Impound Garage

Impound garage in GTA V.

For the business in GTA V, see LSPD Auto Impound.

The Impound Garage (also known as the Vehicle Impound or the Impound Lot) is an underground parking garage near police stations in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Grand Theft Auto V which stores vehicles seized by the police.

Description

In GTA San Andreas, entering the impound without a law enforcement vehicle will result in police officers pointing pistols at Carl Johnson. The officers will then call for backup and the player will receive a three-star wanted level, regardless of whether Carl kills an officer or leaves the garage.

Impound Garages return in GTA V, functioning similarly to those in GTA San Andreas. Players can now recover abandoned vehicles from this garage. The garage has room for two vehicles, and if the player abandons a vehicle, the oldest vehicle in the garage will be replaced by the most recent vehicle the player abandoned.

GTA San Andreas

In GTA San Andreas, the Impound Garage allows the player to retrieve a vehicle which was lost during a mission or cutscene. Impound Garages are underground parking garages located at the bottom floors of police stations. The first few floors of the garages have police cars which spawn in the parking spaces. Vehicles which the player abandoned are stored at the rear of the ground floor in the garage. However, not every abandoned vehicle will be stored here, and on occasion the vehicle which appears will be a random vehicle which the player never drove.

Some missions have "Clear Area" commands, which remove any parked vehicle within a certain radius from the mission's marker. These vehicles are then placed inside an impound garage, and the player can then enter one of these garages and retrieve their vehicle.

Due to a glitch, vehicles may sometimes spawn stuck inside each other, or they may spawn stuck halfway inside the ground. Also, strange occurrences may happen in impound garages if the player is playing certain side missions like Vigilante or Export missions; Vehicles will spawn stacked on top of each other or laying on their sides. Aircraft, like Dodos or even Hydras may spawn unlocked. Impound Garages exhibit strange behaviors like these very commonly. These glitches hint that the Impound Garage was simply a game mechanic that was never perfected or implemented correctly in the game.

Since the Impound Garage is never mentioned in any instructional guides for the game, it is possible that impound garages were going to be fully functional but were never completed during the game's development. In the beta version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, there was a mission which was supposed to introduce impound garages to the player, but it was dropped during development.

Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online

In GTA V, Impound Garages return. If the player abandons (but doesn't destroy) a vehicle that they have modified at a Los Santos Customs garage or ordered online, they will be able to retrieve the vehicle from the Impound Lot for a fee of $250. Reasons for losing a vehicle might include triggering a mission that requires the use of another vehicle, the vehicle being commandeered by police (which can happen if it's parked outside a police station), wandering too far away from a vehicle and causing it to despawn, or loading an autosave that places the character back at a safehouse instead of in the vehicle.

Parking a vehicle in a marked no-parking zone or in a location such as the middle of an intersection may also result in a vehicle being impounded, though this does not always occur. If the player abandons a personal vehicle belonging to a GTA V protagonist, the vehicle will not be impounded and will respawn at the protagonist's house.

As with the GTA San Andreas version, the Impound Garage is not mentioned in the game's instruction manual (though an on-screen message will appear if a player abandons a vehicle), technically making this feature an easter egg.

If the player is killed by the police in GTA Online, their persoanal vehicle will be impounded by the police and stored at the LSPD Auto Impound. The player can retrieve their vehicle for a fee of $250, or steal it by force, though stealing a vehicle will result in the player gaining a two-star wanted level.

Locations

GTA San Andreas

• Commerce, Los Santos - Just north of Pershing Square and west the Los Santos Police Headquarters.
• Downtown, San Fierro - At the rear of the San Fierro Police Headquarters.
• Roca Escalante, Las Venturas - At the rear of the Las Venturas Police Headquarters.

GTA V

• Mission Row, Los Santos - At the Mission Row Police Station, on Vespucci Boulevard and Sinner Street.

GTA Online

• LSPD Auto Impound - On the corner of Innocence Boulevard and Roy Lowenstein Boulevards next to the Davis Police Station.

Trivia

• In GTA San Andreas, in the Impound Lot of the Los Santos Police Station, there appears to be a pedestrian getting physically attacked by a police officer. A second police officer can be seen nearby holding a pistol. This may be an easter egg, left in the game by Rockstar to reference the large amounts of police brutality and corruption in 1992.