Named data networking (NDN) presents a huge opportunity to tackle some of the unsolved issues of IP‐based vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). The core characteristics of NDN such as the name‐based routing, in‐network caching, and built‐in data security provide better management of VANET proprieties (e.g., the high mobility, link intermittency, and dynamic topology). This study aims at providing a clear view of the state‐of‐the‐art on the developments in place, in order to leverage the characteristics of NDN in VANET. We resort to a systematic literature review (SLR) to perform a reproducible study, gathering the proposed solutions and summarizing the main open challenges on implementing NDN‐based VANET. There exist several related studies, but they are more focused on other topics such as forwarding. This work specifically restricts the focus on VANET improvements by NDN‐based routing (not forwarding), caching, and security. The surveyed solution herein presented is performed between 2010 and 2021. The results show that proposals on the selected topics for NDN‐based VANET are recent (mainly from 2016 to 2021). Among them, caching is the most investigated topic. Finally, the main findings and the possible roadmaps for further development are highlighted.