Car Town Quick Tips&Tricks

Log onto Facebook and you'll notice your car-obsessed friends, and even non-enthusiasts, racing McLaren F1s in a game called Car Town. Jalopnik spoke with the game's creators to bring you these tips and tricks to building the ultimate Facebook garage.

Like other Facebook games, Car Town prizes your willingness to perform tasks and relentlessly encourage your friends to join, and in return for your commitment rewards you with fictional money and level advancement. But the tasks here are little more fun: entering car shows, working on a friend's car, and racing your pals.

And rather than spend your hard-earned fake money on livestock and crops, Cie Games, the game's creator, gives you something you actually want: a fantasy garage, tons of great cars, and a host of upgrades for both.

Play it for a while and it becomes clear in the available cars list this is being produces by car people (1970 Challenger, Ford GT, Bandit Trans-Am) with a sense of humor (Taco Truck, Pinto, and soon a Gremlin). By blending talk of engine upgrades with fun tasks like delivering pizzas they've created a sort of a back-door way to get your friends/family/significant others interested in cars.

"This is finally a game that the car people can enjoy with all their non car-people friends," said Dennis Suggs, Cie Games Chief Creative Officer."

Dennis and the Car Town crew put together this quick guide, including a basic overview as well as some tips on how to earn the most coin and get your favorite car into the game. I've added some personal comments in italics.

Buying A Car

Unfortunately, you can't just buy a Mazda RX-7 the second you step into the game. You have to earn coins and XP to collect the vehicles you want. Fortunately, the cheap cars include some interesting rides.

Behold my Columbia Blue Ford Pinto!

Getting To Work

Work Bay is the most basic way of making money and XP. You can use it to queue up job task such as Fuzzy Dice, Car Wash or even Jet Engine. More jobs will unlock as you level up and progress through the game. You can easily queue up jobs by just clicking on one of the work bays and selecting the desired job from the Service Menu.

Jobs can also be queued up by clicking on the customers who are parked outside of the garage. Customers are very similar to Work Bays, however focuses on Fuzzy Dice and Car Washes. This is recommended for players who are planning to spend extended amount of time to effectively level through Car Town. As long as you have a vacant work bay and a free employee you can just click on the cars lined up outside of your garage and start the job.

As you progress through the game, the need for more workers and work bays will increase. You can add additional workers by clicking on the "Hire" icon and select your friend that you would like to hire. Adding additional work bays will allow the player to perform more jobs at the same time. To do so, click on the "Edit Garage" icon, select the work bay of choice and add it to the garage.

I've put our interns to work washing random cars. Good interns.

How To Finish A Job

The job timer indicates how long it takes for your current jobs to complete. The timer is indicated as duration when are on the job list. It is recommended to do the shorter duration jobs if you are looking to level quickly, however if you are planning on not coming back for a few hours, we suggest that you queue up a job that would compliment your away time.P

During the day I'm a little too busy to make the interns wash cars, believe it or not.

How To Get More Money Out Of Each Job

Here's a little secret some people have written off as a bug: you earn 10% better when you collect close to the finish of a job. If it's an hour-long job and you collect within the first six minutes that's a jump in coins for you.

This is how they get you to pay more attention to the game than whatever else you're doing. It's okay, as long as it isn't distracting you from working reading blogs.

Ladies And Gentleman, Start Your Engines

Racing your friends is a very fun and effective way to earn money. Every race you win, you gain 500 coins from each win. To access this, you can click on the "Challenge" icon and select the friends you want to race. Once they have completed your challenge, you can access the "Challenge" icon again to view the results of the race and claim your wins.

The racing is fairly simple and, being the 1320, challenges your mouse-clicking reflexes so you can attain your perfect shift. I'm fairly mean with a Pinto, so watch out.

The Difference Between Fast And Quick

We've all seen a faster driver in a slow car beat slower drivers in a faster car. The same is true for Car Town. As a way of keeping the game interesting and more realistic, the faster a car is down the strip the quicker the tachometer and the more challenging it is to shift. When going head-to-head sometimes the best advantage is the slight one.P

So please, don't race your original Skyline GT-R against my Pinto.

Hit The Road, Jack

Road Trips is another effective way to gain coins and XP. Depending on your car, you can engage in 2 to 6 person road trips. You will gain more coins and XP as more of your friends attend your road trips. On top of that, if you have a full car, you gain a large amount of coin bonus. You can start a road trip by clicking on the car you want to start the road trip on and select "Road Trip". From there, you will be able to select the destination of the road trip. Once the road trip has started, you can post on your wall about the road trip, so your friends will be able to easily locate and join your road trip.

In this version of a road trip you also can drink as much Mountain Dew as you want without risking numerous stops.

A Fleet Of Beaters, Just Like Your Real Garage

If you're interested in slaving away all day as a virtual grease monkey, but want to earn coins there's a trick to making road trips work for you. Instead of investing in expensive cars right away, build up a fleet of cheap cars like Beatles and Pintos and put them on road trip quests. Because these challenges don't expire, you can come and collect your money later in the day without risk. A good way to make money for the inattentive.

Please do not rear-end the pizza delivery truck parked outside your house.

Building Your Virtual Garage Mahal

Every player will be able to customize and personalize their garage by using the Edit Garage feature. With Edit Garage, players will be able to purchase work bays, tile flooring, and decorated walls and even purchase a land expansion to expand their garage. To access the "Edit Garage" options, just click on the "Edit Garage" icon and select any of the desired tabs listed on the "Edit Garage" menu.

Black-and-white checkerboard floors are fairly cliche, so I prefer the blue steel look. And no, I'm not an ambiturner.

Turn Your Garage Into A Coin Farm Without Looking Ridiculous

As you expand your garage your can build addition walls and add items like gas pumps and pool tables to generate a little more income every few minutes. But if you don't want to ruin the aesthetic of your dream garage with too many jukeboxes you can create walls that effectively hide your money making enterprises from view.

My great grandfather was a coin farmer in Georgia, his recipe for coin pie's still a hit around those parts.

What Forza And Car Town Have In Common

While customizing your garage is one thing, many of our players enjoy customizing and personalizing their cars. There are varieties of ways to customize your cars, from engine performance which helps players achieve higher scores in races, to customizing your cars appearance. When customizing your car's appearance, you can adjust the height of your car, add a under carriage Neon light and even create graphics to personalize your car. To access the car customization menu, just click on the car you would like to customize and click on "Customize".

Like Forza, these cars each have classes and performance indexes and, as you upgrade your vehicles, your performance index increases. Unfortunately, you can't take your milk truck to Laguna Seca.

How To Get Your Personal Car On Car Town

There's a nice mix of normal and interesting cars on here, so there's a decent chance you can find a car you own or covet in the game. If you notice something missing, there's an easy way to get a car into the game. Dennis told us they've already worked out licensing with most automakers and have a long list of cars they're going to add. In order to add a car to the list or move it up, they watch what people say on the Car Town fan page and move cars up on the list of additions based on the feedback.

They're working to add the Lotus Exige, we're working to make them add a Seven and a Cortina!