Before we begin, let me assure everyone reading that I, nor any of us here at The Autopian, have any desire to yuck your yum, ick your pick, flame your fave … none of that. If you’re a stancebro, by all means, stance, bro! You like high-riding trucks? Awesome. Teutonic tourers? Fantastic. Classic muscle? Love it. We are PRO-CAR here, and while there may certainly be all sorts of opinions and personal choices in the automotive world that may not individually be some of our things, we respect that they’re someone’s things, and we want everyone to enjoy there own brand of automotive fun. And we enjoy you enjoying it!
That said, if there is one person upon whom’s opinions and tastes we can all be pretty hard, it’s our younger selves. Depending on how old you are, your feelings about what was peak-cool-car have likely changed since your earliest days of automania – perhaps a little, perhaps a lot. Or flipped entirely; I find myself admiring way too many Crown Vics and Regals these days, and wondering whether certain W-bodies I spot have a 3800 under the hood.
Spacer
Back when my Dad was enjoying Seekonk, Massachusettes’ back roads in the 1976 Datsun 280Z you see above (he was the second owner, this was around 1980), 12-year-old me was always hoping the old man would give it the full body-kit treatment like I was seeing in ads in the backs of Road & Track and Car and Driver (and the occasional Motor Trend). At the very least, get the clear covers for the sugar scoops. Come on, Dad! Today, that Z looks perfect to me. Those turbines – chef’s kiss.
My tastes had matured little by the time I was commuting to high school in a 1974 Super Beetle. The only mods I could afford to actually make were chrome covers for the stock peashooter pipes and a fresh Fram air filter, but I dreamed of giving it a faux-Porsche makeover like The Coolest Guy In School, who’s name eludes me now. I’m not sure if his Beetle was wearing an Innovations 930-Vee kit as seen above, but it looked very much like that, whale-tail and all. And it was actually a complete, fully-painted car, not a mid-project kludge still in gelcoat. It was white with broad tandem stripes in two shades of blue, as I recall. What a machine!
Of course, I think it’s ridiculous now. But I’d love to drive it around ironically.
Your turn! What Mods Were You Into As A Kid That Make Adult-You Cringe?
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
Anything in the JC Whitney catalog counts as something you shouldn’t do. But I always wanted a Cherry Bomb muffler for my 200sx. Thankfully I was always broke.
Now that I’m 48, and still not grown up, I want some Bass for my Titan. Nothing that’s going to rattle the neighbors, but much more than factory. Maybe one day.
I guess mods in general. As a kid you buy what you can afford and waste money on trying to make a car something it was never designed for. As an adult with money I just buy the thing I always wanted to build in the first place and have it be infinitely more reliable and comfortable from the start.
clear corners. but actually, it’s not cringey. Everywhere else in the world I see clear headlights.
The oversized stereo system…huge rear speakers, large fronts, a huge huge amp. All of that rendered neutral by the loud exhaust system. Surprisingly, my hearing survived mostly intact.
Aye yi yi… typing about audio systems just earlier, I remembered something I must’ve blotted out for my mental health. It wasn’t a terrible sounding rig, in my CRX Si. I’d installed four good-sounding aftermarket 6.5 inch speakers and had a pal rig up a dash unit with a separate amplifier.
But, since theft prevention provided weird solutions, said pal provided a really weird cassette/AM-FM unit that was removable. Not the faceplate, but the whole shootin’ match. Which was supposed to save the radio pre-sets… with alkaline batteries, which would discharge inside of a few hours, rendering them useless, so you had to re-set the buttons every time you removed it.
Needless to say I rarely removed the unit, figuring any thief was probably doing me a favor, but it never went missing.
I’m not ashamed especially, although it’s pretty silly since a 4×10 front speaker wasn’t exactly going to drain my modest 24-year-older bank account. But when it became unlistenable, I removed the offending component, cracked open a green plastic-bodied AM transistor radio I had lying around, connected its wires to the old Buick’s, covered that mess with the grille cover and it sounded… good enough!
Oooooooooh boy…. the things I did to my poor 1996 Ford Ranger. I got it in ’96, had it till ’06, and in that time:
And believe it or not, there was MORE! I just listed the big stuff that makes me sigh in embarrassment now. Seriously my truck looked like I covered it with concrete and rolled through the JC Whitney warehouse.
Going back a little further, to early/mid childhood – ’70s style custom van *toys*. Some with opening doors and interior detail. There’s a bed in there. I’m not sure what the design team thought kids would think would go on back there, but 5-8 year old me guessed wrong.
Never on my cars, but on all my friends: the two worst words on the 2000s mods list, Altezza Tail Lights
Pretty much anything related to 1990s hot rod aesthetics, but especially the overuse of machined aluminum brightwork. Once while on lunch with my cousin back then, he started smoothing out the foil from his burrito on the dash of our work truck, a thrashed but still pretty cool calf-poop yellow squarebody. “I’m gonna show you something real cool”, he said, proceeding to rub the foil firmly into a piece of fake wood trim, dull side out. “See?” he said, “Looks just like billet. I did a Mary Kay box for my girlfriend like that.” Choices were re-examined that day.
