Can Cars Come With Built-In Dashcams? - Our Guide

Since dashcams are now becoming one of the most essential modern accessories for cars you might be wondering if you can find any card with their dashcams built inside of them? 

Although not as common, you can indeed find some makes of cars which already have a dashcam inside of them such as BMW's, Minis, Subaru's and even Tesla's.

To help you find the perfect car for you which has a built-in dash cam we've composed a short guide that will take you through the benefits of choosing a car with a built-in dashcam plus which cars and models have these built-in dashcams. 

Let's get into it!

Why Choose a Car With a Built-In Dashcam? 

Buying cars with in-built dash cams is not as common as buying dash cam systems separately since this dash cam technology is typically reserved for higher-end cars. 

There are however some benefits to picking a car that has the presence of dash cams which we will list below. 

• There's no hassle of installation - Having factory-fitted dash cams takes the hassle out of wiring your own in and has a similar cost to buying your dash cam and getting it installed, the wiring is also often neater.
• It can lower insurance - Manufacturer-fitted dash cam models inside of your car can lower the insurance you choose as it is proven it helps drivers to drive more carefully.
• They protect your car - If you haven't heard about the benefits of dashcams already, they are excellent for providing first-hand witness footage to any incident on the road and can prove your innocence in hit and runs or road collisions, for example, they also great for recording dispute if with audio.
• It offers better technology - In-built dash cams on cars come with all kinds of technology such as protection against theft attempts due to them being synced to the car alarms, independent driving from the car due to the cameras and adaptive cruise control.

Our Ultimate List Of Cars With Built-In Dashcams 

As the popularity of dash cams rise so does the number of cars that are fitted with solid dash cam features, we've listed out the major brands which have dash cams inbuilt below along with their models and dash cam system details to help you out. 

Subaru's 

Many of the Subaru car range come with an eyesight dash cam system inside of them which differs from regular dash cams slightly since they cannot be controlled or accessed by the driver. They record footage of the driving inside of the cars to help with lane departure warnings and adaptive cruise control. 

The Subaru Legacy, Outback and forester are a few examples of the cars which have these typical dash cams inside, the footage can be accessed by Subaru in case of a crash but you can't access it yourself for personal use.

Tesla's 

The Tesla Model X and S all have factory-installed dash cams, they can be recorded onto a USB stick and have a theft mode as well as helping to control independent driving functions from the car.

BMW 

BMW has a drive recorder function inside of its car which is on the 3 series and 8 series, this typical dash cam functionality records footage in case of a collision in 40-second instalments. This does come at an additional cost and doesn't include installation either.

Citroen 

Citroen calls their dashcam the 'connected cam' which allows you to access the recorded footage from the car through a phone app. It also has independent driving functions like other cars and you can save specific videos and photos from the car by holding down a button.

Mini

Mini have an advanced eye front and rear dash cam set-up on their cars such as the hack back and clutch man, this also has theft protection and GPS tracking inside.

These dashcams however have to be requested to be fitted inside at an additional cost so are not built-in like other models.

Should I Get a Car With a Built-In Dashcam? 

Overall, we suggest getting a car with a built-in dashcam if you want a higher-end car to avoid the hassle of fitting one yourself, most of these dash cam set-ups come with excellent setups such as collision tracking, independent driving functions and lane departure warnings too. 

If you do want easy access to your footage however we suggest buying your dashcam and installing it yourself, some of the higher-end factories fitted cams can be hard to access and set, unlike a regular dash cam.