fan of CCSB trucks in real life, but the four seats were welcome here because I drove this thing everywhere. Lots of other people did too, and the Caracara 4x4 was a regular sight in public lobbies well after it faded out of being the new hotness. Flying in the face of memes about American truck owners, people who drove trucks in GTA were almost always total bros and very chill. It spoke volumes about someone's personality when, in a game full of multi-million-dollar exotics and futuristic wondercars, they chose to drive a good ol' pickup truck.

My first "expensive" purchase in the GTA world was this Insurgent, back in 2015, because I loved huge armored vehicles. Explosives weren't quite as prevalent in the game world yet, but it was still nice to have the added protection from Kuruma nutjobs while repping the Saints.

After the release of the SUV Insurgent and the Pegasus Gunsurgent, there was an outcry for a pick-up Insurgent without a gun. Those prayers were unintentionally answered in the form of the Insurgent Pick-up Custom, which had a glitch to remove the gun turret from the roof, turning it into a harmless-looking armored truck. However, the turret itself still worked, resulting in the gunner angrily shaking their fists while bullets spewed from the truck's grille. Discrepancies with the crosshair made it difficult to hit anything more than 200 yards away.

The Anti-Aircraft Trailer always arrived with its faithful Sadler companion. Lots of people slept on the AA Trailer, not knowing that the flak turret was incredibly strong and could down even an Avenger in two direct hits. Hooking this thing to the back of a Nightshark or an Insurgent made for a fast and dangerous doom train. The downside was that, once again, it was kneecapped by the developers' poor decision to make the trailer take the slot of your personal vehicle, meaning that you couldn't tow it with any of your cool armored vehicles and were entirely dependent on having a friend who owned something that could tow it unless you wanted to hurt that poor Sadler.

From the minds of mortal men, the mightiest of machines: Phantom Custom. Or, as our enemies liked to call it, the "god mode truck". The single most heavily-armored vehicle in the entire game is this unassuming big rig, able to soak up almost 70 homing missiles before giving up the ghost. This truck cab turned the tide of many, many battles against stubborn shitters and was a cornerstone of crew fights, having no weapons of its own but being unable to be ignored. Hundreds of hapless griefers would pour ammunition into its completely impervious backside, standing perfectly still for a single revolver shot. Even tanks weren't safe, as it was easy to take one down by strapping a load of stickies to the front and ramming it at full speed, armoring through the explosion like the mango Sentinel. The saddest part is that the counter to the Phantom Custom was as simple as getting in a plain old car and shooting the driver through the windshield, but none of these knuckleheads would ever dare risk their precious KDR by getting out of their shitter toys. They'd just keep bashing their heads against the wall and then cry that it was hacks. Some people never learn.

They may as well have called the Avenger the B-17, because it was a flying fortress. A fully-crewed Avenger was legitimately terrifying and could retake control of an entire session all by itself. If the gunners knew how to use thermals, they could keep griefers locked down so hard that they wouldn't even be able to respawn. If the Hunter was the Valkyrie's big brother, then the Avenger was Mom and Dad getting up off of the couch. But to me, the real fun of the Avenger was flying it solo. Unlike most aircraft, the Avenger had a significant amount of armor, and it was so huge that it could "joust" other aircraft and utterly destroy them by body checking them. At worst it would lose an aileron or two, and then it could just go nto VTOL mode and land gently. For a while I had a good collection going of hostile aircraft getting clotheslined into oblivion by my Avenger, but that ship has sailed. The other trick up the Avenger's sleeve was being able to airdrop vehicles from two miles up. It was a laugh riot to load an Insurgent into the vehicle bay, pile eight friends and myself into it, and Operation Dumbo Drop that sucker onto the aircraft carrier. For such a big aircraft, the Avenger was able to fit in absolutely anywhere.

The Terrorbyte was the developers' answer to players who wanted a luxury camper, because they're incapable of adding any sort of "comfy" vehicle or property without turning it into some kind of secret war machine undercover base thing reminiscent of a transforming action figure playset. The Terrorbyte was nice as a mobile wardrobe and ammo refill station, and it came in handy as a roadblock in a few missions, but that was the extent of its usefulness. You couldn't even load a regular motorcycle in the back, even if you glitched one into the bay. I would have taken this thing everywhere if I could have put a dirt bike inside it.

The Oppressor Mk II needs no introduction. This is the vehicle that heralded the downfall of the entire game. What could be more balanced than a vehicle that's the size of a motorcycle, can fly, can hover, can rocket boost, can shoot dozens of missiles that can't be dodged, can block incoming missiles, can be spawned next to you instantly with no cooldown, can refill your health and double your defense, and can't be fallen off of? This cancerbike irreparably ruined public sessions and PVP to the point where the meta forced all other vehicles into two categories: those that could stand up to it, and those that couldn't. "Counters" to the memebike were just things that didn't instantly die to it or had more armor than its load of missiles could penetrate. It was like Akuma from Super Turbo in that it was so broken that the only counter to it was itself. That was the only reason I even owned one. People everywhere hated it, and the devs took years beating around the bush, giving it tiny "nerfs" that did nothing to address the problem, until numbers started dropping and they finally changed a number in the game's code to make the missiles less accurate, but the damage was already done. What the Oppressor Mk II really killed wasn't combat and PVP, but grinding and PVE. Innumerable calls for it to be removed from the game were shouted down with "but my grinding!" because it absolutely trivialized almost every mission in the game. You could play GTA without ever actually looking at the game, only the radar. Get on the rocking horse, hold forward until you reach the yellow dot, press the button until all the red dots are gone, hold forward until you reach the other yellow dot, watch green number go up. That was what the entire game had been reduced to. With the Mk II, every mission became a class of Harry Potter students flying their broomsticks to the magic castle and finishing the mission as fast as possible, and even one person speedrunning the objective would leave nothing left to do for the people who wanted to actually enjoy their cars and guns, unless everyone agreed beforehand not to use their memebike. Be it in peacetime or wartime, all it took was one meta slave to ruin everyone else's fun.

