Stealing a parked car has been a single button press since 1997. In Grand Theft Auto VI, it is a whole system — and one of the biggest mechanical departures Rockstar showed press during a preview session at Rockstar North, reported in detail by IGN on August 27.
Scan It First With WAINK
The first step with any parked car you fancy is to pull out your phone and scan it with a new app called WAINK.
The scan tells you four things:
- What the car is worth
- What it would cost to register as a personal vehicle
- Whether it is locked or alarmed
- Whether it has a tracker fitted
That turns car theft into a decision rather than a reflex. You now have the information to judge whether a given car is worth the risk before you touch it.
Cars Are Tiered, and You Need the Right Tools
Vehicles are sorted into tiers, and the more expensive the model, the harder it is to get into.
Different tiers need different equipment. An older, less secure car might go with a simple slim jim. A modern prestige vehicle needs something far more advanced, like a key cloner.
Crucially, some cars are effectively locked off early in the game, because you don't acquire the necessary tools until later in the story. Boosting now has a progression curve — the supercar you spot in hour three may simply be beyond you until you have earned the kit.
If you don't want to bother with any of that, carjacking still works exactly as you remember. Any car with someone already in the driver's seat can be taken the old-fashioned way.
Trackers Punish Careful Driving
Some vehicles carry advanced trackers that alert police to your position if you drive too slowly.
It is a wonderfully awkward design: the safe, inconspicuous option — crawling along in traffic — is the one that gets you caught. You either commit and pick up the pace, or you abandon the car.
Selling It: Fences and Condition
Stolen goods go to a fence, another idea carried over from Red Dead Redemption 2. There are fences for jewellery and, separately, fences for cars.
Two things affect your payout. First, condition — any car delivered damaged is worth less. Second, getting it there at all, which Rockstar has made harder on purpose: Vice City's streets are narrower and its traffic denser than GTA 5's, so a clean delivery across town is a real driving challenge.
A car fence may also hand you information as well as cash. Rockstar's example is the code to a police impound full of vehicles ready to be boosted.
Why It Matters
Boosting is not a side activity here — it is one of GTA 6's core earners, alongside holding up businesses, robbing stores and bank heists. And Rockstar says money matters more to the story this time, with the main mission flow sometimes requiring you to raise a certain amount of capital before it continues.
That makes the WAINK app less of a gimmick and more of a tool you will genuinely live in.
