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
I undid lowering springs on stock struts after just a few short months. Got stiffer factory option springs and Koni adjustables. Never cheap out on brake or suspension modifications.
Body kits and underglow at first, full on Fast and Furious. After a while i transitioned to full JDM worship, anything JDM just HAD to be better than USDM crap. Then i moved on to racing stuff, if it wasn’t a homologation special then WTF are you doing bro? Still think those are cool but with age comes acceptance or at least respect for all vehicular trends.(OK most trends. stance can suck it)
I had a Neon license plate frame on my teenage car for about a week until a cop pulled me over and told me it was illegal. After that I got the hint that I didn’t really want to do things gave the cops excuses to pull me over. I have the same struggles sometimes with my son and his Miata. I try to steer him to the more tasteful mods, like sequential turn signals and lighting upgrades, but away from stuff like a stick-on spoiler.
A Mustang specific thing, but the sheer amount of time spent debating whether to remove the air box snorkel. “Can you feel any difference?” “I’m not sure!!”
But I am glad I talked myself out of the short throw shifter.
You don’t want to hear what I have to say then. My MGW shifter on the Mach 1 was a significant improvement and I couldn’t stand driving one with a stock shifter after that.
Oh, it’s a me thing not an objective thing. At this point, I’ve embraced the farm implement feel of the SN95 transmission as part of the car’s charm.
I got caught up in the “tuner” craze. Thankfully nothing too wild happened and the car could have been easily returned to stock. It did improve my wrenching skills, which now-me is thankful for.
Black wheels on everything.
Pretty much all the mods from the 2000s era car scene. They were cool when I was a teen.
Which makes sense, cause a lot of those cars were 20something dudes cruising the local high school, Dazed & Confused style.
I sometimes still see the euro taillights on an old vehicle and I’m like, how did we think that was cool
No exhaust or straight pipes I should not have done. Surface mount speakers and hot wired cassette players also a mess. Actually those were a cost thing. I think the only mods I did were to keep the cheap things working because I was too poor for anything cosmetic.
Not me, but back in the 90’s a buddy of mine had his room covered with pictures of Acuras cut out from car magazines that he had “slammed” by cutting the page in half with an X-Acto knife and removing the wheel wells to make it look like they were lowered. When I got my CRX, he got so excited, “Bro, just cut the springs and DROP IT!”
There was a period of time when I had a set of U bolts that you would buy at the hardware store clamped onto my springs to squeeze them lower. ????
Eventually my better judgements prevailed when I couldn’t take the sketchy changing and banging noises it would make when taking certain turns and bumps. Sigh.
Yeah, I did not take his advice on that.
I modded my first car with radial tires, rear anti-sway bar, full gauges, and a CB radio.
I wouldn’t bother with the CB anymore, the whole band is a mess.
How so? I’ve been curious about it
Loud exhausts, muffler deletes, etc. So annoying now.
Back when all I had were pitifully slow cars I wanted to make them louder so they would feel fast. Because Racecar! Now that I’m an old with cars that are legitimately fast I have no need for that nonsense. It’s one of the biggest reasons I went EV for my last car as I can have something with quick 0-60 and be virtually silent.
Silence is golden. My EV isn’t that fast by today’s standards. It’s definitely a lot faster and quieter than anything else I’ve owned. Handles better too!
I’m over loud exhaust also. Too many trucks and SUVs in my area have loud exhaust from either intentional modification, catalytic converter theft or rust. It’s just loud and annoying to me now.
The worst mod I was into as a kid was clipping baseball or football cards to my Schwinn Stingray to get that awesome sound as I rode it.
The horror…the horror
exactly, those cards would be worth more than a car today!
There was a thing when I was young where guys would jack up the rear ends of their muscle-adjacent cars (solid axles, leaf srings) and put huge tires on the back to make it look like a dragster. Now, I look back at that, and think about crash safety and avoidable fiery death.
Also, louvers on the rear window, or louvered hoods.
Guilty of leaf spring shackles and rear window louvers.
Walking around as a teenager in the early 90s, I recall seeing those still being driven around. We called them ’BTLP’ = big tires low performance.
A thrush muffler, flipped over air cleaner lid, traction bars, and white letter balloon tires do not make a smogged 305 Nova fast
I installed a pair of 10 inch Pioneer subwoofers in my Ford Focus hatchback in high school, I was over them before I finished college.