One of the game's answers to the prevalence of the memebike was to simply build a better mousetrap. Much like the Stromberg was the natural predator of the Oppressor, the Toreador here was made to fight the Oppressor Mk II. It combined the armor and aquatic capabilities of the Stromberg with the rocket boost and stealth icon of the Vigilante. Its effectiveness against its seemingly intended target was debatable, but it proved to be an effective vehicle in PVP nonetheless. I personally didn't care much for it, because the glass cabin offered no protection from NPC bullet spam and passengers were unable to use drive-by weapons, but I still owned one because it was a fun car to jump around in and wasn't allergic to water like the Scramjet. It also had this rare livery hidden its files, unavailable to anyone except GTA+ subscribers and people with knowledge of merge glitches. Ironically, despite the war camouflage motif, my Toreador never saw actual combat wearing it as most of us were already on our way out by then.

The Speedo Custom was good for delivering cargo as well as delivering death. This boxy buddy came free with the purchase of any nightclub to make dropoffs for it, and many people used it only for that purpose, not knowing how vicious the turret on its roof could be. It didn't have much armor, but in urban firefights it could poke its stubby little nose out from around a corner and snipe hostiles from well beyond minigun range. I had so much fun with this thing that I used to give crewmates a sales pitch along the lines of "buy this van and get a free nightclub".

For deliveries above the 90-unit cutoff, the Pounder Custom came out to play. It was forced to play a more blue-collar role compared to its smaller sibling, because installing the rocket turrets on it would cause it to get hung up on overhangs like that 11-foot-8 bridge. It did its job, it did it well, and most importantly, it saved a lot of people from buying the Mule Custom.

If this Hakuchou could tell stories, they would fill a library. This motorcycle was my flesh and blood for years. I had other bikes for stunting, yes, but this one was my daily driver as nothing could match its speed. My friends even raced me with helicopters, following the same courses Forza Horizon style, and it was neck-and-neck every time. What really made the Hakuchou so engaging was that it lived and died by its wheelie. Unlike a car that merely had a gas pedal, the Hakuchou made use of an intricacy of the game engine to go much faster by popping a wheelie, making it almost like a turbo boost. Learning how to read traffic and keep that boost active as much as possible was a game unto itself, which made seeing those 170+ MPH numbers on the speed challenge leaderboards all the more satisfying.

The armless era was a formulative time in my GTA character's career, and I earned a bit of infamy among our crew for rocking the gimmick so hard. It was only proper that I had a car to represent it. This Coquette Classic used a glitch that made the entire rear half of the car completely invisible, aside from the exhaust pipes and taillights, making it the perfect candidate to match the invisible arms meme. it always got smiles, chuckles, and headscratches whenever it showed up at the downtown car meets.

This Fugitive here was my very first car when I began playing GTA on the PC. I still love it to this day. It may not be flashy or conventionally appealing, but loud and gruff V8 sedans are my weakness. Eight years later, she's still shining and purring just like she did when I picked her up off the streets.

The first car I ever bought in GTA, all the way back on Xbox 360 in October of 2013, was a Voltic. The car itself was lost to bugs in the transfer process, but its spirit lives on through this second model. I didn't drive it often after migrating to PC, but the hours upon hours spent racing to earn the money to buy the original will always stick with me.

In a similar vein, this Ruiner symbolizes the first car I ever owned in GTA. The Ruiner was my main car in GTA IV, so when I saw it in GTA V and Online, I flew right back to my old baby. This one was added to the collection shortly after I started playing on PC and it has all the mods I missed out on on 360, like the crazy Shakotan exhausts and exposed intercooler. It's fun for me to compare it to the other Ruiners in my collection and see how much my tastes have changed.

Poetically, my GTA career was bookended by Ruiners. One of the vehicles that released as things were winding down was the Ruiner ZZ-8, and I was delighted to see it because I've got an equally soft spot for fourth-gen F-bodies. The ZZ-8 leaned a little closer to the Firebird with its snout and beehive taillights, but it wasn't too hard to doll it up to resemble a Camaro with the '97-'98 factory Bright Purple Metallic paint. As long as I don't have to change the spark plugs myself, I'm happy.

Normally I don't really dig the small and cute cars, but the modern Fiat 500s are charming to me, especially with their take on dog dish wheels. I tried to customize this Brioso R/A to look like one, but those unremovable carbon skirts put the kibosh on that idea. You win some, you lose some.

The Schafter V12 was already an amazing car, but they released an armored version at the same time with almost identical performance. I couldn't help buying both and giving the armored one a more subdued look to contrast the regular version's bold white. It wasn't quite as stable as the Baller, but the extra protection nonetheless came in handy more than once.

Since the game never had a '72 Riviera, I had to cope with a '65 in the form of the Buccaneer. This one has an unpurchaseable worn paint finish with a crew color glitched into one of the fields in order to keep the classic look while resembling some Rivieras I've seen photos of.

The Rocoto is one of those unassuming street cars I had to pounce on once I knew what it was based on. Volkswagens are mostly alien to me, but their cars from the 2000s with luxuriously oversized engines like the Phaeton W12 and the Passat W8 make me absolutely giddy, and the Rocoto is related to the first-gen Touareg which had the option for a V10 turbodiesel. It wasn't quite as fast or as torque-loaded as its VW analog, but it was close enough to tick the boxes for my obsession.

I wanted to like the Tropos Rallye, I really did. Stratoses are cool as hell and I love '70s and '80s wedgemobiles. The Tropos was just too grippy for me, though. It was a fantastic car and was great if you liked to drive grip-style, because it was nearly impossible to get this thing to break traction, but I was just more at home in slippery V8 barges.

Whenever a moon needed exploring, the Desert Raid was ready to handle it. This odd-looking giant rally buggy was much more nimble than it let on, with acceleration that rivalled even the electric cars and massive suspension travel that let it soak up the bumpiest trails. The best part was that the body panels loved to fall off at the drop of a hat, so after a couple of tumbles you were driving nothing but a pipe frame reminiscent of a failed Wile E. Coyote contraption.