Not everything has to be period-correct, but I’m no longer cool with mods that don’t play well with a vehicle’s original design. The high-school me that sketched out elaborate redesigns of the ‘69 Mustang fastback lived to see Ford build pretty much exactly that with the fifth generation, but as a cohesive whole instead of an “update” that would have made the car look like a senior citizen in parachute pants.
But yeah, billet… woof.
Purple StreetGlow neons on not just my first car (white Grand Am), but also on its replacement (gray Mazda3).
This is easy – exhaust mods that make your car as loud as physically possible.
I was never into most of the mods that made cars worse. Things like big wings, obnoxious graphics, obscene colors, “rubber band” tires on massive wheels, stance, etc. never appealed to me. In that way, I still mostly agree with my younger self. But I strayed from righteousness when it came to exhaust mods… First it was a Silverado with the loudest cat-back Flowmaster exhaust you could get. Then it was a straight-piped Mazdaspeed3. Thankfully it was never as bad as all the VW and BMW guys with their crackle tunes these days though.
I still have the MazdaSpeed3, exhaust and all, but that’s part of the reason I hardly drive it now (it was my daily for a while). I wouldn’t be opposed to modifying another vehicle’s exhaust again in the future, but I’d certainly tone it back. I’m still a sucker for a good sounding car, but there’s a balance between being stock and being as loud as humanly possible.
Pressurized carburetor on a cheap turbo setup. With an automatic choke. Learning experience.
Daytons on everything.
I spent weeks lovingly drawing a Mazda MX-6 on chromed Daytons – which helped me get a passing grade in my drawing class, even though I had a 20% attendance rate since I had a full-time job my last year in high school. Thank you Ms Nielsen.
Slamming the nose of my Super Beetle so low that it scraped on those concrete dealies at the fronts of parking spaces.
Great handling and looks but a terrible ride.
(I was chronologically an adult at the time.)
The only one I have a firm stance against that I liked when I was younger was the “dub” wheels, large rim and rubber band tires.
My first car was a 1984 Subaru GL sedan, black with all the power options and digital dashboard. It was a hand-me-down and I tried my best to give it love even though I didn’t appreciate it. It kind of reminded me of a small BMW 635CSI, so I got the generic rubber spoiler from the auto parts store and put that on the trunk lid to give it a similar silhouette. The spoiler looked a little (a lot) cheap and it was heavy enough that the trunk had trouble staying open. I probably should have left that alone.
I probably should also have stashed that car away somewhere safe. What can ya do?
Mine was a hand-me-down ’82 Subaru GL sedan in “shiny maroon” with a stick and A/C, an AM/FM radio, and nothing else. So I added a tape deck (Pioneer!), a CB Radio (the old man was into CBs), blacked out the chrome trim, and got rid of the awful stock fake wire wheel hubcaps for some much better looking plastic “aero” ones from a later Subie. Looked a heck of a lot better, sounded a lot better and played tapes. I cut about two inches off the stick and got a knob from an old BMW in the junkyard and glued it on. And I added a set of big-ass round Bosch driving lights to the top of the bumper – the better to spot moose and deer with in Maine. That car was pretty darned cool for the day.
I would do exactly the same today (well, it would be an MP3 player with Bluetooth today). I’d actually love to have a chance to drive one today. Pretty sure I would find it awful, LOL. I haven’t been in one since 1988.
My next car that I had long enough to play with was my ’85 Jetta 2dr. That got a sunroof (classic popup or take out ’80s style), a set of 13in VW Quantum alloys from the junkyard, a good stereo setup (Yamaha CD and Nakamichi amps with Boston Acoustics speakers). Next was my beloved ’84 Jetta GLI. That got 14in GTI alloys with sticky rubber, a Neuspeed exhaust system, Bilstein’s and more driving lights. And the stereo, of course. And the first car I ever did (had done – I didn’t know how to wrench yet) mechanical stuff to – it got the Euro-spec cam and exhaust manifold/downpipe, so probably 105hp! That is the car that I wish I still had.
There really aren’t any mods I did in my youth that I would not do today, though today’s cars don’t need them. All I have done to my two BMWs are adding back some factory niceties that BMW left off post-facelift, and in the case of the convertible, changed the original (ugly) piano-black interior trim for poplar wood. I have not done a single thing to the Mercedes wagon other than scheduled maintenance and repairs. Someday I will get around to installing the 3-stage intake I have for my BMW wagon, but it’s only been a dozen years that it’s been sitting on a shelf in my garage, no rush.
Anyone else flip their air filter cover upside down?
Oh yeah. I was taught that “mod” by a Highway Patrolman so I knew it was righteous .
Only before a race…for those extra 2 or 3 horsepower…