How to make a FiveM police car

A FiveM police car is a normal add-on vehicle plus three things: emergency flags in its metas, working lights and sirens, and a police livery. Here is the whole job in order, with the free GXD tools for each step.

1. 1Start from a model you are allowed to use

   Use your own model, a lore-friendly base you have the rights to, or a car you bought with a licence that allows edits. Ripped or leaked models break the FiveM / Cfx.re terms and get resources taken down. You need the model (.yft and usually _hi.yft) and its textures (.ytd).

2. 2Set it up as a vehicle: vehicles.meta and handling.meta

   In vehicles.meta give the car its spawn name (modelName), its handlingId and a police class: vehicleClass VC_EMERGENCY, with flags such as FLAG_EMERGENCY_SERVICE and FLAG_LAW_ENFORCEMENT. Then add a matching entry in handling.meta. Meta Forge builds both from a form, and the Handling Tuner explains every value.

3. 3Choose how the lights work: Non-ELS or ELS

   Non-ELS cars carry their lights and sirens in the game files: a siren setting in carcols.meta (flash patterns for the siren1…siren20 bones) that the car points to with sirenSettings in carvariations.meta. No extra script is needed. ELS cars use an ELS script on the server and a VCF file per car that maps the light extras and patterns. Build Non-ELS patterns in Signal Bench, or an ELS VCF in ELS Config. Give every siren setting its own id — two cars sharing one is the most common "wrong lights" bug.

4. 4Make the police livery

   Most police cars use the model's livery textures (often named sign_1, sign_2…) inside its .ytd, so several departments can share one model. Export the car's UV map with UV Template, paint the livery on the 3D car in the Livery Workshop, then put the exported texture into the .ytd with OpenIV or CodeWalker under the same name. The livery guide covers this step in detail.

5. 5Pack it as a resource

   Put the .yft / .ytd files in a stream folder and the metas next to the fxmanifest.lua, which needs fx_version 'cerulean', game 'gta5', the meta files in files { } and one data_file line each: 'VEHICLE_METADATA_FILE', 'HANDLING_FILE', 'CARCOLS_FILE', 'VEHICLE_VARIATION_FILE'. Resource Forge writes the manifest; Pack Forge merges several cars into one pack.

6. 6Check it before it goes live

   Run the resource through Pack Doctor — it finds clashing spawn names, siren and light ids, modkit ids and textures over the size limit. Then ensure the resource in server.cfg, spawn the car and test every light stage. If your garage shows "NULL" as the name, the Vehicle Registrar writes the missing text entries.

7. 7Add it to your framework

   QBCore, Qbox and ESX need the car in their vehicle list before shops and garages know it. The Vehicle Registrar turns your vehicles.meta into ready-to-paste entries.

Rather skip the build? Every GXD police and EMS car is lore-friendly, comes in an ELS and a Non-ELS build with liveries, and there are free police cars to try first.