The Trophy Truck was the Desert Raid's more svelte sibling, with almost identical performance and a much more traditional appearance. I used glitches to remove the spare tires from the back in order to make it look like something out of Stadium Super Trucks. If you like high-energy videogame-style racing, I highly recommend you look that up sometime.

There aren't many games with jumping tanks in them. Metal Slug and Blaster Master are the first to come to mind. The Scarab put a smile on my face by allowing me to add GTA to that list. This one in particular is the Apocalypse flavor, with more traditional treads and armor plating. In a move even more reminiscent of Blaster Master, the Scarab is the Arena vehicle in which I first learned to fly. The shunt boost pushes your vehicle to its left or right regardless of which way it's facing, so by jumping in the air and flipping on to your side, you could shunt straight up and, with some practice, chain shunts together to effectively fly across the map like the Metroid games' Space Jump ability. I'm pretty sure a lot of randoms thought I was an actual hacker.

Take the APC, remove its weapons, then give it bigger tires and make it rounder and cuter. That's the Zhaba. This peaceful herbivore of a vehicle could crawl over just about anything and float in water to go just about anywhere it wanted, albeit very slowly. Players could even stand on it without getting knocked down as it drove at full speed. As a side note, this thing looked absolutely ridiculous with F1 wheels, too much so even for me.

The Vagrant was a vehicle I wish I had tried a lot sooner. It was a zippy little buggy that thrived both on and off the pavement, and I bought it out of boredom when I had no reason to grind or run missions. It would have made those Blaine County jaunts a lot more enjoyable.

As fun as the Zhaba was, it just wasn't that practical for daily use because of its ponderous speed. The Freecrawler was the solution, offering much of the same capability and just as much cubic-ness in a faster and more accessible package. The short wheelbase and tiny overhangs gave it amazing approach angles, even to the point of conquering city barriers if you didn't mind scratching the paint a little bit.

Anyone who's grown up in Los Santos recognizes the Dubsta in its chrome and gold forms and understands the hustle they represent. Back when heists were just twinkles in our eyes and selling Ballers and Felons for $9000 was a legitimate moneymaking method, these Dubstas, commonly known as Dubsta 2s because they used a different model than the standard street Dubsta, were highly prized because they sold for roughly $25000 each. But they were like the Romero Hearse in that they wouldn't spawn unless you had one of your own to trigger it, so in order to get that gravy train rolling, you had to know a guy. This particular Dubsta was used to spawn a great many more, both for other players to add to their own rare car collections as well as for myself to use as garage fillers, because 25K is still 25K.

This Mesa was technically a Merryweather Mesa, specifically glitched to remove the roll cage but keep the hard top. Sadly, the mall in downtown wasn't very big, so it couldn't do a lot of crawling. I even tried to emulate the teal Bikini Pearlcoat color found on some modern Jeeps, though in hindsight I think I may have made it a bit too green.

Applying suspension upgrades at the mechanic would lower a vehicle's center of gravity. This piece of information was vital for anyone intending to drive a Rumpo Custom on a regular basis. This awesome off-road van was wild to tear around in, especially while blasting its ahooga horn, but taking a turn too tight would make it topple over like an old Explorer unless you lowered it as much as you could. Glitching the roll cage and roof rack off of it to make it look more like a plain adventure van certainly didn't help mitigate that damage.

Not much to see here, just a Tornado Custom done up to resemble a certain famous video game car. Wah.

Now this was a hearse that was always nice to see. On top of being based on the Buccaneer, the Lurcher had a unique horn that played old-timey horror movie organ stabs at increasing pitch. The Sad Trombone horn had absolutely nothing on pinning some poor sap to the wall and announcing your triumph with the glorious DOOT.

The charmingly-named Fränken Stange was another perfect candidate for F1 wheels. Balls-out performance and mods really made you want to dig through the ditches and burn through the witches.

When glitches for Benny's wheels started making the rounds, I couldn't help putting a gaudy set on the original Gauntlet in mockery of its sub-par performance. When iFruit still worked, I really should have put a license plate like "SXT" or just "THE V6" on it.

The Viseris was living proof that the developers really did hate fun. When it released, it could hit speeds in excess of 200 MPH, but it was still balanced by poor handling and braking at high speeds. Tearing ass down the highway was pure joy in this car. So much so, in fact, that the developers implemented an absolutely half-assed fix in the form of artificially capping its top speed. The engine and handling characteristics of the car were untouched, and it just magically stopped accelerating somewhere around 125 MPH, even if it was outfitted with low grip tires, going downhill, or otherwise boosted. It was an incredibly lazy and unnecessary patch for something that didn't even need to be patched, and unless you were really a fan of Panteras, there was just no reason to touch this car at that point.

The Tailgater was another curiosity from the launch era, much like the Asea. Despite being one of the main cars in single player, Tailgaters were notoriously rare online, only spawning at very specific locations under very specific conditions. It made for a nice weekend of hunting.

Another car that was formerly exclusive to returning players, this Blista Compact was one of the first cars I ever got. I dressed it up to look like a low-budget tuner car, which I find amusing in hindsight considering that CRXs are all but extinct in the real world by now.

The Elegy Retro Custom was another of the forefathers of modern GTA tuner cars. It had a nice mixture of mods available to resemble different kinds of Skylines, but I was much more clueless about cars when I got it and just gave it whatever options I thought looked cool.

Man, the things we do to satisfy our love of station wagons. The Regina was one of the slowest vehicles in the game, it had almost no mods, and it didn't do anything well, but I couldn't help but bring one in out of the rain.

As much as I like S13s, the Remus didn't get much drive time. It was similar to the R88 in that its role was simply to help other cars glitch low grip tires before they were made available normally.

