Data & sources

Most of what you read in the game is real. Here's exactly where it comes from, and what was changed on the way in.

Vehicles, recalls and complaints — NHTSA

Sourced from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's public APIs:

• Vehicle catalogue (vPIC) — every year, make and model in the game is a real vehicle, validated against the federal catalogue.
• Recall campaigns — recall jobs use genuine campaign numbers with the real component, summary, consequence and remedy text.
• Owner complaints — the "other owners report" notes are real complaints filed by owners of that exact year and model.

Complaint text is sanitised before it reaches the game: identifiers and contact details are stripped, all-caps is normalised to sentence case, and anything involving a crash, fire, injury or fatality is dropped entirely — out of respect, and to keep the tone where it belongs.

NHTSA data is public domain. The game is not affiliated with or endorsed by NHTSA.

Certifications — MechanicRank

The 13 certification tracks come from MechanicRank: brakes, diagnostics, diesel, electrical, engine, EV and hybrid, HVAC, mobile service, preventive maintenance, pre-purchase inspection, performance, suspension and steering, and transmission. The exams use real questions from that bank, the real 75% pass mark, and MechanicRank's own Apprentice → Master grading tiers.

Competing shops — MechanicRank directory

Rival shops are real businesses listed in the MechanicRank directory, shown with their real public Google rating and review count.

Only that much crosses over. Phone numbers, street addresses, websites and place IDs are deliberately left out — they're real contact details and have no place in a game. Rivals compete purely on their public ratings, and the game describes them neutrally: well reviewed, booked out, hiring, or referring work. Nothing in the game invents misconduct for a named business.

If you own a listed shop and would rather not appear, claim the listing on MechanicRank and it'll be removed from the next build.

Service manuals

The in-game Shop Manual panel links out to charm.li and ALLDATA DIY for actual repair procedures. The game doesn't reproduce their content.