Eight Short Robberies, One Garage, and a $270,000 Top Job
Buy an Auto Shop for $1,670,000 to $1,920,000, finish one setup job, and the job board upstairs opens. From there you run eight Robbery Contracts with Sessanta and KDJ.
Seven contracts pay $170,000 to $185,000 before their 10 percent cut, leaving you $153,000 to $166,500. The eighth, the Union Depository Contract, pays $300,000 solo and leaves you $270,000.
Every contract follows the same shape: two short planning jobs in free roam, then one finale. All eight can be done completely solo, and none needs supplies or stock.
Add customer car work at $20,000 to $30,000 a job and a daily Exotic Exports list worth up to $300,000, and this garage becomes three businesses in one.
Key Takeaways
- Auto Shops cost $1,670,000 (Mission Row) to $1,920,000 (La Mesa), are identical inside, and are bought on Maze Bank Foreclosures after one visit to the LS Car Meet.
- There are eight Robbery Contracts, with three shown on the job board at a time; each is two planning jobs plus a finale, and all are playable solo or with up to three others.
- Sessanta and KDJ take a combined 10 percent cut on every contract except The ECU Job, which pays its full $172,000; you also get a one-time $75,000 bonus the first time you lead each contract.
- The Union Depository Contract is the clear headline job: $300,000 gross solo, rising to $375,000 with four players, for $270,000 to $337,500 after the cut.
- Customer cars pay $20,000 to $30,000 each with mod costs refunded, and Exotic Exports pays $20,000 per car plus a $100,000 bonus for clearing all ten in a day.
1. What the Auto Shop Actually Is
The Auto Shop arrived on 20 July 2021 with Los Santos Tuners, Rockstar's car-culture update built around the LS Car Meet in Cypress Flats. It is a legitimate modding business that doubles as a robbery base.
On the ground floor you get a working mod shop and a showroom-quality 10-car garage. You can modify your own cars there at owner rates, and friends can use the bay too.
Upstairs is where the money lives. An office, the contract job board and the Exotic Exports list turn the same property into a planning room for Sessanta and KDJ.
Sessanta is the mechanic who runs the shop day to day. KDJ, also known as Moodymann from The Music Locker, is her partner, and together they source the robbery work.
Nothing here is passive. There are no supplies to buy and no stock to fill, which makes the Auto Shop feel very different from a Bunker or Nightclub.
2. Unlocking and Buying Your Auto Shop
Start at the LS Car Meet, the graffitied warehouse in Cypress Flats marked with an LS icon. Go inside once, watch the opening scenes and meet Mimi, Sessanta and KDJ.
That single visit is what unlocks the purchase. Rockstar sells LS Car Meet membership for $50,000, and it is worth having for trade prices, races, the Test Track and reputation rewards.
Membership is not, on its own, the key to the shop, though. Reputable current guides are clear that one visit is enough and Auto Shops then appear for sale, membership or not.
With the visit done, open Maze Bank Foreclosures on your in-game phone or laptop and filter to Auto Shops. Five locations are listed, and you pick one and pay.
Mission Row is cheapest at $1,670,000, then Strawberry at $1,705,000 and Rancho at $1,750,000. Burton costs $1,830,000 and La Mesa is priciest at $1,920,000.
Every shop is identical inside, with the same board, garage, payouts and upgrades. You are only buying driving time, so Mission Row is the sensible default for most players.
Burton is the most central pick, Rancho sits closest to the LS Car Meet itself, and La Mesa gives instant highway access. None of the five is a bad buy.
How you modify cars here also makes a useful contrast with the future game, where how vehicle customization works in GTA 6 is a separate, still-developing picture — the system described here is the current, playable one.
3. Upgrades, Staff and What to Skip
Style, tint and emblem are pure looks. Styles run $265,000 to $450,000, a tint costs $187,500, and emblems cost $25,000 to $104,500, none of it earning a dollar back.
Staff are the first upgrade with a real job. Each member costs $385,000, and hired staff can modify and deliver customer cars while you are busy elsewhere.
The catch is driving. Staff can damage a customer car on delivery, and that damage comes off your payment, so staff buy convenience rather than profit.
The Car Lift costs $650,000 and adds a second customer car slot. Two cars can sit in the shop at once and new ones arrive more often.
Personal Quarters cost $340,000 and let you spawn at the shop, with a bed, wardrobe and gun locker. Useful comfort, but buy them after the lift.
A bare shop runs contracts perfectly well from day one. Buy staff and the lift first if you love the customer work, and cosmetics only when money no longer matters. All prices here are base prices at the time of writing, and weekly discounts regularly cut them.