One of a very select few hardtop convertibles in the game, the Carbonizzare was an extremely comfy daily driver. It really made me miss that short-lived glitch that allowed you to freeze-frame emotes in cars, throwing your hands up in the air like a good game of OutRun.

It took me a long time to truly appreciate the 9F Cabrio. I owned one very early on and sold it, not knowing much about it besides the novelty of it having a nonexistent model for its engine, but later in life I came to appreciate the first-generation real-life R8 and gave it another shot in my quest for more convertibles, and only then did it reveal its secrets to me. Quick acceleration, a charming engine note, and snappy handling with AWD as a safety net made it a joy to drive and a staple of my daily rotation for months.

The Surano was my first entry into small two-seater sports convertibles. I really wanted to try a soft top, but having unusable back seats bugged the hell out of me at the time, so the Surano fit the bill. It did its job well, but I eventually moved on to bigger and better cars.

I'm not much of a Bimmer guy, but my love for comfy two-door cars brought me to the wheel of a Zion Cabrio very late in my tenure. It didn't really "wow" me in any way, but at the same time, that was exactly what I was asking of it, and it delivered.

Now this majestic beast has some history. The Windsor Drop was one of my favorite cars from beginning to end. Being a four-door convertible made it tons of fun to bring friends, and I use that metaphor specifically because that's how it felt to drive. It was a huge luxury car that actually handled like a true land barge, with a bold but understated growl and handling that insisted you make reservations, yet never leaving you wanting for speed or power. This car really was the life of the party.

Did it bother anyone else that we got so many different flavors of Mustang, yet not one of them was a Fox? At least I was able to cope with a Mach 1 in the form of the Dominator GTT. This thing was a boomer cruiser through and through that I felt right at home bringing to missions with all the kids in their flashy import boxes.

In another universe, I feel like I would have fallen in love with the Deviant. It's got all the ingredients of a badass muscle car, and I'm not averse to restomods, but by the time it was released, my heart already belonged to other vehicles. If it had been released earlier, or starred in another game, we would have made beautiful music together.

The Duke O'Death is another old car that was catapulted to relevance when the Age of Missile Spam began. At first it was a niche vehicle exclusive to players who had started on PS360, but it was eventually made free for all players, and its explosive resistance was a lifesaver once everybody and their brother had homing missiles in their back pocket. It also helped that the Duke was extremely heavy and bullied its way through traffic easily, making it less susceptible to getting sideswiped by errant NPCs. It was a genuinely cool and balanced car that harkens back to a time when the game's vehicles were made with a little more care.

My best friend drove a Sabre Turbo Custom religiously, so when the F1 wheel glitches started appearing, I thought it was high time I got one of my own. This one in particular has a unique crew color on a velvety worn paint finish, which was grandfathered from an NPC-modified Sabre Turbo that rarely spawned with unobtainable paint. It proved to be great fun to go cruising together, and the lowrider hydraulics worked in tandem with the taller tires by allowing the car to tilt forward for a dragster look.

It may have been easy to mistake this for just another muscle car, but this was actually a Future Shock Imperator with all the trappings of an Arena War vehicle. Its immense power gave it high speed and terrible handling on paper, but well-timed use of shunt boost made it able to take 90-degree turns at full speed and make long jumps over hazards. Arena vehicles were some of my favorite cars to drive because they almost turned the game into a platformer with how differently they encouraged you to see the game world.

It would be easy to dismiss the Sanctus as a gimmick bike, only worth driving around Halloween. It was a mistake I made myself. It shares a lot of parts with the Avarus, so I thought it was just an Avarus with a skull and some spooky mods made as a quick cashgrab. But, it turned out that the Sanctus was a motorcycle unlike any other, with unholy amounts of torque that allowed it to drift across town and dared you to fully open the throttle. Not to mention it sounded utterly badass, and with some practice it could climb two-story walls like something out of a horror movie. This bike wasn't silent, but it was definitely a killer.

In a similar vein, this Ruffian evokes imagery of the Headless Horseman. The Ruffian's different headlights were classified as extras, and with the use of a very simple glitch, it was possible to obtain one with none at all. Driving it at night was very interesting.

Is "Apocalypse Deathbike" a band name? It should be. This bike was born out of the pursuit of speed. The Gargoyle was famous for a glitch that propelled it to very high speeds when popping a wheelie with specific wheels installed, and this quality persisted when it was upgraded into the Apocalypse or Nightmare variants of the Deathbike. Then, low grip tires were glitched on to it for even more speed, and coupled with its built-in jump, this bike became truly worthy of the War Boys.

The fact that there were two Sanchez models in GTA made it a no-brainer to have one with standard tires and one with low grips. Surprisingly, it was much more controllable than I expected, but it lost a lot of its stunt potential.

This Manchez Scout was a last-minute addition to the collection during the initial low grip tire rush. Trying to paint up this one was even more difficult, and the end result was very lacking all around. The extra speed was noticeable, but it couldn't hold a candle to other, faster motorcycles, and it handled like a drunk squirrel. This is a bike I wouldn't hesitate to sell if push came to shove.

The BF400 was an example of low grip tires done well. Its already high speed got a nice kick, and the handling was just loose enough to be fun. With a color-matched livery to make it look sharp, this was a bike I took out quite a bit when I wanted to ride on the wild side.

The Sovereign was a rare vehicle in more ways than one. It was only available during the Independence Day week, and it was pretty darn slow, so seeing one in the wild was an uncommon occurrence. In addition, one of its quirks was that it wasn't able to be painted because of the American flag livery. This one here had that overridden with a midnight purple paint job that turned the livery into a subtle detail, visible if you looked very closely.

While its performance was completely unremarkable in every way, the Diabolus Custom had so many customizations and looked so cool that I rode it all the time nonetheless. I gave it a vivid purple-chrome secondary color and carefully masked it off to make the bike look like it had a glowing, futuristic power core. It was fitting that the Diabolus Custom also had an unusually powerful headlight, making it quite useful as a portable spotlight when people needed illumination for a scene.

