Technically they don't need to give you the code unless you own that model of car. There's no requirement in the GPL that the code has to be shared to the whole world/everyone. It only needs to be provided to the person that has bought the vehicle which includes said software in compiled form.

This is not correct. They need to provide the offer for source to anyone they provide the binaries to (e.g. customers) but the offer has to be valid for anyone that gets a hold of it[1].

[1]http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#WhatDoesWrittenO...

I think I didn't expand my comment enough. In this context (of software running a car), the manufacturer needs to provide a way of getting the GPL'd source code to anyone that owns a vehicle with the relevant binary running in the car.

Basically you don't lose your GPL software right if you've bought the car from someone else other than the manufacturer.

I'm pretty certain they don't distribute source code with cars though, so seeing as the author didn't say "I don't own the car" - and they didn't ask - I think that's moot.

Once they give a copy to one owner, that owner can distribute it publicly.

This is only allowed under GPLv3, iiuc. Under GPLv2, you are obliged to distribute (host) the sources yourself even if it's an unmodified upstream version.