Cars are environmental objects on the various multiplayer maps and single-player levels in the Call of Duty series. They can either take the form of civilian cars (Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) or trucks (Call of Duty: World at War). Cars are littered across the maps (usually on the streets) and can easily be destroyed with explosives, light machine guns, etc. When cars sustain enough damage, they will catch on fire. Cars on fire will sustain constant damage until it explodes. This puts the player at great risk whenever they decide to hide behind a vehicle and can cause great frustration, especially if they were killed in either the multiplayer or singleplayer levels due to this.
Exceptions[]
Not all cars are stationary objects. One exception is the car the player is in, in the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare level "The Coup". Another exception is the car seen in the Call of Duty: World at War level "Vendetta", in which Heinrich Amsel rides in at the start and at the end when Reznov and Dimitri attempt to kill him. Gary "Roach" Sanderson and Joseph Allen ride in two different cars in Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 as well, while several civilian cars driven by Brazilian citizens and gangs in "Takedown" and in Exodus a civilian can be see crashing his car. Even in Call of Duty, there was a mission in which the protagonist has to escape a tank by driving a car.
Multiplayer[]
In Multiplayer, the last player to damage the car gets any kills from it. Therefore allies are unaffected by explosions from cars as long as the player shoots them last. Likewise, in hardcore they may incur teamkills for no apparent reason if they leave flaming cars around. Kills by cars do not count towards the Danger Close Pro challenges.
Here is a list of Multiplayer levels containing destroyable cars.
Cars instantly explode if the player jump onto them from far up.
Most vehicles in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 have Infinity Ward references on their license plates.
In some games the player can deflate certain vehicles' tires by shooting them, shoot off the rear-view mirrors and break the windows of some cars.
It is possible to "hold" a car as an item by spawning it in with console commands in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The item appears with the name "Claymore" but cannot be placed down. It is possible to switch this weapon with another, causing the model of a Claymore to appear as the world model. The icon shown when given the ability to switch for the "destructible_car" weapon is the kill icon for a car bomb. However, this "weapon" is unavailable to be used for any purpose.
The hood of an exploding vehicle can instantly kill the player in the Modern Warfare franchise if the player is in the right spot and the hood happens to fall on them. It's a very rare death so major planning and probably luck will be needed for the player to encounter this. The game was going to have this death as an achievement called: Vehicles hate us? Why?. This achievement however, would be impossible to earn since the likeliness of a vehicle's hood falling on a player is too low and so was cancelled. Another cancelled achievement is similar except the player has to witness any friendly or enemy AI die by this event.