Cheap Car Repair puts you behind the counter of a shady car workshop in a run-down Polish village nicknamed Bumfuck Nowhere, sometime in the 1990s. Money's tight from the start, so the game leans into corner-cutting fixes: filler over dents, pantyhose standing in for a fan belt, watered-down fuel the customer probably won't notice.
As long as a car survives long enough to leave the garage, the shortcut counts as a win. Botched jobs don't just cost a refund though. Angry customers can come back and trash the workshop, forcing a renovation before business can continue.
Repairs cover patching bodywork, filling dents, painting panels, scraping rust, and swapping in either proper parts or suspiciously cheap substitutes. Cars get jacked up, wheels come off, and components get disassembled and reassembled bolt by bolt. Running the place also means juggling costs, quality, and profit, since every shortcut carries the risk of blowing up later.
Outside the workshop, story missions follow John the Mechanic through the surrounding countryside, introducing shady traders, annoying neighbors, and the village's assorted weirdos along the way.