Always the Cars: Every Vehicle Fans Have Identified in the GTA 6 Trailers

By Ruan Martini, Daily Checkpoint

People ask me what I am most excited to test when GTA 6 lands on November 19. The map, sure. The cops, the weather, the NPCs, all of it. But if I am being honest with you, and I usually am in this space, my first hour in Leonida is a car hour. I want to know what I am driving, what I am stealing, and what is going to chase me. So I went through what the community has pulled out of the four official trailers, frame by frame, and the pile is enormous. Depending on which database you trust, fans have identified somewhere between 140 and more than 300 vehicles across the trailers and Rockstar’s official promo material, with GTABase running the biggest community database of the lot.

Before the list, the ground rules, because this topic is a rumor factory if you let it be one. Rockstar has not published a vehicle roster. Almost every in-game name below comes from community documentation, mainly the GTA Wiki’s vehicle pages, the GTA VI Wiki, and GamesRadar’s running trailer-by-trailer cars guide, where analysts match shapes to the series’ returning models. Every real-world comparison is a fan identification, and I will keep calling it that. When fans say a car “is” a Chevelle, they mean its shape, its stance and its badges point at one. The handful of names Rockstar itself has used in its own storefront copy, I will flag as official when we get to them.

The hero cars, and one very funny name fight

Start with the car Rockstar clearly wants you to remember. The Declasse Tulip closes Trailer 1, with Jason and Lucia speeding away together, and it closes Trailer 2 as well, the two of them driving off into the night. The GTA VI Wiki reads its shape as a 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu, all long hood and bad decisions, and the footage shows it wearing custom stickers, which is our first quiet hint that personalizing your ride matters in this game. If the trailers have a main character with four wheels, it is this one.

Jason’s own truck situation is where the community documentation turns into comedy. The GTA Wiki (the big Fandom one) has a full page for a Vapid Creado, a coupe utility in the shape of a fifth-generation Ford Ranchero GT, and it says the name can be read right off the car’s front fender badges in a video on Rockstar’s official promotional website. Then Rockstar’s own Ultimate Edition storefront copy named Jason’s well-worn, low-riding pickup the Vapid Ganado, and said the edition adds a Ganado Retro Build with exclusive mods. GTA BOOM’s vehicle page openly admits it used to call the turquoise ute a Creado before switching to Ganado. So the current state of the art is this: the hero has a Ranchero-shaped ute, everybody agrees on the ute, and the internet’s best documentarians cannot agree on its name. One of them is going to win an edit war over a fake truck. I respect the commitment.

The third hero ride shows up in the Extended Look: a convertible that Jason and Lucia use outside their apartment, repeatedly, with a fully working retractable soft top that GamesRadar clocked as it folds away in the parking lot. GamesRadar identifies it as the Ubermacht Sentinel Classic, and car spotters reading the same footage matched the shape to an E30-generation BMW 3 Series cabriolet, which fits, because the Sentinel badge has carried GTA’s BMW energy for years.

Muscle: the loud section

Vice City runs on V8s, apparently. Trailer 1’s neon strip alone gives us the Bravado Gauntlet Hellfire, which fans read as the Challenger Hellcat of this world, and the Imponte Ruiner shows up in a road-rage social clip, because of course the Ruiner is involved in a road-rage clip. Trailer 2 adds the Bravado Buffalo STX, the community’s Dodge Charger, parked in a lineup of luxury cars next to an Imponte Phoenix and a Pfister Growler, and the Declasse Vamos keeps popping up near a certain hammer-carrying neighbor in Hamlet. The Extended Look throws in a race-spec field and more street racing, which we will get to in the culture section.

Two muscle cars wear uniforms. Trailer 1 has a Bravado Gauntlet Interceptor, a police coupe, in the pileup after a pursuit, and trackers list a Buffalo STX Pursuit in the same trailer, while the Extended Look’s big chase features a police Bravado Buffalo trying to run our heroes down. And the launch trailer, the one from October 15, opens its car account with what Car and Driver’s spotters called a modified Chevrolet Camaro lookalike, with Jason and Lucia leaning on it like it is already theirs. Its in-game name is still unconfirmed, which has not stopped anyone from wanting it. There is also a one-off in the Ultimate Edition’s Classic Car Collection mission: a Sirius muscle car, manufacturer unknown, that GamesRadar logged among the project cars you hunt down for a fixer. A mystery muscle car as a collectible. Rockstar knows its audience.

Exotics: Vice City money

The single most expensive shot in Trailer 1 might be the causeway run: a Pegassi Zorrusso and a Grotti Furia racing across the water while a passenger stands up through the open roof of one of them, living her best and most uninsured life. Community lists match the Zorrusso’s shape to a Pagani Huayra and the Furia to a Ferrari SF90 Stradale. Nobody at Rockstar has confirmed either match. Nobody needs to. You can see it.