4. The Setup Job and the Job Board
Before any contract appears, you must finish one setup job: Setup: Impounded Car. Sessanta's car has been impounded, and you recover it from the police for her.
Clear the officers guarding it, take the car, lose your wanted level and drive it back to the shop. The job is quietly timed, and Sessanta warns you when time runs short.
To use the board at all, register as a VIP, CEO or MC President in free roam. The job board sits by the office upstairs, and KDJ messages you when it refreshes.
From then on the board shows three contracts at a time, chosen at random from the eight. Finish one and it rotates away for a while, so you cannot farm the same job back to back.
5. How a Robbery Contract Works, Start to Finish
Pick a contract and you get two Planning Work jobs first. These are short free-roam tasks such as stealing gear, planting devices or learning a code.
Planning jobs pay nothing meaningful alone. Their value is unlocking the finale cleanly, and most take only a few minutes once you know the route.
Then comes the finale, launched from the board like a small heist. Only vehicles in the Tuner class can be selected for contract finales, so bring a suitable car.
Finales are playable solo or with up to three others. Helpers on someone else's contract earn $50,000, or a little more on the Union Depository job.
Sessanta and KDJ each take 5 percent, a combined 10 percent cut. The one exception is The ECU Job, where they take nothing at all.
Your first completion of each contract as leader also pays a one-time $75,000 bonus. Across all eight, that is $600,000 extra just for trying everything once.
A finished contract cools down for roughly an hour before it can return. Rotating through different contracts is therefore the fastest honest way to grind them.
That structure is deliberately smaller than a full heist, and it helps explain the contrast covered in how heists and robberies work in GTA 6 — that page is about the future game only, while these contracts are live and repeatable today.
6. All Eight Contracts and What Each One Pays
The Superdollar Deal pays the most of the regular seven at $185,000 gross, or $166,500 after the cut. You stop a military convoy and steal its banknote printing plates.
The Agency Deal pays $182,000 gross and $163,800 net. You break into an IAA facility to retrieve a sensitive recipe for an unnamed client.
The Lost Contract pays $180,000 gross and $162,000 net. You hit a Lost MC meth operation, clear out the gang and take their supply.
The Bank Contract pays $178,000 gross and $160,200 net. After planting signal jammers, you rob a run of Fleeca branches across the map in one finale.
The Prison Contract pays $175,000 gross and $157,500 net. You enter Bolingbroke Penitentiary to deal with rival gang members and get an ally out.
The ECU Job pays $172,000, and you keep all of it because no cut is taken. You intercept a freight train and lift its electronic control units.
The Data Contract pays $170,000 gross and $153,000 net, the lowest on the board. You steal sensitive hard drives for the hacker Avi Schwartzman.
The Union Depository Contract sits apart from all seven and gets its own closer look next. At $300,000 solo it pays close to double the next best job.
All figures here are base payouts at the time of writing, before weekly bonuses. Tuners event weeks with multiplied rewards can change the order for a week.
7. The Union Depository Contract: The One to Wait For
This is the finale-tier job: a straight robbery of the Union Depository vault for a shipment of gold, delivered afterwards to an FIB-linked client.
Its planning work is Elevator Key and Vault Code. You take a key from a corrupt businessman, then blackmail a bank manager into giving up the code.
Inside the vault you load gold into a duffel bag with limited capacity. Solo players leave some gold behind because one bag holds less than several bags can carry.
Looting triggers a five-star wanted level. Lose the police completely, then deliver the gold to the rendezvous, at Hookies or El Gordo Lighthouse.
The payout scales with crew size: $300,000 solo, $325,000 with two, $350,000 with three and $375,000 with four. After the cut the leader banks $270,000 to $337,500.
Crew members earn $55,000, $60,000 and $65,000 at those crew sizes. Practised solo runs take roughly 20 to 30 minutes, so take this contract first whenever it shows.
8. Customer Cars: The Honest Half of the Business
Alongside the robberies, the shop runs as a real garage. Roughly once per in-game day a customer car arrives, and Sessanta lets you know it is waiting.
Each car comes with a checklist: repairs, a respray colour, and body or performance changes. You pay the modification costs up front as you fit them.
Those costs are refunded on delivery. Your profit is the service payment on top, about $20,000 to $30,000 depending on the class of vehicle.
Follow the checklist exactly or add an extra change of your own. A pleased customer can pay a small satisfaction bonus, while an unhappy one can pay less.
Delivery is where care pays. Drive the car yourself and keep it clean, because damage on the way is deducted from what you are paid.
Staff can deliver instead, but they are slower and can damage the car. Delivering yourself also earns LS Car Meet reputation.
With the second Car Lift fitted, two customer cars can wait at once. Chained between contracts, these small jobs quietly add six figures to a long session.