Also known as the $2,500,000 Bati, the Shinobi was a welcome addition to the game's bike roster that was also an example of rampant in-game inflation. Sure, it had some cool mods, and we hadn't gotten a new sports bike in years, but it drove almost exactly the same as a bike from the game's launch in 2013 that was equally competitive and could be had for less than one percent of the Shinobi's price tag. Move over, Lynx.

Installing low grip tires on a Shotaro resulted in one of the most amazing bikes of my GTA career. The Shotaro was so naturally grippy that the loss in handling was almost imperceptible if you weren't specifically trying to throw it out, and the added speed covered the Shotaro's one weakness, making it even more exhilarating and turning it into a trick machine. Even after the nerf to low grips, I still had tons of fun with this one.

The Chernobog was a really cool idea that was executed poorly. Having a dedicated missile carrier to counter aircraft was a good addition in theory, but it was armored with wet paper towels and took ages to set up while having a unique radar icon that magnetized bandits right to you. It wasn't until a few years later when the localized off-radar ability was introduced that it became even remotely viable, and even then, nine times out of ten it was better to just use the explosive sniper anyway. None of us ever bothered using the Chernobog in combat and we instead spent our time Cargobobbing cars under its missile turret and using it as an atom smasher.

You knew you'd won a shitter stomp when they pulled out the ol' ragetank. The TM-01 Khanjali was the surest sign that its owner was angry at something, be it getting dogpiled by a crew or getting ventilated by laggy overpowered NPCs. The real fun of the Khanjali was in wedging telephone poles between its chassis and turret and spinning really fast to make the physics engine freak out and launch the tank across the map.

When I saw there was a car being added with a controllable gun turret on the roof, my first impulse was to paint it up like the car from Super Spy Hunter for the NES. The Weaponized Tampa made heists and PvE missions downright hilarious, being able to scream around corners with guns blazing. Who cared if it could hardly hit the broad side of a barn?

In yet another example of the developers being horribly out of touch with their fanbase, the Caracara was added to get an F-150 Raptor into the game, but specifically as a knockoff of a 6x6 conversion of one. And then they added a gun turret to the back for kicks. It was fun to use as a party Technical, don't get me wrong, but many of us were much more welcoming of the later Caracara 4x4.

Gee Barrage, how come your mom lets you have two gun turrets? This truck was my first choice to bring to heists when playing with randoms, because having not one but two mounted guns grabbed their attention and ensured there was no fighting over who got to play with the big shooty. It was like one of those fancy minivans with the TVs in the back.

Before we had the Khanjali, we had the APC. Being slightly faster and fully amphibious made it loads of fun to bring to missions that had you recovering cargo from the ocean. Seeing one of these with a proper driver and gunner duo was actually pretty scary, and since you needed a crew to operate one of these effectively, I found it fitting to do this one up with glitched Benny's wheels and a shiny purple paint job to pay homage to the Third Street Saints. Did you know that that was why my character wore purple headphones?

The Insurgent Pick-up Custom, affectionately known as the Gunsurgent, was the best way to calm down a noisy session all the way from its Pegasus predecessor's introduction in 2015 to the present day. Even memebikes had to watch their step around it. Whenever this big guy came out of the garage, it was officially go time. Turned out there weren't many problems that a rolling block of steel with a Ma Deuce on the roof couldn't solve.

Despite being lauded for its stealth capabilities, having the same radar icon as an average street car, it was always easy to spot a Vigilante coming because you'd see said icon doing a pirouette every couple of blocks. Not many drivers could handle the Vigilante's boost function, and its low ground clearance made it prone to getting violently hung up on bits of terrain that other cars would completely ignore. It was even more groan-inducing trying to use its missiles and watching them go sailing straight underneath the vehicles you were trying to hit. The Vigilante was amazing at pushing other cars around, though, especially that cursed Humane Labs monkey van, and parking it against a wall to launch cars with its rocket boost was a ride you could charge admission for.

Never in the history of GTA has a vehicle had a redemption arc as glorious as that of the Dune FAV. On release, it wasn't anything special, as its occupants were exposed and its mounted gun had a very limited traversal, and it only became more hated as time passed because the developers, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to bind the proximity mine function to the same button as the horn, making it all too easy to blow yourself to smithereens when trying to give a friendly beep. This problem was exacerbated in the Dune FAVs used for bunker sales, as now the mine button not only took the place of the horn button, but also that of the one used by every other bunker sale vehicle to drop a shipment, so giving that friendly beep on your way to deliver was going to cost you a hell of a lot more than just 500 GTA-bucks. Many of my friends and crew writhed at the sight of these buggies for years until the release of the Up-N-Atomizer physics gun, at which point the lowly Dune FAV got a new lease on life by being the only vehicle in the game that allowed the driver to use the Up-N-Atomizer as a drive-by weapon. Filled with newfound vigor, the Dune FAV made its triumphant return to the battlefield, bringing joy and physics fun to everyone, and we all lived ragdolly ever after.

For quite a while, I looked down my nose at the humble Nightshark. It was just a smaller Insurgent, right? Why would I bother owning one when I already had an Insurgent? But then it went on sale, and I gave it a try out of boredom, and my game plan was changed forever. This thing was a feisty little mountain goat. It was kind of like a small Insurgent, yes, but that smaller size meant it had much more get-up-and-go than its bigger brother, and it was much more comfortable when taken off the beaten path. I actually kept mine in the back of my Mobile Operations Center, where it could be summoned without having to wait for the mechanic to pick up the phone, as an emergency escape vehicle. This foresight proved quite useful, as one of the Nightshark's most important qualities proved to be that it was able to tank a memebike's full complement of missiles and keep running. This, combined with its lack of a unique radar icon, made it ideal for defensive play, and once we learned that breaking the driver's door off made it easy to score eject kills, it became ideal for just about everything.

Bless the Habanero, it tried so hard. This little Lexus RX knockoff loved to throw its rear end out and had a high-strung engine note that reminded me of a small displacement V6. It made it feel like it really, really wanted to be a tuner. If it had a little more mod potential or speed it would have been one of my favorite cars.

