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 fantasized about putting aftermarket wheels and somehow upgrading the power on my 1992 Camry 4 cylinder when I was a young teen. Probably because of watching Fast and Furious.
By the time I was an adult I realized that was tacky and focused on shock and damper upgrades on my cars for handling.
White wall tyres on anything from after the 1950ies.
Racing stripes and tacky decals, gradually progressing to painting everything matt black and a quick and dirty rattle can flame job over the top.
Although to be honest, I’d do it again in a a heartbeat, and my green ’62 Valiant currently has red flames down the side, and my project Valiant ute is planned to get ghost multicolour metalflake flames over a silver metalflake/green tinter base.
Yes, I was cringe, and continue to be cringe, but I don’t care – there are too many boring looking cars on the road to NOT want to make your cars look ridiculous!
Decals. So, so many decals. My black Pontiac Grand Am GT (a 1999 coupe with a SUNROOF – I was such a baller as a high school junior in 2007) had red accent decals all over it. And red/black seat covers.
Ew.
I have some stickers on my car now, but only on the rear window and only small ones that I could easily remove.
The thing I found in my garage that made me sigh at myself was a grounding kit…
Tinted headlight covers from that company “GTS”. I had a set on my ’99 Saturn SC2 🙂
Overly powerful radios
Neon underglow and that sparkly rainbow window tint. I had both on my ‘86 Monte Carlo SS. I’m embarrassed to admit some of the questionable mods made to that car.
(This is going to make me sound like an odd person. So be it!) Like some of the other comments I’ve seen, I used to be really into subwoofers and car stereos. Over the years, I’ve grown up (now 43 years old), thought about my long-term hearing, and have left it behind. Or so I thought. In the past few years. I have traded bass for bass and am now the head coach for the bass fishing team at my school. One kid on the team wanted subs in his truck, so over the summer, I helped him pick out his components and taught him how to build a custom box. Now, several more kids on the team want banging systems in their trucks too. We get together, and I help them work on their boxes as a kind of team-building thing. They want to make shirts that say Bass team / Bass team. Hillbilly nerds, I love it. But, yeah, so now I’m back into car stereos!
My 1990 Honda CRX Si sported a ‘HondaSport’ logo across the windshield and blue tinted PIAA headlight bulbs. I also had a bra on that car to cover up the horribly rock-chipped hood – with a glued-on red Honda badge. It also had a stereo that managed to get 134 dB on a dB meter once.
My 1994 Honda Civic EX Coupe had red ‘Type R’ floormats, a “Type R’ shift knob, and very briefly ‘Type R’ logos on the sides. I also had purple fog lights on that car which got me two ‘blue light’ tickets from the local constabulary. This car got up to 136 dB.
I now have permanent hearing damage, but am a reformed up-badger.
Not sure if I regret it but I rocked a genuine Nissan bra on my 1992 Sentra. It was brand new and I was determined to keep it that way!
Still have the box after all these years!
I unashamedly still love the stuff I did back then, still like clear taillights still like slammed cars, still like bright colors and underglow but I like when they are executed in a more muted way, my current car is bright yellow and I’m in the process of making custom clear tail lights for my car with the stock housings. See also tri spoke wheels.
I daily a BMW e36 slammed on coilovers with stretched tires. I’m 45 years old. I don’t even care.
Personally not proud of this, but me and all of our friends in New England where I grew up, has Confederate plates on the car cause we were “Rebels”, Stupid kids really.
Yikes. Those were REALLY popular here in Texas in the 70’s… and now, for some stupid reason.
You know the reason
Yep, and the reason is still stupid.
Oh Dear Lord. Those modifications are horrible. I had a classmate in college with a 240Z and it was beautiful. His only modification was to the exhaust system, which ended up sounding great.
The worst thing I did personally was but some driving lamps I bolted onto my Datsun 510. One got hit by a rock but the survivor ended up on the back bumper of my next car, a Peugeot 504 so I could see better towards where I backing up. And on occasion, get some dick to dim their high beams when they were close behind me.
Well, I also replaced the whole rusted out exhaust on my 510 with a straight pipe and a glass pack muffler. Which sounded fun around town, but was pretty annoying on the 12-hour drive home on quarter breaks from college.
I always wanted a 510. Major envy. 🙂
Mine was a ’68 station wagon. So that was probably not the one you wanted. But it was a great car for college days as it held everything I owned back then. It wasn’t awful to drive. Understeered pretty heavily, but when not pushed, it was ok.
