If there’s one thing car enthusiasts want from their vehicles, it’s more. They’ll dump tons of money into power-boosting parts, suspension upgrades, premium tires, engine tuning, and a whole slew of other fun stuff to make their cars faster off the line and quicker through turns. But for this Autopian Asks, I want to know about the other end of the spectrum: How much money have you spent on optional, not-repair-related stuff that doesn’t make your car perform better?
A funny thing about me is that, despite spending oodles of money on buying, storing, and fixing so many cars, I don’t actually like spending money on modifying them. Sure, I’ll happily blow $17,000 on a brand-new Smart, but then I’ll fight myself about spending $500 on a modification. That’s why most of my cars are almost completely stock. I want to put a set of VW GTI wheels on my Jetta SportWagen, but can’t convince myself to spend the money. I even fight myself over window tint, even though I hate driving around in cars that feel like fishbowls in the summer. So, it’s usually a pretty big deal for me when I do spend a lot of money on a modification, especially if it’s purely cosmetic.
Thanks to folks like the Bishop and Thomas Hundal, I’m deeper into BMWs than I have ever been before, and that’s dangerous. Thomas introduced me to a shop called ID4Motion, and all they do is make plug-and-play digital clusters for old BMWs and cars like the Honda S2000. ID4Motion’s instrument clusters were utterly amazing, and really help modernize a BMW E46 or similar.
I’m a huge fan of BMW’s clusters from the 2000s, but I still wanted to see what one of the nifty ID4Motion clusters would look like in my E61 wagon. Then I saw the price. I couldn’t believe people were blowing $1,000 just to have a digital instrument cluster. I’ve had the ID4Motion tab open on my phone for maybe two years now, thinking maybe one day I’ll spend the cash … but I just couldn’t justify it.
ID4Motion recently closed its doors, which made me sad. Thomas then informed me that sellers in China have been slinging their own digital clusters for years, and theirs were more like $300 or $400, not $1,000. So, I bought one.
I still feel weird about spending $400 on a purely cosmetic mod, but I did it. I’m also going to spend another $160 or so to give my E61 an Android Auto system. When I’m done, the E61 will feel at least a decade newer. Yes, I know I said I was going to sell that car, but every time I drive it, I fall in love again, so here we are. You’ll get to read about these things at a later date!
Am I the only one who feels this way? What’s the most you’ve spent on car mods that didn’t do a thing for performance?
Top graphic image: Mercedes Streeter
$11,000 on custom paint that my mom chose without consulting me on my buick in 2000. I pre-paid my painter but hadn’t made a final decision on colors yet, my mom went behind my back(I was 17 at the time so basically had no rights) and decided it would be “cute” to paint it root beer brown with an oh so 90s custom cream splatter on the nose complete with a gold pearl coat.
I was less than happy, especially after one of my friends pointed out that it looked like “elephant c**.” Her excuse was that the car had a tan interior so there weren’t a lot of colors that would look good with it, I proved her wrong in 06 when I had it repainted in honda supersonic blue pearl after I had to hang new quarterpanels on it.
I spent about $1500 adding factory nav and backup camera to a brand new Jetta because I wanted to use the harness in the car and the Chinese aftermarket stuff at the time was a bit iffy with windows ce. I think I spent a little under that about a decade earlier on a 7″ lcd and industrial PC VIA Eden based IIRC just because it looked neat and I could say I had a PC in my dash.
I’ve spent maybe $1200 on bumpers for trucks probably $1500 with a winch but then it becomes sort of a performance item.
Most expensive: $500 for custom neoprene seat covers for my trucks. And I’ve done this three times in the last 16 years. Worth every penny, because I have 5 kids, and the trucks have been our camping/hiking/kayaking adventuremobile. Mud, sand, gravel, sap, dirt, snacks, sodas, the occasional bodily fluid. Put in the washer and it’s good to go.
Second most expensive: full coverage floor mats for the reasons above.
Third most: the nerf bars on my prior truck so said kids could climb in and out.
Fouth most: amp and graphic equalizer for my first car, an 84 Camaro. I’m dating myself there, for sure. But hey, it was a great car and I could hear my tunes…
$300 on custom fit seat covers for the Civic, though that price will be dwarfed when I find the seats out of a wrecked carbon trim for the Mazda. And then that will be dwarfed when CorkSport has the bodykit for my car available, though one could make the argument the vented fenders help cool the brakes and the aero helps with downforce. I have no idea what that will cost, but I think $3-5000 is a pretty safe bet. More if it includes a new rear window, wing, and bracing for said wing.
I won’t be tracking the car, so those will be cosmetic upgrades. I don’t feel like dropping $1500 to have a fiberglass hood shipped here, so the plan is to make one myself. Done enough reading and watched enough videos to know I can make that myself for less than $500, so I’m gonna learn.
My S1 Elise Sport 160 was a project, and it cost me about £4,000 to buy (and about £13,000 in parts and servicing over the next nine years).
One of those parts was a colour matched hard top. I can’t remember the exact cost, but it was between 500 and 1000. It made my noisy, leaky car a dry and relatively quiet daily driver.
Also it no longer looked like a soggy green tent had collapsed on it.
I spent about $1200 to have leather seats installed, twice. I feel like a fool now.
I paid a shop a bunch of money to A) fix the ac in my 12 valve Dodge pickup and B) install the “death pin” blocker kit that’s just a fancy washer. The AC was WELL worth the money and even though the death pin hadn’t moved in 180k miles, I’m not going to take the risk on the only thing that’ll kill that motor
$70 on the heated mirrors that were on the top Forester to replace the manual mirrors it had standard. The 98 Foresters are pre-wired for heated mirrors even if it came with manual mirrors. The heated mirrors are also much bigger than than the non-heated, so that’s another benefit.
The mirrors were $30 each, and the switch was $10