Car mods in ETS2: what to know before you download

Euro Truck Simulator 2 is about trucks, but car mods are among the most searched-for downloads. Some are fun and well made. Many are copied from other games, and a lot of the sites offering them are traps. Here's how car mods work and how to tell the good ones from the bad.

1. How car mods work

A drivable car mod adds a new vehicle that you buy at a truck dealer, just like a truck. You drive it with a cab view, its own engine sound and, in good mods, a detailed interior. Because the game is built around trucks, most cars can't pull a trailer, so they can't take normal jobs. Most people use cars for exploring maps, quick jobs between garages or just for fun.

Like every mod, a car must be made for your game version. A car for an older version may crash the game, have no interior or show up as an invisible vehicle. Check the version before installing, and see how to install mods if you're new.

2. Drivable cars and traffic cars

There are two quite different kinds of "car mod":

• Drivable cars that you own and drive yourself, as above.
• Traffic cars and traffic packs that put more, newer or real-brand cars on the road around you. These are AI traffic mods. Browse our AI traffic mods, for example Real Traffic Density for believable traffic levels.

3. The "ripped model" problem

Building a detailed car from scratch takes months. Many car mods skip that by taking a car model from another game, usually a racing game, and converting it. These are called ripped models. They're a problem for a few reasons:

• The model belongs to that game's developer, so sharing it breaks their copyright. Pages offering these mods get taken down, and the mod disappears with them.
• The person sharing it often didn't make it, so there's no real author to update it after a game update or to fix bugs.
• They're mostly spread through re-upload sites, which brings the next problem.

Warning signs: a famous supercar appears out of nowhere with a "v1.0" for the newest game version, there's no author name, the only downloads are on mod-hub sites, or the mod is for sale on a store page with no history. We don't list mods like these on EuroTruckSimulator2.uk.

4. Fake download sites

Search for almost any car mod and you'll find sites that copy mods, rename them and wrap them in ads. Be careful of pages that:

• have several big "Download" buttons, most of which are ads;
• send you through link shorteners, countdowns or "verify you're human" steps;
• give you an .exe file instead of a .scs or .zip. An ETS2 mod is never a program you run;
• ask for your Steam login or for notifications to be allowed.

A real mod is a .scs file, sometimes inside a .zip, .rar or .7z, that goes in your mod folder.

5. Where to find safe car mods

• Steam Workshop (ETS2's own Workshop page in Steam): one-click install with automatic updates. Check the comments and the "last updated" date.
• The author's own thread on the SCS forum: modders post their releases and support threads there. The forum doesn't allow paid mods.
• The author's own website or channel, linked from one of the above.

Every mod on EuroTruckSimulator2.uk links only to pages like these. When we find a drivable car with an official page and an up-to-date version, we'll add it.

Vehicle mods we already list, each with its official page:

6. Quick questions

See our hand-picked truck mods and AI traffic mods, each with a link to its official page.