Car modification is a popular industry. Lots of people like to add their own personal touch to their car to make it stand out from the rest, by making stylish additions, or replacing bulbs with funkier colours. But styling your own car is a bit like fashion. It’s easy to go too far, or just get it plain wrong.
We’ve all seen car styling mods gone haywire. But as well as making your car look ugly, they can also be detrimental to your driving, and your safety. In some cases, badly carried out mods can even damage your car and decrease its value. So when putting your own stamp on your vehicle, it’s important to keep safety in mind, and enlist the help of a professional if necessary.
With that in mind, here are our top six top nightmare styling faux pas, which no self-respecting car owner should ever make:
Animal Paint Jobs
You know what we’re talking about. Leopard- or tiger-print paint jobs. Snakeskin paint jobs. Grills made to look like shark teeth. Or worse, cars with mouse ears. Unless you’re a mobile dog-grooming company or advertising a zoo, you should never subject your machine to such a mauling. It cannot look good.
Spoilers on a Hatchback
It’s amazing to think that spoilers and skirting on Vauxhall Novas and Ford Fiestas aren’t a thing of the past. Even though it isn’t 1995 anymore, and said cars have never even been anywhere near a race-track, these sorts of mods are still going on. If you want to get pulled over by the police at every corner, then a spoiler is definitely the way to go.
Drilling a Hole in Your Exhaust
It has been thought by a number of people in the past that drilling a hole in your exhaust is one way to make your 1.2 litre engine sound like a Lambo. However, it doesn’t. What it does do, is cause damage to your exhaust, and makes your car sound stupid. Don’t do it.
Furry Dice
Even when employed sarcastically, furry dice are a bad joke, not to mention distracting to a driver. For both safety and style, the only thing that should be dangling from your rear-view mirror, ironically or not, is a tree-shaped air freshener.
Tinted Windows
Firstly, you aren’t the President of the United States. Secondly, it’s likely that most people don’t care enough to study what is going inside your vehicle. In fact, tinted windows screams ‘suspicious behaviour’, and only makes it more likely that you’ll be pulled over and cautioned by police for placing a sight-obstruction on your vehicle.
Chunky License Plate Lettering
Personalised plates are a functional, if at times somewhat self-aggrandising, way of putting your own stamp on your car. But making your registration almost illegible with chunky elaborate fonts isn’t a good idea. It makes it harder for traffic inspectors and police to see your number, and again, increases the likelihood of you being reprimanded.
This article is written by Steve who works for Turbo Revs. In his free time, he loves to hire supercars and take them for a spin around the UK!
