I'm sure many of you have encountered this problem before. Step 1: Modify materials.cs. Step 2: Reload vehicle. Step 3: Realize materials.cs never updated. Solution: Step 1: Modify materials.cs, as before. Step 2: Instead of reloading vehicle, open up Blender. Step 3: Import the car's model. Step 4: Export it. Step 5: Close Blender. (this is important, you want to fix materials, not break them) Step 6: Vehicle reloads itself, and your modifications to materials.cs should be reflected!
That's because mesh hotloading also forces materials to reload. Anyhow, materials most of the time updates with CTRL+R too (not always, I've encountered this too sometimes, in particular when commenting out lines)