How to Add Cars to FiveM: Add-on Vehicles & Handling Explained

Custom vehicles are one of the most popular ways to make a FiveM server stand out — from realistic emergency fleets to drift cars and supercars. This guide covers how to add cars to FiveM, the difference between add-on and replace vehicles, and how to tune them.

Add-on vs replace vehicles

• Add-on vehicles are added as new vehicles with their own spawn name, alongside the base game cars. This is the recommended approach for servers — nothing is overwritten, and you can add hundreds.
• Replace vehicles swap an existing GTA car’s model. Simpler, but you lose the original and can hit conflicts. Generally avoid replace on RP servers.

How to add an add-on car

1. Get an add-on vehicle resource (it includes the model .yft/.ytd files and metas).
2. Place the resource folder in your server’s resources directory.
3. Make sure its fxmanifest.lua streams the model files and references the meta files (vehicles.meta, carcols.meta, carvariations.meta, handling.meta).
4. ensure the resource in your server.cfg.
5. Restart and spawn it by its model name.

The meta files explained

• vehicles.meta — registers the vehicle, its model, class and handling ID.
• handling.meta — how the car drives: speed, braking, grip, mass.
• carcols.meta / carvariations.meta — colours, mod kits and variations.

Editing these by hand is fiddly — our free handling.meta editor and vehicles tool let you generate and tweak them visually.

Tuning car handling

Want your cars to feel right? Handling is where it happens. Lower fMass and higher grip make a car feel arcadey; realistic values make it weighty. Test changes live and iterate — the handling editor makes this far faster than editing XML by hand.

Performance note

High-poly custom cars and large fleets eat streaming memory and storage. Keep models optimised, and run your server on hosting with fast NVMe storage so asset streaming stays smooth — that’s exactly what our FiveM hosting is built for.

Frequently asked questions

How do you add cars to a FiveM server?

Use add-on vehicle resources: place the folder in resources, ensure the fxmanifest streams the model and metas, add it to server.cfg, and restart.

What’s the difference between add-on and replace cars?

Add-on cars are new vehicles with their own name (recommended); replace cars overwrite an existing GTA model.

How do I change how a FiveM car drives?

Edit its handling.meta — mass, grip, braking and power. Our handling.meta editor makes this visual instead of editing raw XML.