- Primary Subject: American Truck Simulator: Road Trip: Ford (Update 1.62)
- Key Update: Road Trip: Ford adds Car Mode, four licensed Fords and the Atlas sightseeing system, but its car physics still feel like trucks after Update 1.62.
- Status: Evergreen
- Last Verified: November 10, 2026
- Quick Answer: Road Trip: Ford is a $7.99 American Truck Simulator DLC adding Car Mode, four Fords, and Atlas sightseeing. Great idea, unfinished car physics.
My American Truck Simulator garage sits in Olympia, Washington, so the first thing I did after installing Road Trip: Ford was leave the truck parked and head down the West Coast, splitting the drive between a Bronco and an F-150 I picked up along the way.
I've always wanted to do the great American road trip for real, crossing all that distance and watching the biomes change outside the window.
Until I get there, SCS Software's $7.99 DLC is the closest I've come, and I applaud the studio for attempting it at all.
SCS spent a year and a half building a second game inside ATS
SCS announced Project Road Trip on April 11, 2025, calling it "a big experiment" and giving it a dedicated team.
The DLC arrived on September 29, 2026, and that same day ATS hit 21,318 concurrent players on Steam, the highest in its ten-year history according to SteamDB.
The core of it is Car Mode, which runs on its own progression while sharing your bank balance and explored map with the trucking career.
It needs to be separate, since ferrying a Crown Victoria between dealerships has little in common with hauling a trailer over a mountain pass. I just wish the two halves talked to each other more, or that the car side had progression worth chasing.
The Fords look like they came off the lot
Four cars ship in the pack: the 1967 Mustang Fastback, a 2023 F-150 Lariat, a Bronco Badlands, and the Crown Victoria. You can tell SCS built them alongside Ford.
The studio thanked the automaker for helping it track down a classic Mustang during a US visit, used 3D-scan data for the F-150, and recorded engines from real cars.
The interiors hold up under close inspection, and the Mustang sounds good enough that one creator SCS featured admitted to sitting parked and flooring it just to hear the engine.
Atlas is the best idea in the pack
Atlas turns sightseeing into something to chase. You pick a Tourist Board, the GPS sends you there, and finding its landmarks and viewpoints earns a postcard you can stick on the dashboard.
The whole system borrows the look of old roadside souvenir postcards, and it suits a road trip better than anything else SCS added.
Update 1.62 landed on November 3 with 12 more boards, including a Route 66 board timed for the highway's 100th anniversary. Atlas only works for people who own Road Trip, though.
Owners can use it from a truck cab too, but a trucker who skips the car pack never sees it. I understand why SCS tied its most fleshed-out new system to the thing it's selling. However, I feel that a feature this good should belong to everyone who plays ATS.
Underneath, the cars still remember being trucks
Car mods in ETS2 and ATS always had the same problem. They used truck physics, so a sedan handled like a semi with the trailer unhooked.
I went in believing Road Trip would fix that. The official cars are a clear step up from the mods, and they're still not quite there.
This part is personal. I've never driven an F-150, but I drove a 2012 Ford Ranger, a family hand-me-down, for years until its engine block gave out.
Buying the F-150 partway down the coast was my attempt to get some of that back somewhere new. It never felt right, and that colored my whole time with the DLC.
Other players have pinned down why. On the SCS forum, people report force feedback that is "much weaker on the cars than trucks, even at max slider values," truck-style engine braking on every car, and no Park gear.
One post notes that "older cars such as the Mustang and Crown Victoria didn't have electronic stability control (ESC), but they handle as they do."
Update 1.62 left all of it alone, and fresh reports about weak force feedback went up the day it released. Recent Steam reviews for the DLC have slipped to Mostly Positive, while the all-time score holds at 82%.
Courier work needs a better reason to drive
Quick Jobs and the Dispatch Market send you out with parcels and dealership transfers, and customers rate how you handled each run.
SCS has been upfront that launch jobs "focus on getting yourself and the delivery safely from point A to point B." In practice, they felt like busywork next to trucking.
I get why the jobs exist. In a game built around making money, nobody drives for free. ETS2's Coaches DLC, due November 12, scores trips partly on passenger satisfaction based on how hard you brake and corner.
A ride-hailing system along those lines would help give Car Mode's driving an actual point.
A promising first leg
It's too early to tell how SCS will handle a full coast-to-coast trip with four cars and an undated RAM & Dodge pack still waiting.
For now, Road Trip: Ford is a commendable start. The scenery was already there before this DLC, and seeing it through a windshield instead of from a sleeper cab makes it feel new again. Fixing how these cars drive should come before the next leg.
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