Also on the Lexus train, the game had a Lexus GS in the form of the Intruder. Naturally, I had to BIPPU it with an obnoxious wrap and oversized wheels. In spite of that, it was still a comfy car to drive. I think I'm just a sucker for full-width taillights.

The Weevil Custom was another really cool car released very late in the game's life that just wasn't enough to keep me coming back to it. It was fast, fun, cool looking, and mean, but when the cards were down it was just another car. At least it gave me some pleasure to take English Dave's prized car to the chop shop. Enjoy that panther cage, jerk.

There was a time when a Sultan was in every player's garage. As a fast four-door with good handling that could go off-road and be found on the streets, it was popular among brand new players who needed a reliable vehicle for heists and missions. Other cars eventually outclassed it and left it to be just another street car, but its day in the sun was bright indeed.

The poor, poor Bullet. Such a nice car doomed to a lifetime of heckling for being misclassified as a Super and landing squarely at the bottom of the rankings, when it would have fared much better in Sports. If you disregard the race tiers and judge it purely on its own merits, you'll find a fun little Ford clone that's great for cruising.

The Surge was a car that was easy to pick out in traffic due to its neat illuminated grille. It was ahead of its time, in my opinion, considering it was from 2013 and light-up badges and grilles didn't start catching on until years later. Performance was subpar, but it was at least small enough to fit between the bunker bollards and go roll around the weapons factory facilities.

My first GTA winter was spent in the company of a Radius. It even had steelies on so the nicer wheels wouldn't get damaged in the snow. This lovechild of a Dodge Caliber and a Ford Edge won my heart with above-average speed for an SUV and a comically aggressive exhaust note that you'd never expect from such a round little creature.

Honda's modern automotive offerings rarely caught my eye, but it was nice to see an interpretation of their new NSX in the form of the Jester. I remember it having quite a throaty sound to it that made it enjoyable to drive in spite of being an otherwise average sports car.

Sometimes I found it hard to believe that the Jackal was a car that could be insured directly off of the streets. It was a fast little thing and I remember being taken aback at how much torque it had in higher gears, where similar cars would have run out of breath. If I had to start all over and pick a four-door fresh out of the gate, I would probably pick a Jackal.

Truthfully, I was never much of a fan of the Swinger, but it showed up for free on the podium once and I couldn't help snagging one just to show off the needlessly obscure and nigh-unobtainable livery that was only available to people who played during one specific week many years ago.

The Veto Classic was given out for free as part of a promotion when the GTA community completed a challenge for heisting the most money collectively over a couple of weeks. I didn't drive mine much, but we all had a good laugh seeing one of our buddies dress up in a Mario costume and drive the thing around.

Curiously, the regular Speedo was one of those old vehicles that could be insured but not painted or modded. This one has had that limitation circumvented through the use of the poorly programmed yet official iFruit app.

Back before the Weevil was added to the game, the only way to get something resembling a standard Beetle was to glitch regular wheels onto an Injection like this. Using iFruit limited you to the Sports category, which is what was used here, whereas a full-featured merge glitch granted access to the whole catalog.

Remember the FIB Buffalo from GTA IV? This was my attempt to recreate that, from back before we got the newer wheel categories with better steelies in them. The Buffalo used to have a glitch to remove the skirts from it, as shown here, before eventually getting patched years later.

The Blazer Lifeguard was considered a flex vehicle for many years. It was a rare spawn that could be stored in garages, but not modified or insured without the use of very rare glitches, so having one like this and driving it in the wildlands that were public lobbies was a rare occurrence. Eventually it was added to the shop for purchase and it became little but a pleasant memory.

The bedless Rat-Loader was another classic meme vehicle. By switching certain between mod options on certain vehicles, it was possible to "trick" the game into having none equipped at all, and this was an example of that. What made it even funnier was that the truck then lacked collision boxes on its rear end, allowing two of them to be reversed into each other to create a CatDog abomination.

Having a Romero Hearse in the olden days meant you had friends. It was a vehicle that only spawned in missions, or if someone who already owned one used theirs to spawn a wild one for you. This one in particular was even more unique, as it had been glitched to have the casket and rosary removed. For the longest time, it was my white whale, hence the license plate.

Driving the Faction was an interesting experience. The stock model, which hadn't been upgraded into either of the two Benny's variants, had bugged collision boxes which caused it to crash and flip wildly whenever it hit a curb or other low obstacle. It was frustrating, to say the least, but it also caused you to see the game's map in a new light and drive more realistically, since it's often all too easy to ignore curbs in GTA games. In addition, this particular Faction had an unobtainable modification in the form of the power bulge on its hood.

This famous workhorse was vital when it came to obscure vehicle mods. The Sadler had many visible "extras" in the form of its accessories, which corresponded to various parts of other vehicles that were unmodifiable at mod shops, making it incredibly useful for merging with vehicles such as the Faction above or other vehicles with unwanted interior clutter. On top of all that, it was also just a really nice truck.

The BeeJay XL was the vehicle I always brought to Halloween festivities, because of the covered body in the back seat. This feature was used in the single-player campaign during the mission where Michael hides in the back seat of his car to catch Franklin, but it could also be obtained through glitches when playing online.

I apologize for not having dollar rims, chrome paint, and green neons on my Adder. Like any classic car, such an old vehicle should always be outfitted with period-accurate mods. I will do better in the future.

The Cyclone was my absolute favorite of the electric cars. It looked cool and it was fast enough to be enjoyable, especially when it got up to highway speeds in reverse. Low grip tires only made it even more chaotic and goofy.

A Penetrator drives into a bar. The bartender asks, "Why the long face?"

Once it stopped being the poster child of race car power creep, the T20 was a comfortable, if benign, little supercar. It was the first vehicle to have an active spoiler, which is something I wish had been retroactively ported to the game's older cars that would have had one. At least they quickly gained popularity.

