GTA 5 Los Santos Customs: The Complete Guide to Every Vehicle Modification
Every upgrade Los Santos Customs offers in GTA 5, from turbo and armor to Benny's widebody kits - what each one does, where to find every shop, and how to spend your money wisely.
Los Santos Customs (LSC) is the vehicle shop chain that runs through every corner of GTA 5. Drive almost any car you own through the garage door and you can turn it into something faster, tougher to kill, and a lot better looking, without touching a single line of a cheat code. The system is simple once you know what each upgrade actually changes and which shop to walk into.
The essentials:
- LSC has full-service shops in Burton, La Mesa, and on Route 68 in Harmony - any of the three does the complete job.
- Performance upgrades (engine, brakes, transmission, suspension, turbo, armor) change how a car handles and how much punishment it survives; cosmetic upgrades (bumpers, spoilers, wheels, paint) only change how it looks.
- Turbo is worth buying on almost every car you plan to keep: it improves acceleration and adds a visible flame and backfire effect.
- Not every vehicle can enter LSC. Mission-locked cars, most emergency vehicles, and a handful of special vehicles are turned away at the door.
- Benny's Original Motor Works, in Strawberry, goes further than standard LSC with widebody and custom kits, but only for a short list of classic and lowrider-style cars.
Where to find Los Santos Customs
Three LSC shops cover the map in story mode:
- Burton, in the hills above Rockford Hills, close to Michael's house. The most convenient stop if you play as Michael or Franklin.
- La Mesa, in the industrial strip of south Los Santos, near the rail yards. Easy to reach from the Grove Street area.
- Route 68, in Harmony, out in Blaine County. The shop to use if you are already near Sandy Shores or Trevor's trailer.
All three sell the same catalog of upgrades at the same prices for a given car, so pick whichever one is closest to where you already are. GTA Online adds more locations as the map grows around it, but the underlying menu works the same way.
Once a car is fully built out, you need somewhere to keep it. See our guide to every GTA 5 garage and how many vehicles it holds if your personal garage is already full.
Performance upgrades, explained
Every performance mod is bought per car, and prices scale with how expensive and fast the vehicle already is. A cheap sedan costs far less to fully upgrade than a supercar.
Engine (EMS upgrade)
Four levels, each one a straight boost to acceleration and top speed. Level 4 is the single biggest jump in raw performance LSC sells, and it is almost always the first thing worth buying on a car you plan to race or chase people in. If pure speed is the goal, check our ranking of the fastest cars in GTA 5 story mode to see which starting point is worth upgrading at all.
Brakes
Two tiers, Street and Sport. Better brakes shorten stopping distance and make a car far less likely to slide through a turn it was going too fast for. Cheap, and worth getting on anything with a strong engine.
Transmission
Improves gear-shift speed, which translates into snappier acceleration out of corners and off the line. Less flashy than the engine upgrade, but it stacks well with it.
Suspension
Lowers the ride height and stiffens handling on higher tiers, trading a bit of comfort on rough roads for sharper cornering. Matters more on tarmac-focused cars than on trucks or off-road vehicles.
Turbo
A single upgrade, but one of the best value picks in the whole shop. Turbo improves acceleration noticeably and gives the car a flame-spitting backfire on gear changes and hard braking. Purely cosmetic side effect aside, the acceleration gain alone makes it close to mandatory on anything you drive often.
Armor
Four levels of protection against bullets, explosions, and collision damage. Level 4 armor is the difference between a car that survives a shootout or a police chase and one that explodes after a few hits. If you only buy one performance upgrade on a getaway car, make it armor.
Cosmetic modifications
Cosmetic mods do not change how a car drives, only how it looks and how much it is worth reselling. LSC's cosmetic catalog covers:
- Bumpers, skirts, spoilers, hoods, and roof options (a handful of cars can go convertible)
- Custom exhaust tips and grilles
- Wheels, in several style families (Sport, Muscle, SUV, Lowrider, Tuner and more), plus wheel color
- Paint: primary and secondary color, in matte, metallic, or metal finishes, plus pearlescent options on some cars
- Window tint, from light to limo-dark
- Xenon headlights and, on cars added after the vehicle was patched for it, a neon underglow kit
- Horn selection and tire smoke color
None of this affects performance, so treat it as a budget item: style the car the way you want it to look, then spend the rest of your money on the upgrades that actually matter in a chase.
Which vehicles you can't modify
LSC turns away a few categories of vehicle:
- Cars tied to a specific mission that are not meant to be kept
- Most emergency and military vehicles (police cruisers, fire trucks, ambulances, tanks)
- A handful of special or event vehicles that were never built with a mod menu
If a vehicle does not prompt the modification menu when you drive it into a shop, it is one of these locked categories, not a bug.
Benny's Original Motor Works: the next level
Benny's, tucked into a garage in Strawberry, is a second workshop layered on top of LSC. It offers widebody kits, custom hydraulics, and unique parts that standard LSC does not sell, but only for a specific list of classic muscle cars and lowriders. If the car you are driving is not on that list, Benny's will not let you in. For the cars it does support, the widebody kits are the single biggest visual upgrade available in the game, turning a stock classic into a show car.
Tips to avoid wasting money
- Buy engine and armor first on any car you plan to keep using. They matter more than anything cosmetic.
- Turbo is cheap relative to what it does; treat it as a default purchase, not an optional one.
- Fully upgrading a supercar can cost more than the car itself. Decide if you are keeping the vehicle long-term before you spend that much on it.
- Respraying a car at LSC is inexpensive and instant, so do not be afraid to experiment with colors before committing to expensive wheels or a widebody kit that locks you into a certain look.
FAQ
Does LSC exist in both story mode and GTA Online? Yes. Story mode has no level requirements, only money. GTA Online gates some upgrades behind player rank in addition to cash.
Is there a fastest way to fully upgrade a car? Buy every performance category in one visit rather than spreading purchases out; LSC does not offer a discount for doing so, but it saves trips.
Can I remove upgrades once bought? Cosmetic parts can be swapped for others or reverted to stock at no extra charge beyond the new part's price. Performance upgrades are permanent once installed; you are only buying the next tier up, not removing what you already own.
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