GTA 6: how to steal cars, and which ones stay locked

The phone tells you what you are dealing with before you touch the door. WAINK, an app on the character’s phone in Grand Theft Auto VI, scans a parked car and reports what protects it: the lock, the alarm, the tracker, what it is worth resold and what it would cost to register. Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North, walked IGN through it on August 27, 2026.

Line on the scan	What it decides
Locked	Which tool you need, Slim Jim or key cloner
Alarm	The theft reports itself to the police
Tracker	The speed you must hold to shake it
Value at a Pay n’ Spray or a car fence	What reselling it pays
Registration cost	What keeping it in your name costs

A Slim Jim opens the old ones, not the new ones

Two tools are named, and the scan says which one a given car wants.

So, for example, this car needs a key cloner. This other car will just need a Slim Jim. So we’ve added a lot of fun little tools you need or mechanics you need to perform these formerly binary actions.

A Slim Jim is the flat metal strip you slide between the glass and the door of an older car. TheGamer, writing up the Extended Look on August 27, 2026, notes that theft no longer runs through a smashed window every time: the tool is shown working a door. Recent models want the cloner, which copies an electronic key.

Which tier a car sits in is not only about the model, it is about how far you are. Rob Nelson, in the same interview:

You start off the game and there are certain parked cars that are not accessible to you until you get a bit further along with the story and you acquire certain tools to get into them, but you can always carjack any driver you see.

That is where the published record stops: no list of tiers, no list of which cars need what, and no word on where a Slim Jim or a cloner is picked up. What came with the tier announcement is that the tools arrive through play.

The alarm line decides who sees you

A crime does not raise stars on its own: a passerby has to witness it, or an alarm or a camera has to report it. Rob Nelson set that rule out in the same August 27, 2026 interview, and it is what gives the second line of the scan its weight. A locked car with no alarm, opened on an empty street, raises nothing.

One star is easy to lose, he says in that same interview. Getting away before the first patrols arrive is usually enough, according to the preview roundup ComicBook published on August 28, 2026. What makes the police harder to shake after that comes down to the clothes you are wearing and the vehicle you are in, and riding as a pair rather than alone adds a line to the description. Our guide to the police system has the rest.

The tracker rides along

Some vehicles carry a GPS tracker, and speed decides what it does. IGN, in its list of 69 details from August 27, 2026, reports that it alerts the police if you drive too slowly. ComicBook completed the picture the next day: the WAINK scan shows “how fast players have to drive to shake the tracker.” Nobody has written whether a tracker can be removed, or how.

Carjacking never needs a tool, and it is the only way in while you own nothing that opens a door. It costs something else: the driver you drag out calls the police, as Rob Nelson told Dexerto on August 28, 2026. Taking an empty car avoids that call.

Once you are driving

The same scan quotes the registration fee, and registering is how you keep the car. ActuGaming noted on August 28, 2026 that a stolen vehicle only becomes a personal one once it is registered, and that the paperwork is paid for. The other two branches start from the same spot: a Pay n’ Spray, or a specialty car fence to resell, with customization waiting behind that.

Two things you would rather not find out mid-chase. The tank of a stolen car can be close to empty, ComicBook reported on August 28, 2026. And the trunk doubles as a wardrobe and a weapon locker, per Vice the same day: a change of clothes lives in there, which matters when the police remember the outfit rather than the face.