Is it just me, or does the Torero have really tiny rear wheels? I don't remember the Countach looking like a platform cart with a body kit. Still, I was born in the '80s so I was obligated to buy one. It was a decent car that served as another example of the developers' ineptitude, as it was shown in official marketing material with a colorable interior, yet no such feature was available in the game without the use of clever glitches. All you had to do was tick the box to enable it, guys!

In a humorous parallel to real life, the Toros was an alarmingly quick SUV that was released with a faulty transmission. When driven hard in a particular manner, it was possible for it to get stuck in a high gear until it was manually shifted in and out of reverse. I don't know about you, but I play GTA games to get away from car problems.

You'd think a McLaren F1 homage would have been a shoo-in for a GTA game, but it took years for the GP1 to make its debut. Sure, there was the Tyrus, but that was a track car and it wasn't the same. I remember the GP1 being quite grippy, as well as for the novelty of having eight exhaust pipes.

While we never got a true M1, getting an interpretation of its supercar descendant wasn't so bad. The SC1 was a favorite of mine for its futuristic looks and its lovely louvers.

When the 811 showed up to the party, you knew you were about to have a good time. This curvaceous beauty was derided for its poor track times, but only true believers knew the spirit of the Autobahn dwelled within it. An incredible top speed made it ideal for those long trips to Paleto Bay, and it could even hold its own against "meta" vehicles in stunt races where it had room to stretch its legs. Curb boosting and the low grip speed boost made it even more of an untamable monster that was sure to have its two passengers grinning from ear to ear as they careened into the side of a mountain.

From a distance, the Tyrant looked like just another supercar. When you got in one and pulled up next to someone at a traffic light, that was when its appeal was made clear: this car was friggin' huge. Seriously, it was like those BMW M8 memes. The Tyrant had almost the same footprint as a Rhino tank. Its performance was nothing special, and it was a pain to customize, but there was something appealing about driving a supercar that was the size of a Super Duty.

The early years of the game were full of comfy aircraft like the Vestra that added atmosphere and flavor to the game. Look at that charming little nose and split tail. It was tiny enough to do the Zancudo tunnel run, too.

After cutting your teeth on the Rogue, the Pyro was what you moved up to when you wanted to make a passenger soil themselves. The copilot couldn't do much other than watch as you turned this supermaneuverable dogfighter into an airborne carnival ride that could beat even a Lazer in a turn fight.

This Hydra was an aircraft with a very special place in my heart, because I discovered the glitch to remove the missiles entirely on my own, with no forums or tutorials involved. I felt like a million bucks when I logged back in to see those clean wings. It struck me as very fitting, considering I didn't use the Hydra in its usual close air support role and merely used it for cargo runs and the occasional escort.

On the other hand, the Havok here also had a special place in my heart because I completely and utterly hated it. The only reason it was still in my collection was that I never needed the money from selling it. Seriously, you looked at this thing funny and it would tip over and drag you into a cartoonish death slide before making you question your entire life up to this point. And then they introduced a sale mission with eight, yes, eight of these things! No wonder nobody ran hangar cargo.

Tiny plane is tiny. The Alpha Z-1 was the plane of choice for buzzing downtown and challenging yourself to fit into ever tighter holes. Seriously, this thing was fast and could turn on a dime, and it even had countermeasures to keep trouble off your tail. The only bad part was that this little bird would turn into an albatross if you were even the slightest bit off the mark when trying to land.

A Cargobob was another one of those things that every player was all but required to own, whether it was the standard camo flavor or the alternate Cargobob Jetsam like this one. It was indispensable for getting vehicles unstuck and having fun bringing them to places they had no business being at. Even the developers got in on it with the missions that had you airlifting a tank back to your bunker.

The B-11 Strikeforce was an odd duck. Despite the popularity of its real-life analogue, it took years to show up in the game, and when it finally did, it was in the form of an unusually maneuverable high-altitude dogfighter that couldn't do the one thing its inspiration was famous for. Seriously, the explosive cannon on the B-11 took multiple hits and multiple passes to take out even a person standing completely still as it tossed them around like a beach ball. One of the aces in our crew practically made a game out of seeing how long they could juggle a ground target with a single strafe. All the developers had to do was copy and paste the cannons from the Hydra and Lazer, yet they chose to give their version of one of the most famous aircraft in American history a brand-new bespoke weapon that hit with all the force of a runaway shopping cart.

The Besra was another one of those planes from the launch era that was flavorful and fun. A nimble stunt plane was always a good time in itself, but what really made the unarmed Besra fun was that it shared the same radar icon as the two very common and very dangerous combat jets. My crew and I strongly condemned attacking any players transporting cargo, but I can't say it wasn't amusing to buzz past them and raise their heart rate a little before they found out it was a harmless Besra.

The duality of man was exemplified in the Akula stealth helicopter. With potent weapons, good speed and agility, a little bit of armor, four seats, and the ability to go on and off the radar at any time, the Akula was effective in just about every role, which made it popular for sneak attacks in combat zones as well as cargo runs when you just wanted the irate masses to let you grind in peace. Like the Besra, it was also a giggle to take the Akula up to the height limit and turn off its stealth above a crowd of players before watching their radar blips scurry about and circle the wagons. Ain't I a stinker?

Savage! Just pretend I said that in the voice of the theme of the Amiga game by the same name. The Savage was a fun helicopter from the heists era that managed to be useful in PvP and PvE for quite a while with its explosive cannon and enough armor to disengage. It also served as very painful insight into the developers' priorities. One of the Savage's quirks was that it had a slightly off-center radar lock point, which meant that in rare circumstances a skilled pilot could dodge homing missiles by pitching the helicopter forward. This bug persisted untouched for three entire years until players noticed that it could be used to counter (read: not get instantly steamrolled by) the Oppressor Mk II. Only then did the devs "patch" the Savage, because nothing was allowed to oppose the almighty shitter bike. This sort of backwards balancing is what began to drive my crew and my friends away from the game.

