GTA Online Auto Shop Guide: Contracts, Prices, Payouts

In GTA Online’s massive lineup of businesses, the Auto Shop is still one of the smartest buys for a new player. It’s cheap, it starts paying the moment you own it, and behind its tuner-garage storefront sits a series of heists you can play solo. Here’s how it works, what it costs and what it really earns.

The Auto Shop, your way into Los Santos Tuners

The Auto Shop arrived on July 20, 2021 with Los Santos Tuners, the update that turned GTA Online into a car-culture paradise. Its home base is the LS Car Meet, a huge graffiti-covered warehouse in Cypress Flats where you show off your rides, race and hang out with no wanted level. You sign up for a membership with Mimi, build your reputation, and that’s where your path to owning a shop begins.

The shop itself is a legitimate front. Officially, you repair and customize cars; unofficially, you pull jobs with Sessanta, the strong-willed mechanic, and KDJ, her DJ and driver partner. That double life, a clean business by day and heists by night, is the whole spirit of the update.

Contracts, the heart of the business

The real engine of the Auto Shop is its heist-style contracts. Each one follows the same rhythm: two prep missions in free roam, then a finale where you grab the payday. A full contract takes less than half an hour, and you can run it start to finish solo.

There were six at launch; there are eight today, but only three are listed at a time on the whiteboard at the back of the shop. The most lucrative by far is the Union Depository contract. The finale payout depends on the target, and Sessanta and KDJ take their cut along the way.

The ideal loop: start the best-paying contract available, knock out its preps, then the finale. Repeat it and you’re looking at several hundred thousand GTA$ an hour without ever needing a crew.

Customer cars and Exotic Exports: the side income

Alongside contracts, the Auto Shop opens two smaller revenue streams. The first is customer cars: every so often, a car shows up in your shop with a list of requested mods. You build it to spec, deliver it and pocket GTA$20,000 to GTA$30,000 depending on the class, with your customization costs refunded on delivery.

The second is Exotic Exports, not to be confused with the CEO Office’s Import/Export. Once you’ve wrapped up a contract, a list of ten cars to track down appears upstairs. Every car you steal and deliver to the docks pays GTA$20,000, and clearing all ten on the list unlocks a GTA$100,000 bonus. A nice way to pad your bank account at the end of a session just by cruising around Los Santos.

Which Auto Shop to buy, and for how much

You buy the shop on the Maze Bank Foreclosures website, from your phone’s browser, once you’ve visited the LS Car Meet. You also need to be registered as a CEO, VIP or MC President. There are five locations, all identical inside, so the only thing that matters is distance. A central shop means shorter trips during preps.

The best value is Mission Row: the cheapest and the most central. From there, add upgrades at your own pace (staff to build customer cars for you, personal quarters, a second car lift) and customization (style, tint, emblem). Fully kitted out, the shop climbs to around GTA$4,250,000, but none of that is required: contracts work with a bare-bones shop. A nice perk on top: the Auto Shop gives you a permanent discount on all vehicle mods, and classic paint colors are free there.

Is the Auto Shop worth it in 2026?

Yes, especially if you’re just starting out. Where the Nightclub or the Bunker fill up stock while you do something else, the Auto Shop rewards active play: one finished contract means a healthy chunk of GTA$ for about twenty minutes, all solo. With one of the lowest buy-ins in the game and an easy learning curve, it’s one of the very first businesses to target if you want to build a war chest without relying on a crew.

It pairs nicely with the other pillars of solo play, like The Chop Shop’s Salvage Yard, The Contract’s Agency and the Cayo Perico Heist solo. To see where the Auto Shop fits in the bigger picture, check out our roundup of the best businesses in GTA Online and, if you’re starting from scratch, our beginner’s guide.

That leaves the question on everyone’s mind: will these businesses survive the next installment? Car customization will be front and center in Grand Theft Auto VI, as our breakdown of car tuning and customization in GTA VI shows, and we dig into the future of the online mode in our analysis of GTA Online after GTA 6, which is due out on its November 19, 2026 release date. Until then, the Auto Shop remains one of the best ways to fatten your bank account in Los Santos.