Many players are questioning the value of buying modified cars from the auction house due to a significant change in how car parts are handled. Previously, when reverting an auction car back to its stock configuration, you would retain all the performance and cosmetic parts that had been added. This meant you could easily switch back and forth between a stock and modified version of the car without losing your investment in upgrades. This understanding heavily influenced decisions around purchasing Auction Parts Cars.
This system allowed players to experiment with different builds. You could buy a stock car from the auction, see what parts had been added, revert to stock to check the base performance, and then reapply the upgraded parts, or even change rims or body kits, all while keeping the original performance enhancements in your inventory. It was a flexible and player-friendly system for managing your collection of auction parts cars.
However, this is no longer the case. Now, when you revert a car bought from the auction house to its stock form, you lose all the previously installed performance parts. The game notification mentions a “reset,” but players are finding out the hard way that this “reset” means losing the actual parts, not just the tune. This is a departure from past game behavior, where only the tuning setup was lost, but the physical parts remained in your inventory, ready to be re-equipped.
This change fundamentally alters the economics of auction parts cars. If you want to change something as simple as the rims on an auction car and revert to stock to do so, you are forced to repurchase all the performance upgrades to bring the car back to its previous performance level. This makes buying anything other than a completely stock car from the auction house seem pointless. The added value of pre-upgraded auction cars has been significantly diminished because you no longer retain the parts.
The frustration stems from the fact that the game doesn’t explicitly state that parts will be removed from your inventory. The notification is the same as in previous iterations of the game, leading players to believe the behavior would be consistent. This lack of clear communication about the change in handling auction parts cars, coupled with the actual loss of parts, is causing significant disappointment and prompting many to reconsider their auction house strategies. It raises the question: are auction parts cars still a worthwhile investment, or has this change made them far less appealing?