Our old crew used to be pretty big, and sometimes four seats just weren't enough. The Annihilator let us taxi around without having to deal with the slowness of a Cargobob, and when rappelling was added to it, it got a nice little niche as a comfy copter for those of us who wanted to have a little fun while grinding.

Oh, the many memories I have with the Valkyrie. In a time when jets and tanks were kings, the Valkyrie was a god, raining destruction from the heavens at the behest of those worthy of it. A good friend of mine was a helicopter enthusiast, who understood there was more to the game than just padding your own KDR, and the moment a session turned sour we sounded the alarm like the Dudley Boyz, him at the stick and myself on the guns. Not even Hydras and Lazers could touch our helicopter as we restored comfy times to our crew sessions, proving that teamwork was the ultimate weapon. At least, until the game introduced shitter tools like the explosive sniper and fast missiles that finally forced our bird to return to Valhalla.

Some people would keel-haul me for not using the anime livery on the flying Dorito, but screw it, I liked my Volatol to look like a GI Joe toy. Unfortunately, it couldn't hurt much of anything, as it was a slow and giant target with ineffective bombs and turrets that were irreparably broken years after its release with no fix ever implemented. Better hope you got that Doomsday Heist mission done at release or you're in for a bad time.

There used to be a bug which allowed players to save the Agency's SuperVolito Carbon by simply taking it to their hangar. I don't think I ever actually flew it besides that initial trip. Hey, free helicopter.

The Ultralight was what you got when you strapped an LS1 to a hang glider. It was kind of a neat concept, being so small that it could go off the radar just by laying off the throttle. It eventually fell by the wayside because the Akula did everything it could, but better.

The Rogue was a two-person jack-of-all-trades. It was fun for goofing around and handing bomb controls off to the copilot, but it didn't see much flight time because it couldn't do anything better than another aircraft.

A lot of players didn't know that the free Cuban 800 that came free with each hangar could be equipped with bombs just like more expensive planes. This and its completely innocuous radar icon made it fun for getting into trouble without drawing attention.

A cargo plane that could be used as such, the Titan was a fan favorite from beginning to end. We've all loaded a car or two into the back of one of these things and taken it up to the altitude limit for purely scientific purposes.

The FH-1 Hunter was the Valkyrie's big brother that could buy beer and did a ton of PCP. No longer was the pilot stuck watching their gunner rack up the kills, as they had a host of missiles and countermeasures at their disposal. Well-timed use of chaff even allowed it to lock down memebikes, cementing it as the go-to "this person needs to leave the session" vehicle until the very end.

Though many have challenged its throne, the P-996 Lazer has been the king of the skies since the game very first launched in 2013. I was never a great pilot, so I just dolled mine up to look like Blitzwing from Transformers G1 and called it a day, but a few of my more dedicated friends learned every inch of this plane and used it to nightmarish effect. Through use of spawn manipulation, sometimes ground targets didn't even have enough time to open the pause menu and leave the game before getting taken out by another strafe. Newer is not always better.

The Verus was given out for free sometime after the release of Cocoa Paprika. That's about all I remember about it. I wasn't really into quads, because you couldn't do tricks with them the way you could with a motorcycle, but a free vehicle was a free vehicle.

For the longest time, I regarded the PCJ 600 as the Ruffian's wimpier sibling, but I snagged one out of boredom for its unobtainable paint color and found that it's actually a nice little bike with a bit of tricking capability. I'd have no problems recommending one as a starter bike.

Manchez Scouts will always haunt me as imperfect oddities. It wasn't an an ugly bike, it had tons of cool mods, and it had excellent performance, but for the life of me I could never settle on a satisfying setup for one. I must have given this bike four or five paint and livery combos before settling on plain white because it was hard to screw that up.

The Carbon RS was a fun gimmick bike in the launch era. It was close to the level of the Bati and it had the ability to launch itself into orbit by doing a wheelie into a curb. Ultimately its complete lack of customization meant that the only paint job it would be getting was a layer of dust in the garage. At least later on you could change the headlights, I guess.

BF400s were amazing trick bikes and I knew a lot of friends who rode them religiously. Once you paid its exorbitant upgrade costs, it offered chart-topping speed and could do flips across entire city blocks. Even though I was more into parkour-style "city" bikes, I can't deny that having a BF400 was a damn fun time.

It made me deeply sad that the Thrust was the closest thing we'd get to a luxury touring motorcycle like a Goldwing. Comfy as it was, it was mostly a garage queen until years later when I had honed my skills enough to discover its potential as a wall climber.

After seeing what the Thrust could do, I took my chances on another long wheelbase bike, the Vindicator. It was a little heavier and not quite as capable, but it was neat-looking and the boost was fun to toy around with. The added torque made it a little better for hopping barriers and getting around town.

Everyone ought to have owned a Sanchez. It was the precursor to all GTA stunt bikes, and it aged like wine, being able to do a little bit of everything. The instant free CEO Sanchezes were my go-to backup vehicles for this reason when personal vehicles were unavailable. About the only criticism I could lay on it was that we shouldn't have had to jump through so many hoops to put street tires on one.

The Shotaro was a bike with many layers. Sure, it topped the racing leaderboards, but did you know that you could turn off its lights with a chrome secondary color or #000000 crew paint? Or that its stock wheels were paintable with a common trick? Or that it was a much more capable trick bike than it seemed, despite its infamy for not being able to wheelie at speed? Its strong engine meant that it could rip massive wheelies from a standstill, and its extremely long wheelbase let it devour highway dividers and tall barriers. It always had a reputation as a good inner city bike, and once you got to know it, there was nowhere it couldn't go.

The pursuit of raw speed has always been my motivator in GTA games. The Reever, being a bike with the Gargoyle's speed quirk no matter what wheels it had, made my wishes come true. But you can believe that once a glitch appeared to put low grip tires on non-Tuner vehicles, I slapped those puppies on to go even further beyond. Amusingly, the Reever was already so blisteringly fast that it didn't make much of a difference.

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