What du you think roads were like 200 years ago? Horses and wagons still traversed them. What do you think roads were like many places in the 30s? Cars still traversed them.. When one have the knowledge and resources to make tracks for railways, one should also have the resources to make roads - even paved ones (the Romans had paved roads 2000 years ago...)

If there's anything that the XRE Cars mod for New Vegas taught me, its this. Can't tell you how many times I flipped my damn Corvega, and good luck trying to keep on the completely trashed highways.

For vehicles to be really useful, there would need to be major infrastructure repair to roads and bridges. Which isn't feasible in most of the "frontier" regions where Fallout games generally take place. So anything other than fixing up a car to drive around a bit for fun in a smooth patch of dirt is pointless, and when your concerns are more for food/water/survival, that sort of tinkering usually takes a back seat.

iirc, you could salvage a car in FO2. doing so increased your fast travel time.

something similiar could be done for fo4. dont let us actually drive the car in realtime, but make it clickable to quicktravel. make the trunk interactable so we can store supplies or loot. followers could also always be passengers in the car, making it easy to switch to a given follower depending on the location.

maybe require some kind of resource to use it (i think the fo2 car required energy cells). could be tied in with settlements, i.e. settlements provide fuel resources and/or increase the radius in which you can use the car to fast-travel, and as you upgrade / create new settlements, the radius becomes larger.

the ability to "call in" the car to a given location could also be added. lorewise you could explain it by calling one of your followers to come pick you up or something. that'd solve the issue of having your car available even if you didnt use quicktravel to reach a certain location. i really dont like using quicktravel, especially in the beginning. it makes the world seem small and instanced.

if they really wanted to make it immersive, the car could be driven by an npc on fixed routes. kinda like taxi points in world of warcraft, no need for collision detection or the likes. this would also be a very cool DLC feature.

What do I think roads were like?

I think they weren't weathering explosions, mini nukes and all manner of mutated creatures like exploding ants.

I also don't think any of the chryslus corvergas were designed for anything other than well paved roads.

I also don't think the romans or track layers for railroads were under constant threat of numerous forms of wild life and resident raiders from attacking them. Roads were constructed under the pretense of a stable environment. A commodity not found in the Fallout universe. (This goes double for bridges)

I also think just like olden times a known route like a road is a great place for raiders and thieves to ambush anyone foolish enough to be without a large party traveling along it. Effectively making it an unwise decision for a lone wanderer or anyone who isn't Gun Runners, Enclave, BoS or NCR.

None of this answers the simple question though of tires. The manufacturing of them just doesn't seem possible owing to the raw material being either across an ocean or all the way past mexico.

Dirtbikes and Atvs make a modicum of sense though.

A mountain bike would be nice.

Give them to raiders to so they have a way to quickly ride up and surround the player.

I had a similar experience with XRE Cars. It was fun for like ten minutes, but it was just so inconvenient half the time, especially when you went off-road. Now in Fallout 3, there was a mod that added a motorcycle, but that was for fast traveling purposes only. My problem was that you could ONLY fast travel by using the motorcycle (and so if you went out exploring, you'd have to head back to where you left the motorcycle, which is a huge pain and inconvenience).

I only used that mod for a bit, and uninstalled it. However, even if they changed the mod to where clicking on it would make you fast travel faster, I don't really think it's worth it if you have to go find it.

Beyond specific desire to have "kewl rides", there is no reason for this game to have vehicles. It removes the true feeling of exploration and discovery (a main feature for lots of players) and the Fast Travel system can remove the monotony of revisiting already discovered places (if speed is the goal).

Apocalyptic games with vehicles as part of their mechanics already exist and this simply isn't one of them.

A FO: Damnation Alley type of game sounds kind of fun. Where your goal is to reach something far away, and you have to stop at settlements for parts and supplies (either to buy or to gain through a series of quests) to keep going. Should he a spin-off, though.

The main reason why there are no cars or motorbikes is because making it work with Gamebryo is really hard.

Sounds like the original Touring Carriages mod for Skyrim...

Now that is an excellent idea. Implemented right with the settlement building you would need to forage for supplies to actually fix the rail lines opening up new hubs. The rails are obviously static and would not hinder world design and you would still would have to put work into it to get from point A to B. Plus it would look pretty cool to have some occasional moving equipment in a partially rebuilt wasteland.

It would also work from hardware and tech limitations as well.

Vertibirds make more sense from gameplay to me than cars or motorcycles. In FO3 cars were easy to ignite and then explode. Not something I want to drive through raider infested areas.