Pacific Drive: How to Customize Your Car?

Pacific Drive's wonderfully janky Volvo lookalike is bound to quickly become one of your favorite station wagons of all time. Not only because it's, essentially, your only point of defense against the Olympic Exclusion Zone, but also because it's positively loaded with character from the get-go. Indeed, this is something that you yourself can invest in, as the game comes with a truly comprehensive customization system with what is, in effect, two layers' worth of functionality.

Notably, not only can you tweak your jalopy's color scheme as you come across new customizations in the Zone, but you can also slap some stickers onto it, replace certain bits of machinery, and even re-outfit the car into a wholly different vehicle. Here's how it all works!

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How to customize your car in Pacific Drive?

The majority of Pacific Drive's more advanced features are locked behind the custom crafting stations you'll be making as you go along. By default, there won't really be much you can do about the jalopy's looks, and you'll probably be too overwhelmed with working to survive in the first place.

However, as you invest more resources and time into your Fabrication Station, you'll soon be able to install the Detailing Station. This is, basically, where you'll find all of your unlocked customization options for Pacific Drive. Finding these is no mean feat, mind, and most of us will be stuck with the Deluxe Edition stickers and whatnot early on.

That's no problem, though, because there's also the second major source of customization options: your car's panels, doors, bumpers, and other "equippable" items. These, too, will be relatively rare early on, but you'll find upgraded pieces of kit as you go through the Zone, allowing you to install, say, a set of offroad tires, Steel panelling, a roof rack, and a ridiculous number of other options.

Installing car customizations in Pacific Drive

Now, the "equippable" bits of your jalopy need to be manually taken off, replaced and re-outfitted whenever you need to tweak your ride. This means using the various tools you've got at your disposal in the Garage, and then correctly managing your inventory. The paints, on the other hand, are simply applied onto the equipment, so that's not something to worry about.

Do keep in mind that Pacific Drive feels way more overwhelming early on than it actually is. This is why the lack of real early-game customization options is not an issue, in our opinion. To get a sense of how it all works, we recommend trying to replace the jalopy's car light with a jury-rigged set of halogens, just to see how the system meshes in practice.

It all gets pretty simple and straightforward as you progress through the game, too, so just give the game a chance to onboard you at its own pace. It pays off with dividends!

Play Pacific Drive on PC today!