The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of the metallic structures of a realistic car body frame on the specific absorption rate (SAR) produced by a cell phone when a complete human body model is placed at different locations inside the vehicle, and to identify the relevant parameters responsible for these changes. The modeling and analysis of the whole system was conducted by means of computer simulations based on the full wave finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) numerical method. The excitation considered was an 835 MHz lambda/2 dipole located as a hands-free communication device or as a hand-held portable system. We compared the SAR at different planes on the human model, placed inside the vehicle with respect to the free space situation. The presence of the car body frame significantly changes the SAR distributions, especially when the dipole is far from the body. Although the results are not conclusive on this point, this change in SAR distribution is not likely to produce an increase above the limits in current guidelines for partial body exposure, but may be significant for whole-body exposure. The most relevant change found was the change in the impedance of the dipole, affecting the radiated power. A complementary result from the electromagnetic computations performed is the change in the electromagnetic field distribution inside a vehicle when human bodies are present. The whole vehicle model has been optimized to provide accurate results for sources placed inside the vehicle, while keeping low requirements for computer storage and simulation time.