In your controller, render the new action from your create action if validation fails, with an instance variable, @car populated from the user input (i.e., the params hash). Then, in your view, add a logic check (either an if block around the form or a ternary on the helpers, your choice) that automatically sets the value of the form fields to the params values passed in to @car if car exists. That way, the form will be blank on first visit and in theory only be populated on re-render in the case of error. In any case, they will not be populated unless @car is set.