You're driving through Night City in a stolen Rayfield Caliburn. It’s sleek. It’s fast. But it’s a hideous shade of neon pink that makes your eyes bleed every time you catch a reflection in the puddles of Watson. For years, players just had to deal with it. You bought a car, you kept that color. It was weirdly restrictive for a game obsessed with "style over substance."
Honestly, the lack of a paint shop at launch was one of the biggest complaints next to the bugs. But things changed. CD Projekt Red eventually listened, though maybe not in the exact way everyone expected. If you're looking for Cyberpunk 2077 how to change car color, you need to know that the system is split between specific "CrystalCoat" technology and the massive modding scene that fills the gaps the developers left behind.
The Official Way: Using CrystalCoat Technology
Forget traditional spray paint. This is 2077. We use digital refraction layers.
With the 2.11 update, CDPR finally introduced a native way to swap colors, but there is a catch. It isn't available for every rusted-out Archer Hella in your garage. This feature is specifically tied to Rayfield vehicles—the Caliburn and the Aerondight.
Why only Rayfield? In the lore, these are the pinnacle of luxury. They don't have windows; they use "CrystalDome" tech to project the outside world onto interior screens. It makes sense that their exterior skin is just as high-tech. To use it, get inside your Rayfield and look at the bottom left of your UI. You’ll see a prompt for the "Change Color" menu (usually 'Y' on controllers or 'ALT' on PC).
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A color wheel pops up. You can toggle the primary and secondary colors in real-time. It’s snappy. It’s cool. It’s also incredibly limited because if you’re driving a Quadra or a Mizutani, this menu simply won't appear. You're still stuck with the factory default unless you go "under the hood" of the game’s files.
What About Every Other Car?
This is where it gets a bit frustrating for the average player. If you want to change the color of your Quadra Type-66 "Javelina," the vanilla game offers zero buttons for that. You can't go to a Ripperdoc for your car. You can't go to a body shop in the Badlands.
It’s a bizarre design choice. You can swap your arm for a rocket launcher, but you can’t get a new coat of matte black paint?
Basically, the only way to get a different color for non-Rayfield cars without mods is to find them in the world and... well, "borrow" them. But you can't save those stolen cars to your permanent garage. If you buy a car from the Autofixer website, the color you see in the thumbnail is the color you get forever. Choose wisely. Or, if you’re on PC, stop playing by the rules.
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The Modding Scene: Appearance Change Unlocker
If you are on PC, the "real" way to handle Cyberpunk 2077 how to change car color is through the modding community. This isn't just a suggestion; it’s basically mandatory for anyone who cares about their "V" having a specific aesthetic.
The most popular tool is the Appearance Change Unlocker or specific vehicle customizer mods found on Nexus Mods. These tools essentially tap into the "skins" that already exist in the game’s code. See, CDPR actually designed 10 to 20 different color variants for almost every vehicle in the game—they just didn't give you a menu to pick them.
- Install Cyber Engine Tweaks (CET). This is the foundation for almost all Cyberpunk mods.
- Download a vehicle customizer mod.
- Open the CET overlay in-game.
- Select your summoned vehicle and cycle through the "Skins" or "Appearances."
It’s instantaneous. You can turn a bright yellow MaiMai into a sleek, urban camo version in two clicks. It really highlights how much of the work was already done by the artists, even if the programmers didn't build the UI for us to use it.
Why CDPR Restricted Customization
There’s a lot of speculation about why we don't have a full Los Santos Customs-style shop in Night City. Some technical experts point toward the way vehicles are streamed into the engine. Each car isn't just a model with a color hex code; many are unique "entities" with specific wear-and-tear patterns and baked-in textures.
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Switching colors on the fly for an old, beat-up Thorton might have caused memory leaks or visual glitches that the team didn't want to deal with during their massive redemption arc with the Phantom Liberty expansion. They chose stability over a paint shop.
Actionable Steps for Night City Drivers
If you're tired of your current ride's look, here is exactly what you should do right now:
- Check your vehicle make: If it's a Rayfield, get in and press the d-pad or ALT key. If nothing happens, make sure your game is updated to at least version 2.11.
- The "Autofixer" Tactic: Before buying a car on the in-game terminal, look at all the variants. Sometimes the same model is listed twice with different names and drastically different paint jobs.
- The PC Route: If you’re on Steam or GOG, go to Nexus Mods and grab "Vehicle Customizer." It’s a small file and changes the game entirely.
- For Console Players: Sadly, you are at the mercy of the developers. Your only real option for a "new" color is to earn more Eddies and buy a different version of the car from the Autofixer net-page when it becomes available.
Night City is all about how you look while you're burning down the corporate world. While the car color system isn't as deep as we'd like, knowing the difference between the CrystalCoat tech and the modding workaround saves you a lot of time poking around menus that don't exist. Grab your Rayfield, dial in that deep red, and hit the highway.