Rock N' Roll Racing/Cars

Be warned that when you buy a new car, you will lose all your upgrades for your previous car. You cannot sell your upgrades or your old car, so buying a new car is a big, but necessary, investment.

Every car has three "armaments", items that are activated using the, , and buttons. is a gun weapon that is fired forward (but Sundog Beams track their target so they can go backward, too), is a drop weapon, meaning the item gets dropped behind you on the ground, and  is an "assist", meaning it is not a weapon, but it assists you by making you jump (with Locust Jump Jets) or boosting your acceleration (with Lightning Nitros).

Dirt Devil

 * Cost: $18,000
 * Armaments:
 * Gun weapon : VK Plasma Rifles
 * Drop weapon : BF's Slipsauce
 * Assist : Locust Jump Jets

Slower than Marauder, better handling. Waste of time, though. :)

Marauder

 * Cost: $18,000
 * Armaments:
 * Gun weapon : VK Plasma Rifles
 * Drop weapon : BF's Slipsauce
 * Assist : Locust Jump Jets

Faster than Dirt Devil, looser handling.

Generally prefer the Marauder to the Dirt Devil, especially if your character has the cornering skill.

Air Blade

 * Cost: $70,000
 * Armaments:
 * Gun weapon : Rogue Missiles
 * Drop weapon : Bear Claw Mines
 * Assist : Lightning Nitros

Far superior to the Dirt Devil and Marauder: a Marauder with hundreds of thousands of dollars in upgrades still performs somewhat weakly against an unadorned Air Blade. For this reason you will not want to upgrade your Marauder or Dirt Devil much, if at all, until you get the Air Blade. The armaments are also a lot better: nitros are far more useful than jump jets, mines are more useful than slipsauce, although still not very good, and the rogue missiles are the most powerful weapons in the game, easily able to destroy an enemy vehicle with a couple hits (especially with the weak armor early in the game). Characters without cornering skill, such as Snake, will still have a rough time controlling the vehicle and may want to buy at least one tire upgrade.

Battle Trak

 * Cost: $110,000
 * Armaments:
 * Gun weapon : Rogue Missiles
 * Drop weapon : KO Scatterpack
 * Assist : Lightning Nitros

You'll want this on Bogmire, since the planet is very muddy and this car uses treads. For this reason, you also don't need to spend money on tires, so getting the Battle Trak is where characters with loose handling like Snake start to shine -- you really need to buy this as soon as possible if you have a character with no cornering skill. The Scatterpacks are an improvement upon the Bear Claw Mines and are the best drop weapon in the game. You'll have your Battle Trak for a while, so you can afford to upgrade it pretty heavily, but you'll need to start saving up for a Havac when you're on New Mojave.

Havac

 * Cost: $130,000
 * Armaments:
 * Gun weapon : Sundog Beams
 * Drop weapon : KO Scatterpack
 * Assist : Lightning Nitros

By the time you get to Nho, where you'll need it, you should have enough money to buy this, which you should. On top of not needing tires, now you won't need shock absorbers. The Sundog Beams are a mixed bag compared to the Rogue Missiles you've surely grown to love. The Sundog Beams track enemy cars (like heat-seeking missiles), but they're somewhat slow and don't do much damage. If you're going to bother with them, you should upgrade to maximum capacity, seven beams, which will often prove not enough to blow up just one car by this point in the game. However, if your enemy has already sustained heavy damage, or you can pop in front with some Scatterpacks afterwards, they are still useful.