Key Cloner

The Key Cloner is the tool that decides which cars you can actually drive home in Grand Theft Auto VI. Car theft is tiered now. Older vehicles give in to a slim jim and a bit of patience, but the expensive stuff, a new Grotti or Pegassi sitting on the street, will not start without a key cloner in your pocket.

Rob Nelson, co-head of development, spelled the system out during the August 2026 studio visits: “You don’t need anything to hotwire, but not all vehicles can be hotwired. We’ve added some stratification to the vehicles. Some vehicles need a key cloner to start. You can smash the window and get in, but you can’t start it without the key cloner. If you have a key cloner, you can also use it to get in and start the vehicle without setting off the alarm.” That last part is the quiet headline. The same tool doubles as a silent entry, no alarm, no attention, no witnesses phoning it in.

You do not buy it off a shelf either. Theft tools unlock by doing work for vehicle fences around Leonida, and a phone app styled W-AI-NK scans any car before you commit, listing the tool it needs, its tracker tier, what it sells for and what it costs to register as your own. Early in the game, a supercar is only stealable if you catch it with the engine already running.

Confirmed in the August 2026 Rockstar studio demos, where Rob Nelson scanned an alarmed, tracked car on camera and walked through the tool tiers, with one vehicle fence visible in the Extended Look itself. The mechanic traces back to the September 2022 development leak, which first surfaced a key cloner among the theft tools.

The stratification cuts both ways: NPC passengers can wrestle you back out of a car mid-theft, and if your getaway vehicle gets reported you may have to scan and steal another one on the move.