Yes, they can.
It depends a lot on what you want to do. You can have "red" and "blue" civilian cars. They are exempt from the fire of military units, similar to ambulances (understand that this is an intermediary solution). If you do not make them blind and if you remove the radio damage, they can become intelligence assets that will report presence of the other side's troops. You could mix blind cars with those transporting troops. As soon as the troops get out of the cars they may be engaged by the other side's military units.

So, by shaping their properties you can achieve different effects.