Right. I understand why some ‘yoofs’ want to stick massive spoilers on their cars.
I also understand that some of them want to lower them so much that they’d ground out on every speed bump.
What I really do not understand is that thing where the wheels are stuck out at an angle looking like an elephant has just sat on the car and squashed it.
What’s all that about, and how do you even go about having it done?
God I’m sounding like an old man now.
Better have a nice cup of Horlicks.

You have to love those massive rear spoilers on their FWD cars though eh.

It’s all about the driftin innit

Is it even possible to drift a very badly squashy wheeled VW polo?

It’s defined as stance, involves adjusting the camber angles on the suspension/hubs by aftermarket parts so it kicks out the bottom of the wheel, usually involves the additional fitment of stretched tyres. Utterly pointless from a performance/handling viewpoint but I guess it satisfies the artistic/vanity/need to be seen ego of the owner.

When ever I see a pic of a stanced mk2 golf a bit of my soul withers and dies 🙁

There is one even more pointless the rat look, what the hell is that about, take a nicely painted car and then just vandalise it. Theres a lad near me that has put chicken wire over his headlights, you’ve just got to wonder.

The stance thing originated in Europe and Japan from what happened when you slammed some cars down to the floor, independent suspension arms twist the wheels inwards. A few thought it looked good so it caught on despite the fact it ruins the handling! The first cars I saw with it were 90’s Civics and a few BMW’s. Basically lower = better in their minds.

The rat-rod thing started out in the US (mainly California) where old muscle cars and early Fords could be bought cheap due to the paint being wrecked/missing and the panels getting a rusty patina in the dry sunshine of some states. The whole idea is that the car is mechanically sound but the body is just kept together, not styled with trick parts etc. Again it’s been hijacked by people spending loads of cash on getting the look with paint jobs so missing the point entirely.

Google Slammed!
2 Young lads at work do this. One has had more trouble with his shitty polo since doing it, drive shafts snagged etc. The other bought these coilover shiny suspension things for God knows how much to fit to his bmw and has since lost control of it twice and his brakes failed the other night. Slammed in deed 😯

Hehe! Slamming also really messes up the turning circle, giving a little hot hatch similar manoeuvrability to a super tanker!

However, properly done and tested, a little bit of camber and toe can help the handling for competition use, I personally found a couple of degrees camber and a degree of toe in on the rear wheels of my Mk1 Golf for Hillclimbing, helped turn in massively. Until I fitted the Quaife 😉

Is this what you mean? You obviously live some where chav tastick I’ve not seen anything like it in Bradford….

Touring cars tend to have quite a lot of camber too. Can you spot the similarity in these high performance cars?

Each to their own, but a strange one I have noticed round here is the young lads are taking their front number plate off and putting it on the dash by the windscreen.

Rally car chic I suppose. Just looks a bit daft.

Is that a

?

Is that purple thing up there for real??!!
Looks like something akin to Lightning McQueen in Disney’s Cars.

I don’t know about explain… but back in 2013 I went to the ‘Players’ car show, which was pretty much all about ‘slammed’ cars.

IIRC it was started by two guys (Jaymac and Carl) who wanted to promote a show that was not just Japanese or VAG etc.
The ‘Players’ show is now sponsored by ‘Airlift’ suspension.

As with any vehicle culture, there were some amazing high-end builds, and some atrocious ‘wannabees’. I do remember talking to a somewhat stoical owner of a ‘slammed’ BMW (sat in a huge puddle of oil) who had smashed his sump off whilst driving to the event.

However, from the people I spoke to, it reminded me of the same values / skills / camaraderie that we had 30 years ago building custom motorcycles.

Players Show Links

(My 1998 Discovery is in no danger of getting ‘slammed’ any time soon.)

Stanced/slammed car tells you ‘I live at home with my Mother even though I’m a grown man’.

It’s all about the looks innit. What amazes me is how the yoof of today, whom we’re led to believe are all jobless, uneducated and destitute, can afford to buy cars, let alone drop many times the car’s value on them to make them worse. When I was a yoof and gainfully employed, I could hardly afford the weekly petrol fill up and the only way I could bling my car up was to buy a pair of furry dice to hang off the rear view mirror. Getting a set of Alloy Wheels was a pipe dream, and I didn’t have a banging sound system in the house, let alone the car. At least it keeps them occupied.

To be fair, not all yoofs are like this. A family opposite me has three of them and they seem to be big into MK1 Golfs and have a nice trio of them which they’re restoring – and I mean properly restoring, completely stripped down to the bare shell, full shell resprays, engine rebuilds and lord only know’s what else, with a few tasteful mods built in. They look amazing cars and all done (apart from the paintwork of course) on their parents drive.

Some start really young

Now I love this, you can go to low though. The whole Rat look thing was interesting for a while but there is only so much you can do before it gets contrived. IMO

Its all a bit Daily Mail in here…

Cars like that are a good indicator of the presence of a ‘right weapon’ the owners definitely mouth breathe and have a low IQ.
Instead of stoping age 7 at the football card and peg on their bikes they decided to continue to appease their inner child into adulthood.
I find it fascinating.

Old men in “can’t understand young people” shocker, film at 11.

