How to spawn your car in GTA 5 story mode

Q: Can you call your car in GTA 5 story mode?

Sometimes its best to keep a low profile in GTA! Calling an active vehicle in GTA 5 is fairly simple. Just open up the interaction menu and select request personal vehicle.

Question

If you can’t find your car in GTA 5 story mode, then there are a few ways to find it – watch the video above to find out how:

If it’s a lead character’s (Trevor, Michael, Franklin) own vehicle, then it will be returned to that character’s safehouse, e.g. Trevor’s pickup truck will be at his safehouse on the south of the Alamo Sea (the big lake in the north).
If it’s one you’ve bought or modified at the garage, then your best hope is the Impound Garage
If you’ve abandoned your vehicle to start a mission, been wasted or arrested or simply wandered off, then you can almost always find it at the Impound Garage. An icon will appear on the map for the Impound Garage when a car is available there. You have to pay $250 to get it back. The location of the Impound Garage is in the video above
Unlike GTA 5 Online, you can’t insure your vehicle in story mode, so if it’s been destroyed, then you’ve lost it. The only way to get it back is by restoring a save point which means you’ll lose your progress to that point

Are your cars vanishing from your garages and safehouses? Wondering where they are? Where all that money you just spent on modding your dream ride has gone? Maybe this will help you out.

After some testing I have discovered the following.

If you take a saved car out of your garage in single player (Stolen or purchased/modded or not) and DON'T return it to the garage/safehouse garage before:

1) You exit the game
2) You die
3) It gets destroyed
4) You start any mission that requires a vehicle change

It will no longer appear in your garage. It will be gone for good. All that money you spent on modding will have been wasted. You'll need to repurchase/steal the car again and re mod it.

This has been my experience after some testing. Are you guys having similar things happen to your saved cars?

This is either a bug or a a very poor design decision as it defeats the point of actually using garages and modding your cars. Especially since a large majority of missions will require you to get out of your car into another car, helicopter etc which result in your saved car not being returned to the garage and thus lost.

I see there are many posts about people losing their cars, its probably a good idea to put all the posts about this issue in the same thread and sticky it if there is any hope of Rockstar fixing it.

Some are saying this issue has been in the console version since release and has never been fixed.

EDIT:

http://gta.wikia.com/LSPD_Auto_Impound

"Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online
In GTA V, Impound Garages return. If the player abandons (but doesn't destroy) a vehicle that they have modified at a Los Santos Customs garage or ordered online, they will be able to retrieve the vehicle from the Impound Lot for a fee of $250. Reasons for losing a vehicle might include triggering a mission that requires the use of another vehicle, the vehicle being commandeered by police (which can happen if it's parked outside a police station), wandering too far away from a vehicle and causing it to despawn, or loading an autosave that places the character back at a safehouse instead of in the vehicle."

Home
Questions
How can I spawn a car in GTA 5?

I’ve been messing around with different modes in GTA 5. Most recently, I’ve been giving director mode a go, and I’m trying to figure out how to spawn the car I want. How do I spawn whichever car I want in director mode?

GTA 5 has plenty of cool modes—which makes sense, after so many years of development by Rockstar! Unfortunately, when you’re in director mode, you can only spawn the cars you already own in story mode.

Here’s how to spawn a car in director mode:

Hold the “view” button (the one with the little rectangle on it)
Scroll down to “garage”
Choose a vehicle to spawn

Remember, you can only have one vehicle at a time (even if it’s a jet or a tank). If you want to increase your options, dive into story mode and add some vehicles to the main characters’ garages.

If you want some real-world savings to go along with your loaded virtual bank account, check out Jerry. It’s an all-in-one car insurance super app that will get you the cheapest policies within minutes.

Just click your favorite policy, let Jerry help you switch, and watch the money pile up—the average Jerry driver saves $887 on car insurance!

View full answer

WHY YOU CAN TRUST JERRY

Jerry partners with more than 50 insurance companies, but our content is independently researched, written, and fact-checked by our team of editors and agents. We aren’t paid for reviews or other content.

Browse More Content

Insurance in Your State

What Others Are Asking

Read Advice From Car Experts At Jerry

Browse By Topics

Car Insurance by Make

Car Insurance by State

Can you call your car in GTA 5 story mode?

Sometimes it's best to keep a low profile in GTA! Calling an active vehicle in GTA 5 is fairly simple. Just open up the interaction menu and select request personal vehicle.

spawn car gta story mode