Well, there goes all my credit for saying I don’t know bits of cars on sight. When I first saw Garage Monkeys’ business simulator, I did what I do with all interesting-looking, Eastern European-developed, semi-serious simulators. I ran to my nearest handler (Editor-in-Chief) to request a code. You see, business simulators look at me the same way drugs look at Ozzy Osbourne, in fear, because I will run them into the ground. A bit like the cars you’ll end up selling in the run-down American town of Winston Springs.

You play as the nephew of the owner of a dusty town’s dusty little used car dealership. Effectively, he’s trying to hand the business over to you as part of the tutorial and story, but in reality, you are running the place now; he’s just telling you everything you were never taught. As you take over the business, you must keep it afloat by paying bills, buying, doing maintenance on, and selling cars, and doing everything else Car Dealer Simulator is willing to throw at you. All in that typical wonky-physics world we’re used to with simulator games.

By hook, crook, and every other method in the book, you’ll end up making money like a true Del Boy. Blagging parts on the cheap from the junkyard or fudging the odometer of older cars to increase the price slightly, the whole idea of Car Dealer Simulator is to be Danny DeVito in Matilda. Not exactly to cook the books, but a balance between doing things the legal, right way and the “dishonest” or “underhanded” way of running the business. No Landlord’s Super of doing a full functioning town and survival-lite mechanics, but something similar.

I’ve said it before, a good business simulator is like Bolivian marching powder, if done well, and Garage Monkeys’ simple gameplay loops and typical simulator style hits all those points of your nose. Driving feels light and simulator-y, the tools on offer don’t really feel powerful or special, and some of the UI or design decisions might seem a bit odd. That might sound negative, but that’s sort of the charm of these Gas Station Sim, House Flipper, Crime Scene Cleaner, and even Construction Simulator types. It is more about the thing feeling fine and doing the thing than the full Euro Truck Sim 2 in VR and with a wheel experience.

The best way that I found to progress was simply to buy cheap, crappy 80s/90s BMWs and Citroëns that you can clean up, maybe detail a bit on the outside, and flip quickly. Though I quite enjoy what Car Dealer Simulator has offered for the better part of a week, I can tell it is a bit slow in terms of progression as a result of the gameplay. Each car is the same under the bodywork: Each part always takes the same amount of time, the same “screws,” the same everything. It gets rather repetitive rather quickly.

Sort of based on the Car Mechanic Simulator style of gameplay, but even more simplified, you’ll undo the nuts on the wheels with a socket wrench (ratchet/socket spanner) and do the same with everything else. Each crank of the socket wrench being a click and drag, typically three clicks per nut/bolt. For the exhaust system, that’s about 42 clicks alone; 60 for the wheels, 6 for the battery, and so on. Doing this with every car, every few minutes, quickly becomes tiresome (not a pun), and part of me thinks it didn’t do much.

Towards the endgame portion, you can sort cars up to be practically brand new, albeit with a few extra miles on the clock. Are you buying those cars cheaply and flipping them for great profit? No, not really. The Majority of the money I’ve found Car Dealer Simulator adds to the price tag is when you slowly scrape off the rust early on, repaint, and PowerWash Simulator-style wash the cars. However, despite getting the majority of those systems done fine, the satisfaction of Car Dealer Simulator’s mechanics is not as visceral.

Effectively, there is a clock ticking, and you need to make money. However, another one of Car Dealer Simulator’s inspirations is, of course, Gas Station Sim. Each night, morning, whatever, you’ll be visited by a hooded figure that wants to throw bricks at your cars. A bit like the crap American Dennis the Menace from Gas Station Sim, but this one you can’t switch off because Car Dealer Simulator isn’t as modular. Be it controls that can be a bit “awkward” or something else, you need to scramble out of menus and run to catch the vandal, kicking them so they’ll run away.

A lot of my “problems” with Car Dealer Simulator are the type of thing you expect to be solved with a short time in early access or some months of QA. Despite later on having employees who will do some of the work through wait timers, there is very little to (somewhat) solve the repetitive gameplay. Clicking and dragging of the socket wrench isn’t resolved by power tools and holds, but by wait timers. Just as is the case with rust in the same few places on every car, and the same washing of every car.

There is something more than enjoyable about Car Dealer Simulator, otherwise, my 25-ish hours wouldn’t be as long. However, there is part of me that thinks of Car Dealer Simulator as a game that I enjoy despite itself, enjoying the ideas and the setting rather than finding the mechanics themselves something to play with for hours. Towards the end, you remove so much of the gameplay that it is no longer about doing much of the work, but rather working the systems in place.

However, speaking of systems and working, playing on a PC with an i7, 32GB of RAM, and an RTX 40 series GPU, there are times when Car Dealer Simulator would dip a little below 60 frames per second. Running almost everything on Epic graphical settings, dropping reflections a little to high, post-processing to high, and foliage to medium, I’d get 60 most of the time. However, autosaves would have that typical stutter of some games, and I dropped the foliage because cutting through the forest to get to the junkyard would drop me to 30 frames per second for some reason.

I won’t say the performance is diabolically terrible in my experience, but I could see it being much worse on older systems in particular. As well as a couple of bugs that possibly crept in, some of which have already been addressed. Like most simulators, Car Dealer Simulator is rough and a little difficult to get a proper handle on, but it does enough right to make you want to play more. Maybe not all the time. Nonetheless, over the last week, I’ve constantly found myself jumping to play Car Dealer Simulator a lot more than I think it probably should have.

Ultimately, Car Dealer Simulator will be annoying in places. It is very typical of Eastern European developed simulators that we’ve come to love, but its roughness is only charming to a point. Garage Monkeys’ debut title together is great, what I call “Podcast fodder;” a fidget toy of a game. Performance overall and accessibility could be better, and a lot could have been done if Car Dealer Simulator had been released into early access for a while. However, what is here doesn’t make me hate it, but rather nitpick at its imperfections based on its clear inspirations.

A PC review copy of Car Dealer Simulator was provided by Garage Monkeys for this review.

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Car Dealer Simulator

$19.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Rough but charming gameplay ideas.
• Typical light simulator gameplay mechanics.

Cons

• Could have done with a bit more refinement.
• Performance could still be better.
• Removing too much of the gameplay by the end game.