I don’t get it either, it’s really just a case of form over function. Which is I suppose is the point, they ‘look good.’ When I was a ‘yoof’ the holy grail of cars were stealth bombers, what would be called a “sleeper” today. Speak softly and carry a big stick; a couple of my mates used to take great pleasure in getting clapped-out Metros and Montegos and throwing stupid engines in them, then drag-racing brand new BMWs into oblivion at traffic lights. Each to their own I suppose.

Its all a bit Daily Mail in here…

Yep!

I like the cartoonishness of the splayed wheels, ridiculous way to make a car that gets driven unless it’s on air though.

Stretched tyres are weird. Put wider wheels on your car then put narrow tyres on your wide wheels.

I don’t get the weird Jap stuff with wheels at 45 degrees. Loads of those things are static too (ie, not on air suspension so thats how they run them all the time!).

A lot of the VW stuff that you’ll see with “wheels stuck out at an angle” will be on air so when raised up, the wheels are back to normal.

Whether you get/like it or not, the VW community is one of the friendliest bunch of people I’ve been involved with. And thats not a bad thing is it? Spending thousands on suspension and wheels and stuff is no different to spending thousands on a carbon frame to go and ride it around forests in the mud is it?

I got a 3rd place at Players for my RX7, trophy is a polished section of 4″ bore exhaust. Use it to keep my tap water bottle in on my desk at work like a ghetto wine cooler.

Hard camber that you’re talking about comes from several sources and depends on your tribe. Air cooled VW excessive rear camber pre dates the internet.

For the Japanese cars the camber started off on drifters to increase castor at the front and give better suspension angles during drifting. This was then turned into a cartoon style of modifying by the bosozoku lot as shown by that purple thing up there /\. Additionally in another Japanese scene the VIP cars use hugely excessive camber and roll on the inner section of massively stretched tyres.

There’s as many tribes and niches in modified cars as push bikes, one size (pun intended) does not fit all.

Just because you don’t understand something, no need to be negative.

Can’t say I’ve seen it?

Sometimes the rat look works.
My bil has done a couple of rat bay window campers. Basically, he left the body work, rust and everything, sorted everything else, and fitted a scobby engine in the back….
Disturbingly fast, in a very scary way.

Let em’ carry on I reckon, if it runs the handling and performance then hey thats thier issue not mine.
I do stop at dangerous modifications and if this kinda thing has an impact on safety then it should be captured within the Law and MOT type scenario.

Dude.
Yo!
Innit!

Leave them too it they’re expressing themselves and enjoying life 😀

Rat look’s hard to do right, when it works it really works but a near miss can look terrible.

bikebouy – Member

Let em’ carry on I reckon, if it runs the handling and performance then hey thats thier issue not mine.
I do stop at dangerous modifications and if this kinda thing has an impact on safety then it should be captured within the Law and MOT type scenario.

Thing is, for a lot of these things, they are dangerous and they’re already illegal. (frinstance, tyres protruding from arches) Messing with tyres and suspension geometry for looks generally eaves a less safe car, rolling around on the edge of an overstressed tyre with crippled suspension isn’t smart. If you take a look at the condition of the tyres on street’d cars like this you’ll often find something pretty nasty.

I love it for show cars but the trouble is, people copy show cars for the road, or take pride in not being a trailer queen and drive around in something that’s not really that suited for it.

Having said that, it’s all a sliding scale, lots of mods impact on safety marginally so there’s a question of where you draw the line.

I don’t care if people want to make their cars look stupid, that entirely up to them.

But stupid massive noisy exhausts really piss me off!! Doesn’t help that I live near a bridge that everyone seems to want to rag their car an bike through and make as much noise as possible!!

It looks good on this…

but not on this…

Instead of stoping age 7 at the football card and peg on their bikes they decided to continue to appease their inner child into adulthood.

On a bike forum.

Where grown men drop £000’s on a carbon fibre dookickeys to ride around the woods on.

Legs, stand on, have none, etc.

I’m happy people do it. Gives old men something to laugh at.

Where grown men drop £000’s on a carbon fibre dookickeys to ride around the woods on.

Legs, stand on, have none, etc.

all incremental performance or durability upgrades to ride round the woods if riding round the woods is your thing. (i dont have a fancy carbon bike just a 2009 26in trance-X)
those car mods serve no purpose except the adoration of your bedwetting peers and impair rather than enable your vehicle while you crawl along U.K’s congested roads.

those car mods serve no purpose except the adoration of your bedwetting peers and impair rather than enable your vehicle while you crawl along U.K’s congested roads.

Same with pretty much any car on the road then, if everyone only bought for function we’d all be driving 1.0l (unmodded) polo’s. Bikes too, I could get everywhere on a gents shopper (may push a few bits).

Its a form of expression, and I can appreciate a lot of enthusiasm, creativity and skill goes into (some of) these. Happy to view from a distance!

Please excuse my ignorance, but would you want to go places in them? You know, motorways and such.

’02 steel HT, 26″, never raced or rallied, £2k new.

I’ve driven modified cars all over the UK and into Europe.

Admittedly when your car is so low you have to wait til the tide is right to get on the ferry ramp and then drive in convoy diagonally across it to get up you do question your own sanity. 😆

but would you want to go places in them?

Perhaps a wet tesco’s carpark in some grim satellite town to stand around hunch shouldered talking dump valves with Kev?

I’ve got camber on my slightly lowered VW Beetle, but that’s because it’s running a swing axle gearbox so when you drop it the wheels kick out.