History of Cars in The Sims Franchise

There has been much talk recently of cars in The Sims 4. They’ve been a requested feature since release, but the vocal outcry for their return seems to have reached a fever pitch recently. It makes sense. Over the past decade we’ve seen all kinds of content come to the game, both old and new concepts, but cars have remained set dressing. Something that is a part of our everyday lives still has yet to be featured in the game. It’s a massive part of realism that is sorely missing.

Any time someone mentions wanting cars in The Sims 4, one of the first responses is along the lines of, “how would they even work since the game isn’t open world?” To answer that question, we simply need to look into the past. Follow me on this journey looking at the history of cars in The Sims franchise.

Cars in The Sims

The first series of the game featured vehicles, but not in any ownable capacity. In the base game, they solely existed as a carpool to ferry your sims to and from work or school. It wasn’t until the third expansion pack, Hot Date, that they added a different type of vehicle, the taxicab.

This expansion added community lots to the series, so for the first time ever, your sims needed a way to travel to other lots. A nice detail was that each following expansion added a different vehicle depending where you were traveling.

Five of the different taxi cars in The Sims

Overall, the vehicles in The Sims were minor and only used for realism purposes. Instead of having your sims walk off lot and disappear to the places they were going, the vehicles acted as visual vessels to make it feel more real. They were also one of the more annoying parts of The Sims. Whenever someone blocked the road the cars would honk… and honk… and honk until the sim finally moved.

Not the greatest example of cars in The Sims, but still better than what we have currently in The Sims 4.

Cars in The Sims 2

This is where cars in the Sims get interesting. The jump from what we had in The Sims to what he had in The Sims 2 was tremendous. The base game included the same carpool/school bus system as the original game. The biggest difference was that NPC characters also had unique vehicles that they would arrive to your lot with. Firetrucks, ambulances, grocery delivery trucks, maid vans, etc. There was quite the variety, but like before, these were just visual vessels to increase the realism and had no impact on gameplay.

That all changed with the second expansion pack, Nightlife. This was the grand introduction of ownable cars in The Sims. The biggest benefit was faster travel–no longer waiting for a taxi to arrive. Not only that, but they were also fully interactive and offered new gameplay as well. We’re only at the second game in the series, but this iteration of cars in The Sims is actually the best they’ve ever been. In a closed world, single lot system, no less. So no, you don’t need an open world for cars in The Sims to work.

Gameplay Features

You could have your sims ‘take a spin’ which would increase their energy, comfort, and fun needs. They would disappear off the lot with the car only to arrive a little while later, no need to actually travel to another lot.

If you didn’t want your sim’s carpool to arrive every day, you could set your sim as the owner of the car, and they would drive themselves to work. You could have them drive their kids to school as well.

As cars are an expensive object, they were big hits for burglars. To protect yourself, you could have a car alarm installed. This alarm would trigger any time a burglar was near the car automatically alerting the police.

Sims had the ability to sit in the car, and while doing so, they had a few options. They could play with the lights, listen to the stereo, socialize with others inside, or even woohoo.

The seventh expansion pack, FreeTime, added even more gameplay to cars by introducing the junker. This was a broken down, rusted, torn apart hunk of junk that your sims could restore. The best part is that two sims could work on it together as there were two options; work on engine or work on body. Once the car was fully restored, you then chose a color scheme to paint it.

Minor Details

In the last expansion for Sims 2, Apartment Life, you had the option to buy a helicopter. The functionality was the same, but you would need a Helipad instead of a driveway. The purpose was to show the incredible wealth of your sims.

Another important thing to note about cars in The Sims 2 is just how detailed they were. Aside from everything previously mentioned, the animations were exquisite. Sims would actually open the doors and get in or out. They would open doors for pets to get in and out as well. The car would actually drive in and out of the driveway before driving down the street. It was a level of detail that won’t be seen again in the next game.

Cars in The Sims 3

Open world. All lots loaded at once. Traveling anywhere at any time. This should have been the height of cars in The Sims, but it really isn’t. While cars were a lot more necessary in The Sims 3 to get from place to place quickly, they paled in comparison to what was previously available in The Sims 2. Almost all gameplay from them was removed.

Removed Features

Sims could no longer sit in the vehicle when it was parked. No more listening to the stereo, socializing in a car, playing with the lights, or…. Woohoo. No. More. Car. Woohoo. It was a travesty.