I still root for Nissan to at least survive. As much as the way I liked how Jettas used to drive, I wouldn’t be sad to see VWOA disappear after how they handled some warranty stuff with me. So, no Audi, no Porsche in my future. And my wallet will likely be better off for it.
And the last Sentra I rented was surprisingly decent. Not great enough to trade in a ’17 Accord V6 with < 70K on the odometer. But nice enough that I’d consider one after some catastrophic event.
I’m pretty much sworn off of VW & Co. products myself due to painful experiences. I’d like Nissan to make it too… I’ve never owned one myself yet, but there are a few I’d like to.
Cutting the roof off of most of my brother’s and my Matchboxes to turn them into convertibles or T-tops. Ruined a lot of nice cars that way.
I beat sone of mine with rocks to make than look like they had been in a crash, so the matchbox fire trucks and ambulances could respond.
We both had a Mercedes pickup truck that had a bed with a removable top, and we’d put some gas in the bed, and set it on fire. My brother also had a tin tow truck that he would stuff with fireworks every NYE to blow it apart (then put it back together for next NYE).
Good times.
1996 Kawasaki ZX-7RR with a Ti full race Muzzy pipe – just like the one on Doug Chandler’s race bike or so they said. Fun bike but that exhaust was obnoxiously loud.
I’m sure my neighbors hated me as much as I despise the kid that zips up and down my street with his straight piped R6.
I remember running those on the dyno and wearing earplugs and earmuffs and it was still almost unbearable.
I was big into the custom car stereo thing, to the point that kids from high school would commission me to build them custom systems for their cars. I would make custom speaker enclosures to fit larger setups, utilize component speakers, and build custom fiberglass subwoofer boxes. No matter what I drove you could hear the bass from blocks away, and now I cannot fathom how annoyed my neighbors were with me, especially the ones with young kids. These days I appreciate a good stereo system in a car, but my desire for overwhelming bass or ultimate clarity at every frequency at full-volume is practically non-existent and fully overwhelmed by my desire to keep what hearing I have left so I don’t have to transition into using hearing aides like I’m noticing more and more folks my age are doing.
I’m 47. My brother had giant subwoofers in the back of his Firebird that rattled the rear view mirror off his windshield multiple times. Got my first hearing aids last year. My left ear is ringing as I type this.
About a decade ago I started noticing my hearing loss and got serious about hearing protection. Hopefully that slows the further decline.
Same here… 51. I used to install stereo systems in cars. My hatchback had 13 speakers in it, including the subs in the trunk. Also, the music scene in Austin in the mid and late 90’s was LOUD. We didn’t GAF, we were right up front next to the collossal speakers in small clubs.
Now I have permanent tinnitus and hearing loss. I use closed captions on almost everything I watch. I struggle to catch everything in conversations.
I wear earplugs to concerts. My stereo in my vehicle is nice, but it’s not broadcasting to other cars. I’m shopping hearing aids, too.
Yep, that was me. I actually broke the latch on the rear hatch of my 300ZX on a particularly hard bass hit.
In my professional life I have been very cautious about my hearing, but have noticed it starting to fade recently, though the audiologist says it hasn’t been much of a degredation just yet. The audiologists emphasis on “yet” wasn’t reassuring.
Hmm, the mods I made were more longevity-centered (at least intended) than visual. I added an external oil cooler to my ’67 VW squareback. It was removed some years later as a result of an engine overhaul.
For my ’64 VW sunroof bus I added side scoops to the air intakes on the side. Being much more make-it-useful than visual, I made then out of thick enough and wide enough to be able to use them as steps for loading kayaks up top. They looked OK as I got the vinyl-coated aluminum from Boeing Surplus.
On my ’71 Honda CB 350 year-round ride in Seattle, my mods were safety-related. I added fibreglass side boxes at the rear, crashbar up front, full fairing with windshield and fabricated nylon fairings between the front fairing and my feet for riding in the rain (Seattle, remember?) including a cover for when parking. The side boxes and crashbar saved me on the two times I went down (at low speeds).