9. Exotic Exports: The Daily List Worth $300,000
Finish your first Robbery Contract and a second board appears upstairs: the Exotic Exports list, a blackboard naming ten cars wanted for export that day.
The list resets every real day and is drawn from a pool of about 100 possible cars. Listed cars spawn parked around the map or appear in traffic, marked as you get close.
Steal a listed car and drive it to Sessanta's partner at the docks in the Port of Los Santos. Each clean delivery pays $20,000 and 1,000 RP, plus Car Meet reputation.
Deliver all ten cars from the same day's list and a $100,000 bonus lands on top. A complete list is therefore worth $300,000 for what is mostly relaxed driving.
You cannot deliver while in Passive Mode, and other players can see what you are carrying. Many players hunt the list in a quiet session for that reason.
Do not confuse this list with Simeon's separate export requests. Exotic Exports belongs to your Auto Shop, and its $20,000 per car and $100,000 bonus are base figures at the time of writing.
10. Running the Shop Well and Fitting It In
Open each session at the board and take the Union Depository Contract whenever it shows. Work the other two slots while it is away, rather than waiting for it.
Keep a fast Tuner car ready for finales, and stock armour and snacks before the harder jobs. The Prison and Data finales punish players who stroll in unprepared.
Between contracts, deliver any waiting customer car and pick off Exotic Exports cars near your route. The shop pays best when its three income streams overlap.
It also stacks neatly beside other earners you may own, such as the Agency, the Nightclub, the Salvage Yard and the Cayo Perico heist, because it asks for active bursts rather than constant attention.
There is no shortcut around any of this worth taking, which is exactly the point made in why there is no money cheat in GTA games — contracts, customer cars and exports are the legitimate route, and they pay well enough.
Its long-term value raises one fair question, and whether GTA Online progress will carry over to GTA 6 is still unconfirmed by Rockstar, so judge the shop on what it earns in this game.
For wider context on that future, what GTA 6 Online is so far covers only what is confirmed — GTA 6 launches on 19 November 2026 and its online mode remains unannounced.
Buy the shop because eight repeatable solo robberies, a daily $300,000 list and steady customer work repay $1,670,000 quickly. It remains one of the best first big purchases in the game.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does an Auto Shop cost in GTA Online?
From $1,670,000 for Mission Row to $1,920,000 for La Mesa, with Strawberry at $1,705,000, Rancho at $1,750,000 and Burton at $1,830,000 in between. All five are identical inside.
Do I need LS Car Meet membership to buy an Auto Shop?
No. One visit to the LS Car Meet in Cypress Flats unlocks Auto Shops on Maze Bank Foreclosures. Membership costs $50,000 and adds trade prices, races and reputation perks.
How many Robbery Contracts are there?
Eight in total: The Superdollar Deal, The Bank Contract, The ECU Job, The Agency Deal, The Lost Contract, The Data Contract, The Prison Contract and The Union Depository Contract. Three show on the board at a time.
Which Robbery Contract pays the most?
The Union Depository Contract, by a wide margin. It pays $300,000 gross solo, up to $375,000 with four players, leaving the leader $270,000 to $337,500 after the 10 percent cut.
Can I do Robbery Contracts solo?
Yes. Every contract, including both planning jobs and the finale, can be completed by one player. You can also bring up to three other players, who earn $50,000 or more as crew.
Why is my payout smaller than the board price?
Sessanta and KDJ each take 5 percent, a combined 10 percent cut, on every contract except The ECU Job. A $185,000 Superdollar Deal therefore banks $166,500 for the leader.
How do customer car jobs pay?
A finished and delivered customer car pays about $20,000 to $30,000 depending on its class, and your modification costs are refunded on delivery. Damage during delivery reduces the payment.
How much is a full Exotic Exports list worth?
$300,000 in total: $20,000 for each of the ten cars, plus a $100,000 bonus for delivering all ten from the same day's list. The list resets every real day.
What is the setup job for the Auto Shop?
Setup: Impounded Car. You recover Sessanta's impounded car from the police, lose your wanted level and return it to the shop, which unlocks the contract job board upstairs.
Is the Auto Shop worth buying in GTA Online?
Yes, for active players. It has no passive income, but solo contracts, customer cars and Exotic Exports together repay the purchase price quickly, and you also gain a 10-car garage and mod shop.
Summary
The Auto Shop is three businesses in one: a mod shop for customer cars, a daily export list, and eight short robberies run with Sessanta and KDJ.
Buy Mission Row unless another spot suits your map better, finish the impounded car setup, and take the Union Depository Contract every single time it appears on the board.
Do that, deliver customer cars cleanly and clear the export list on good days, and this garage will fund much of everything else you buy in Los Santos.