Small amount of gameplay options shown for cars in The Sims 3

You couldn’t take a car for a spin to increase motives. Setting the owner of the car wouldn’t prevent the carpool from arriving. You could no longer install an alarm in the car either. To prevent a car from being stolen, you needed to install security alarms around your house instead.

There really was zero gameplay involved with cars in The Sims 3 aside from a sim driving from lot to lot. Even then, I found this to be a net negative because in a closed world setting like Sims 2, your sim would travel from lot to lot and not lose any time. In Sims 3 you’d sometimes waste several in-game hours waiting for your sim to drive between lots.

Gameplay Features

The first bit of gameplay involving cars came in the second stuff pack, Fast Lane Stuff. This stuff pack was focused fully on motor heads and introduced twelve new cars. The only bit of new gameplay, however, was the new Vehicle Enthusiast Trait (which was eventually added into a patch and not limited to pack owners.) This trait added very little gameplay. It mostly just made it easier to build relationship with vehicles–because yes, that was something that existed in The Sims 3.

The fourth expansion pack, Generations, added another minor morsel of gameplay involving cars. With this pack installed, adult sims were able to teach teen sims how to drive. They would take them for a drive a few times, and then the teens were able to drive on their own.

It wasn’t until the very end of support for this series that cars in The Sims 3 finally had some gameplay added to them. And I mean the very tail end for The Sims 3. Roaring Heights, the final world released in The Sims 3 Store, released around seven months after the announcement of The Sims 4. Each world came with at least one new gameplay item, and for Roaring Heights it was a fixer-upper car with identical restoration gameplay from The Sims 2 FreeTime. Once the car was restored, it also reintroduced several gameplay aspects from the cars in The Sims 2.

With this restored car–and only in this restored car–sims could sit in it and socialize, listen to the radio, watch the stars, make out, and woohoo. But again, it was only with this car. None of that gameplay was retroactively added to any other car in the game.

Minor Details

There was a huge variety of cars to choose from in The Sims 3 from motorcycles to hovercars to moving trucks. You could unlock your own fire truck or police cruiser through different careers as well. They were vastly different in looks, but all functioned exactly the same. Here is a picture of some, but not all, of the cars in The Sims 3.

The animations with cars in The Sims 3 were also massively downgraded. Sims no longer opened the doors to get in or out, they teleported. The car no longer drove down the driveway to get to the road, it teleported. Cars in The Sims 2 also teleported at times. For instance, if the driveway didn’t connect to the road, then the car would teleport to it. In Sims 3, however, the car always teleported to the road no matter what. Cars in The Sims 3 never reached anywhere near the level of quality of the cars in The Sims 2.

Moral of the story, cars don’t need an open world to be worthwhile.

Cars in The Sims 4

We’re now back to having closed worlds with single lots loaded at one time. The way things were when cars in The Sims were at their best. However, unlike The Sims 2, The Sims 4 has open world style public areas surrounding each lot. With the way they’ve designed the open neighborhoods, there are quite a few lots that are not connected to any type of road system. There are entire neighborhoods that lack any roads at all.

It is most likely this reason that cars in The Sims 4 are just set dressing thus far. Neighborhoods that have roads will sometimes have various vehicles driving along them. Cars will frequently be parked along the curb or in decorative parking lots around the world. They’ve even gone so far as creating exhaust coming from some of the decorative cars as they drive by. Even so, ownable cars are not a feature in The Sims 4.

But are they coming?

It’s a feature that has been largely asked for since the game launched. We’ve had a ton of concepts from past games return while also having a lot of new concepts introduced as well. Being over a decade into the game, it’s hard to imagine how many new or returning concepts they can introduce before they run out of ideas and need to turn to cars for inspiration.

The Future

We’ve seen recently through various pack concept surveys that cars in The Sims 4 are something they are heavily considering in various ways. It seems a good bet that they’re coming, it’s just a matter of how soon and in what capacity. Based on the various survey concepts, it seems they’re going to be a lot more involved than they’ve ever been before. However, based on the nature of animations in The Sims 4, I think we can all safely assume they’ll have the same teleporting factor from The Sims 3.

So, what do you think? Will we be seeing cars in The Sims 4 sometime soon?