Of all the tacky 00s era nonsense that I coveted, only the lambo doors don’t appeal to me anymore. But the rest of it – spinning rims, color change paint, led underglow – we need to bring that back. Oh and Hoobastank, Rob Thomas, and Sum 41 too is please
How old were you when you realized your tribal tattoos would be more expensive to remove than they were to get? ;D
lol never learned, just got a cover up with a rose and a scroll that says “No Regerts”
Dude… sweet.
It’s funny – I don’t really feel embarrassed by anything that I have thought was cool on a car that I can think of off hand. There are lots of things that I still think are cool that are out of fashion – a C3 Corvette with side pipes gives me feelings in places, and I feel no shame about it – but most things that people thought were dorky years later, I already thought they were dorky when they were in style.
“Big and littles”? Dumb. Like the cliche Southern cop says, this ain’t no race track, boy. And it especially ain’t no drag strip. You do have to turn left and right at some point, you know.
Mini trucks? LOL.
Silly wheels? First it was tiny, tiny wheels on pretty much anything – I got a great deal of comic relief from the “tiny wheels backspaced way too far out, and destroying wheel bearings all the time” look – then wheels were somewhat normal for only a short time before the steamroller era.
And anything silly that got hot since roughly the time I earned the right to call myself a grumpy old man – stance and squat trucks come to mind – can basically just get the hell off my lawn before I throw a beer can at it.
Nope. I have no regrets for any of my automotive tastes. My conscience is clear.
BRING BACK THE MINI TRUCKS
I was never into cars that look modded. My dream was always to build my own car, so I generally dislike anything that doesn’t look like it could have been OEM or isn’t there for some functional purpose unless it’s there for comedy, which is always appreciated. It’s pretty much just questionably aesthetic mods that follow awful fads (if it’s supposed to be an individual’s expression as I often hear claimed, why does it look like what everyone else is doing?); look like something knocked together in a garage by someone who unironically wears a polyester suit to a wedding decades after those were in style decided they were a designer one day (yes, I had a specific person in mind); or a fortune has been spent to make a mediocre common car into a garage decoration. Kustom Kar shows or more modern equivalents were visual nails on a chalkboard to me even as a kid.
I can appreciate wild builds up to a point, but the older I get, the more I love a good sleeper. The more power and the plainer the brown wrapper, the better.
Sleepers are definitely cool. I’m not sure if they’re really any more useful in the (modern) real world, but I like them.
I will say that it’s nice having a car that can move the way you want, but doesn’t attract too much Imperial attention.
My answer is that I regret nothing, but mostly because I couldn’t afford to do anything. I suppose some of the stuff I did to keep my beat ass Corsica on the road could be considered mods, but I’m proud to say I stand by what I ‘done.
Funny, I loaded up a Gran Turismo 4 game save earlier this summer, probably last messed with when I was 22 or so. I have to say my taste in mods wasn’t too shabby, though I definitely went too hard on the TE37’s.
Sometimes it seems like I was the only young car-guy (car-kid?) who couldn’t stand a single molecule of the Fast and Furious universe. I mean not a single goddamn car or thing about that series was anything but cringe to me.
I was barely too old to get into that movie when the first one came out, and it didn’t take long for me to get tired of the entire trend – I was already a hater of mini trucks and most lowered things anyway.
Circa 2006, my single next-door neighbor took a chance and went on an internet date with a guy ten years her junior. She laughed as she told me and my wife that he pulled up to the curb to pick her up in an of-its-time tuner car that, quote, “looked like a Jolly Rancher on wheels.” There was not a second date.
Can I just say that while I respect the inclusiveness, a statement like
is mealy-mouthed horseshit? There are “yums” that absolutely should be shamed forever, that should, in fact, be illegal. And sometimes are. But people still engage in them.
Squat trucks deserve absolutely nothing but scorn and ridicule. Blatant, point-and-laugh, GTFOHWTS bullying. If you didn’t want me to laugh at you, well, you shouldn’t have done that to your truck and then showed it to me. That’s what happens. I laugh uncontrollably and call you unkind things.
In 1997 I had a 1989 Corolla Coupe with pop up head lights (look it up). It was black on black with an automatic (sad trombone). I had a set of 17″ chrome 5 stars, a basket handle “Supra” spoiler on it, aftermarket fog lights colored blue to imitate HIDs, some stick on Pep Boys chrome trim around the windows, and underbody neons (green), complemented inside by a very loud (4 15″ subs in a wall) and poorly installed audio system. I was crushing it!!
Bababab bass! I would have envied that back in the day,