Down on the strip, the white wedge in the traffic is the Grotti Cheetah Classic, which car writers at Fast Car read as a Ferrari Testarossa tribute, and the trailer frame even shows it wearing a CH33TAH vanity plate, a detail I love more than I should. Next to it sits a turquoise Pfister Comet S2 Cabrio, the community’s Porsche 911 cabriolet, and the same trailer parks a Comet Retro Custom, the classic 911 shape, at an intersection full of dirt bikes. The Invetero Coquette D10 brings the modern Corvette energy, community lists split the Coquette family between the C8 and its Z06-flavored D10, and GamesRadar spotted an unknown Coquette hardtop in Trailer 2 that does not match either one cleanly. Trailer 1 also lines up a Grotti Itali GTO (fans read Ferrari 458 Italia), a Grotti Carbonizzare, a Pegassi Infernus Classic (the Countach read), and one still-unnamed wedge that GamesRadar describes simply as inspired by a Lamborghini Aventador.

Trailer 2 contributes the Pegassi Tempesta, read by community lists as a Lamborghini Huracán, and the launch trailer went shopping in the nineties: Car and Driver picked out an R33-generation Nissan Skyline shape, a yellow Lamborghini Diablo lookalike in a night street race, and a lime-green Bugatti Veyron lookalike being chased by police, which is the most Vice City sentence in this entire article. The Skyline thread connects backward, by the way. Community lists matched an Annis Elegy Retro Custom, the R32-style car, in Trailer 1, so the Skyline bloodline looks alive and well in Leonida. One exotic carries an official name, because Rockstar used it in the Ultimate Edition copy: the ’95 Grotti Cheetah, a mid-nineties signature car with retro-futuristic livery. That one is not a fan guess. That one is on the box.

Lowriders, donks and chrome

Now we get to my favorite stretch of Trailer 1, the street where everything is customized and nothing is subtle. GamesRadar’s shot-by-shot log lists an Albany Primo, a Vapid Chino and an Albany Buccaneer Custom rolling in chrome, and community lists match the Primo and its Primo Custom lowrider trim to the Buick Regal family. A few frames later you get the shot that launched a thousand forum posts: a row of visibly modified cars that includes a Declasse Tulip M-100, the donk variant of our hero muscle car, sitting on rims so large that one community list measured them at 27 inches. Tasteful? No. Correct for this city? Completely.

The launch trailer kept the theme going with a spiderweb-painted green lowrider flashing through one shot, and the Ultimate Edition material goes further: an exclusive business called Rideout Customs, which Rockstar’s own copy says can “transform vanilla vehicles into magnificent works of art with detailed interiors, exquisite rims, and donk stylings.” The car illustrating that pitch looks closest to an Albany Manana, per GamesRadar, though they note it could be a new Albany model. Donk stylings, in the official marketing copy. Write that on a tombstone for the idea that car culture is a side feature in this game.

Trucks, SUVs and swamp machinery

Leonida is Florida, so the truck section is stacked. The Vapid Caracara 4×4 is the truck you cannot miss: community trackers matched it to the Ford F-150 Raptor, its name is legible on the hood in Trailer 2, and Trailer 1 already had one working as a lifeguard truck on Vice Beach. The Bravado Bison does Ram duty, spotted parked near the artificial islands in Trailer 1 and working in a Vice-Dale utility livery in Trailer 2. Trailer 1 opens with a Vapid Bobcat XL towing a boat on a trailer, which is the most Florida opening shot imaginable, and Trailer 2 answers with my favorite truck moment in any of the four videos: an unnamed dual-rear-wheel Bravado crew cab, read by GamesRadar as a Ram 3500 dually, towing a bank vault down the highway around the two-minute mark. It is a straight Fast Five homage and everyone involved knew it.

The SUV roll call, all community identifications: the Declasse Granger 3600LX (read as a Chevrolet Suburban), the Gallivanter Baller (Range Rover, one of them burning in the Starlet Motel parking lot in Trailer 2), the Enus Jubilee (Rolls-Royce Cullinan, rear hatch open in Trailer 1, later escorting a VIP from the airport in the Extended Look), the Dundreary Landstalker XL (read as a Lincoln Navigator), a Benefactor Dubsta (G-Class, parked at the Port Gellhorn Pawn and Gun) and the Pfister Astron, the black SUV storming through Port Gellhorn in Trailer 2 with the protagonists in its sights. Trackers still argue whether the Astron is shaped after a Porsche Macan or a Cayenne. I have no dog in that fight, which is a lie, it is the Macan, look at the roofline.

Off-road gets its own ecosystem: lifted Vapid Sandking XL trucks, a Declasse Rancher (read as a K5 Blazer) carrying two guys riding in the open back on the interstate, the Nagasaki Outlaw UTV and a Vapid Liberator monster truck at the Thrillbilly Mud Club, where the GTA VI Wiki also logged swamp buggies and ATVs. The Ultimate Edition names one more officially: the ’67 Vapid Dominator Buggy, built for the Mud Club crowd, and its One-Eyed Willie’s mod shop promo shows what appears to be a Canis Mesa or a close relative wearing hand-painted art.

