Credits
Gearhead Garage is Mekada's game. These are the people and companies who made it and whose names are on it, where to find them now, and what the rebuild is made with.
The original gameSnap-On Gearhead Garage: The Virtual Mechanic, 1999
| Who | What |
|---|---|
| Mekada | Produced and developed the game. Mekada is a brand of Ratloop, Inc. |
| Lucas Pope | Concept, design, code, art and sound |
| Tan Sian Yue | Vehicle models |
| Chris Mullins | Vehicle models, licensing |
| Pete Gonzalez | Business |
| James Anderson | Vehicle models, sound |
| Head Games Publishing | Published and distributed the game. Head Games later became part of Activision. |
| Snap-on Tools | Endorsed the game, which carries its name |
| Twilight3D | Licensed the rendering engine the 1999 game used, modified. The rebuild draws with its own. |
As the game's own credits screen lists them.
Ownership and trademarks
| Gearhead Garage | © 1999 Ratloop, Inc. All rights reserved. "Gearhead Garage", "Mekada" and the Mekada logo are trademarks of Ratloop, Inc. |
| Snap-on | "Snap-on" and "Snap-on Tools" are registered trademarks of Snap-on Incorporated. |
| Head Games | The name and logo of Head Games are trademarks of Head Games Publishing, Inc. |
| The cars | The likenesses of the vehicles in the game belong to their manufacturers. |
| This site | TeamVanilla's. The pictures of the game are taken from the game itself. |
Links
| gearheadgarage.com | The original site, still up: news, updates, the forum, the demo and the FAQ (© 1999-2006 Mekada) |
| Ratloop | ratloop.com: Ratloop, Inc., Ratloop Asia and Ratloop Games Canada. Mekada's page there. |
| Ratloop Games Canada | ratloopgamescanada.com, James Anderson's studio |
| Lucas Pope | dukope.com, his games since |
| Mekada | mekada.com, still up: its ENTER leads on to Mekada's page at Ratloop |
| Snap-on | snapon.com |
| The game's history | Gearhead Garage on Wikipedia |
From the original site's links pageThe links page at gearheadgarage.com lists 75 sites. These are the ones still up at their own address.
| Mekada | mekada.com |
| Activision | activision.com. Head Games Publishing, which published the game, became part of Activision; the links page names Activision as its publisher. |
| Snap-on | snapon.com, the tool maker whose name the game carries |
| The Guild of Automotive Restorers | guildclassiccars.com, a car restoration shop in Bradford, Ontario |
| Street Rod 3 | streetrod3.com, "a project to remake the classic game" Street Rod, as the links page put it |
The fan sites, the pages of the players who built cars and decals, and their teams are gone: their hosts (GeoCities, AOL Hometown, Tripod, Angelfire and others) have closed, or their addresses now belong to someone else. Checked 30 September 2026.
The cars
| 165 cars | The release's own, from the 1967 Ford Mustang to the 1985 Ford Econoline Van, and the many more the game's players built after it came out, from hot rods to Australian touring cars. Each keeps the name its maker gave it. |
| More players' cars | 172 Modded Cars for Gearhead Garage on the Internet Archive: cars by various players, in one 84 MB RAR, put there in 2022. A .car file put in Data\Cars (on Android, Data/Cars in the app's folder) shows up in the game. They are not Mekada's, and some cannot be painted. |
This rebuild
| What | Who, and its licence |
|---|---|
| The program | TeamVanilla, 2026: the game rebuilt for DirectX 12, DirectX 11 and OpenGL on Windows and OpenGL ES on Android, reading the 1999 game's own files |
| VanGUI | TeamVanilla's interface library, MIT licence |
| ANGLE | OpenGL on Windows, by Google and the ANGLE authors, BSD 3-Clause licence. Source |
| stb | Sean Barrett's image readers and writers, public domain or MIT. Source |
| zlib | On Android, the system's zlib by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler unpacks the game's data. zlib.net |
The licences' full texts are in the Windows download's licenses folder.