When I was young, there was no limit to how large a rear spoiler could be. If it looked like it belonged on the wings of a jetliner, so be it.
Chrome paint/wraps!
Please forgive my transgressions.
I had louvers on the back window of my 2004 V6 Mustang in high school and college. I also had my Instagram sticker on the windshield and rear window.
There’s a guy in my building with an S197 that has side window louvers. I go back and forth on if they look good.
I think they look marginally better on the S197, with the wider proportions
Literally all of them
Same
Two 12″ subs in the back of my Firebird, blasting Megadeth at 140db, overpowering the Cherry Bomb glass packs. But the most cringe mod was behind the wheel – my long and glorious mullet.
Nothing wrong with a quality mullet. You gotta go with the flow!
In high school, I really wanted a scoop/ventilated hood for my Ranger. I never got one due to cost, but I did install (waste money) on a number of other “performance” mods like a K&N air intake, cat back exhaust, and Jet performance chip. None of these did anything to increase the 112 thundering horsepower from the Lima 4-cylinder, which was too bad because the lift kit and 30″ tires definitely made getting up to speed take even longer than the glacial stock pace. At least the lift and big tires didn’t help much off road either, since neither did anything to address the lack of a front drive axle.
Looked cool though.
In high school I recall dreaming of doing a full custom car stereo with big subwoofers in the back. Now I can’t imagine ever wanting anything like that. Not only do you lose the storage space, there’s also zero reason for me to ever need to play music that loud. A nicely tuned stereo that plays my music at volumes and EQ that makes it sound good and is not disruptive is all I want, and basically any average car is good enough at that.
I’d like to think my taste back then mostly holds up, but I installed a “system” in my first car (Pathfinder). Klipsch speakers and two JBL 10″s in the back. I had to promise my dad I would never turn it up when driving in my neighborhood. Oh so cringe in retrospect.
Modern car audio is so much better than what it used to be. Actually designing for it helps.
Spinning rims. I never had them on a car, but I had a version on my BMX bike in middle school and some cheap plastic-chrome spinning wheel covers from Walmart or something that I had mounted to my bedroom wall…I took them down right before I had a girl over for the first time. They never went back up!
I’m at the point now where I’ve stopped cringing at the car mods I was into when I was 12 because I now realize that shit was rad and I genuinely had good taste back then.
Imagine being able to think back to being 12 and winding up anywhere other than a therapist’s office afterwards. MUST BE NICE MR. NSX!
I’m not saying that I’m not haunted every day by stuff I thought and said and did back then, but I was correct that late 90’s, early 00’s tuner culture was awesome and so were Midnight Club 3-era DUB cars.
I actually agree with this. Even ridiculous mods are great as long as you are having fun. I always find it weird when people get too caught up on appearing to be “mature”
People overthink. Cars are supposed to be fun, and modding your car in general is a stupid thing to do, so you may as well go all-out.
Definitely cringe bumper stickers.
A friend of mine had a WRX wagon with the back just plastered with stickers, so one day at poker night I added one that looked like your typical I heart my dog sticker, but the heart was replaced with a very clip-art style screw. It took him 3-4 months to notice.
Didn’t Gallagher show one that had “I [spade] my dog?”
Ugh, Calvin sticker here.
Every time I see a Calvin sticker my first thought is always, “I bet they have a nuanced opinion on the subject”
I used the Calvin stickers pissing on stuff to sortof judge how far out of the city I was in Mi. So city it was opposite car, like a Camaro pissing on Mustang, get more out Ford pissing on a Chevy, farther out pissing on NASCAR numbers, farther out pissing on snowmobile brands, and finally random gun brands (like Taurus not the car)… time to turn around…
If you don’t like my driving, GET OFF THE SIDEWALK!
I lowered my high school Fairmont by heating the coil springs.
I support this choice
But did they support that Fairmont?
One broke not long afterwards with a bunch of my friends in the back. I had it coming.
You can’t ruin something that was already ruined from the factory.
There’s a guy at our local Cars and Coffee who shows up with a beige Fairmont 4 door sedan with a built LS and a claimed 1000 hp that looks like a very real possibility.