The cars with the lights on top

You will meet these ones personally, so learn their shapes. The standard patrol car across the trailers is the Vapid Police Cruiser (Interceptor), which GamesRadar and the GTA VI Wiki both read as a Ford Taurus Police Interceptor wearing Vice City and Port Gellhorn liveries. The older Vapid Stanier LE cruiser, the Crown Victoria shape, still works the highways in Trailer 2, and the Vintage Vice City Pack turns the clock all the way back with a ’55 Vapid Stanier, a name Rockstar printed itself. The heavy metal is the Brute Police Riot, an armored truck the emergency-vehicle trackers matched to a Lenco BEAR. Fans counting liveries have identified nine separate law enforcement agencies in Leonida so far, including a Leonard County Sheriff’s Office running green and white cruisers. Nine agencies. Nine different paint jobs to memorize while they are behind you.

Quick hits: boats, planes and the rest

One boat has an official name already. The Ultimate Edition copy confirms a Shitzu Squalo speedboat, and Rockstar’s material ties it to fishing, which means somebody at that studio understands exactly what a man wants from a coastal map. The Dodo seaplane floats through Trailer 1, continuing the series’ longest-running aviation joke, a commercial airliner crosses over the Trailer 2 highway montage, the launch trailer parks a biplane at the beach, and somewhere in that same trailer a character leaps from a pickup onto the landing gear of an aircraft, because subtlety died in this franchise around 2004 and nobody mourns it.

The culture is the real reveal

Individual cars are fun. The culture around them is the actual news, and this part I am writing from what the trailers show, not from what anyone promises. Trailer 1 contains an overhead shot of a street takeover, cars doing donuts in a blocked intersection while a crowd films it, and the in-world rap duo Real Dimez appear in that same scene dancing on top of a car. GTAForums’ trailer analysis logged a Little Havana car meet, and the GTA VI Wiki documents an in-world automotive magazine, @HighRollerzMag, covering the meet scene. Read that again slowly. Rockstar built a fake car magazine, inside the game, to cover fake car meets. The dedication to this bit is total.

The meet culture keeps surfacing. One of Trailer 1’s social media clips shows a race meet gathered at a closed road junction. The Extended Look shows liveried race cars fighting on an actual track, then street racing at night with cars running nitrous, and GamesRadar’s breakdown of that footage spotted two details I cannot stop thinking about: Jason choosing between a slim jim and smashing a window to steal a car, two different theft methods in one scene, while a tow truck rolls past in the background. Shop signage shows up in the footage too, and the cars parked around it are visibly modified, stickers, wheels, the works. All of that is observation, footage anyone can pause. What it suggests, and I am labeling this as suggestion, is a game where car culture is not decoration. It is a system, or several systems wearing a trench coat.

My first steal

So, day one, November 19, first car I steal with my own two thumbs. Not the fastest, not the rarest. The Tulip. It closes two trailers, it is the getaway car of the whole story, and if this series has taught me anything, it is that the car Rockstar keeps putting in the last shot is the car the game wants you to love. Then I am finding a Zorrusso, or whatever lime-green problem the launch trailer was teasing, and I am crossing Leonida in it just to hear it. And Jason’s ute, the Creado, the Ganado, whatever name survives the edit war, I am borrowing it in the first hour. He can have it back. Probably. Tell me yours in the comments, and if you say the mobility scooter, know that I respect it and I am still judging you a little.

Sources

• GamesRadar, “All of the GTA 6 cars we know about so far” (running guide, shot-by-shot identifications for Trailer 1, Trailer 2, the Extended Look and the Ultimate Edition)
• GTA Wiki (Fandom), “Creado” and vehicle documentation (the Creado name read from official website footage; Ranchero GT basis)
• GTA VI Wiki (thegameswiki.com), Vehicles, Pickup Trucks, SUVs and Emergency Vehicles pages (protagonist vehicles, the Caracara, the Bison, agency liveries)
• GTA BOOM, “Vapid Ganado in GTA 6” (the Creado to Ganado naming history)
• GTABase, GTA 6 vehicle database (community identification counts)
• Car and Driver’s launch trailer vehicle spots, via carsales.com.au (R33 Skyline, Diablo, Veyron, Camaro lookalikes; the E30 cabriolet spot)
• Fast Car, “GTA 6 Trailer: All The Car Culture References” (Testarossa read, donks, takeovers)
• GamerMatters, “Things The GTA VI Trailer Showed That Got Me Excited” (takeover and car meet observations); The Manual, “5 new things we know about GTA 6” (the Dodo)
• GTAForums, “GTA VI: Trailer 1 Analysis” (scene log, including the Little Havana car meet)