This is an easy and quick way to get custom cars for TMF, but before we go any further, you must have an authenticated TM account AND have your ports 2350 and 3450 open on your router/firewall before other people will be able to see your car. You can still use custom cars without an authenticated account but you will be the only one who sees it.
Basically when someone else customises a car, that car has to be downloaded to your PC before you can see it. They only have to download it once because your PC stores it so if you ever play that person again their car will load straight away. The location these custom cars are kept is your game cache folder found here...
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\TrackMania\Cache
Please not that the folder 'Application Data' is hidden by default. To un-hide go to Tools>Folder Options>View> and click 'Show hidden files and folders'
In here you will find various file types but the ones we're looking for are the .zip files. Those that contain the word 'vehicle' in the file name are custom cars from people you have played against on various servers. You may have just a few.. or you may have hundreds.
For us to see and use these cars we have to move them to our own custom car folder which is located here...
C:\Documents and Settings\***YOUR NAME***\My Documents\TrackMania\Skins\Vehicles\StadiumCar
This is the location for stadium environment cars only. For other environments go up one level.
You can also create a folder called 'CarCommon' in C:\Documents and Settings\***YOUR NAME***\My Documents\TrackMania\Skins\Vehicles. Cars placed in the CarCommon folder will be available in all environments.
Copy all the zip files that have the word "vehicle" in the file name from your cache folder and paste them into your stadium cars folder or CarCommon cars folder DO NOT UNZIP!! Restart the game and you will have a whole new selection of cars in your garage.
Remember to check your cache folder often for any new models.
This method is for WindowsXP and may differ slightly for Vista
