Stupid car modifications?

Bucket seats, in my 1979 Capri, from which I’d already removed the rear seats in readiness for my attempt at a roll cage from some scaffolding.

Needed to pop to Motormania so just loosely bolted the aforementioned bucket seats in. Big mistake, the impact of which became apparent when I tried to drag race from the lights. Front bolts predictably came loose & the seats tipped back. Car lurched forwards & stalled, in the middle of the lights. I was now trapped, clutching in vain at the hand grips & steering wheel. Luckily someone spotted my predicament & opened the door, allowing me to crawl out into the road. I was more peed at tearing my snow washed denims.

I love the Pauline Calf quote about Paul’s Capri

“**** me, Paul! It looks like you’ve covered it in super glue and ram-raided Halfords!”

😂

That Barry Boys site has some great examples

A lifted pick up around here. Outer diameter of the tyres has to be around 4′. Bank of LED lights at the front and rear. Snorkel. Winches. Hi-lift jack. God knows what the lift alone cost.

It’s rear wheel drive and doesn’t even have a locking diff 🙂

The ones with the wheels at an angle so they look like they need the toilet do my head in. I really cannot see the point.

Often with tyres that are really too narrow to fit, with very exposed outer rims. This seems to be a ‘thing’ on older MX5’s, for some reason. Great idea, take a car well known for its handling, then do a great job screwing it up, and making it really ugly at the same time.

I spent ages on mine working with the genuine font but cutting down size and margins and sizing down the flags and then putting everything back into the right proportions til eventually I had the most legit-looking illegal plate imaginable.

I’m fine with that, mine is a little smaller than legal, but still full sized letters. It’s the tiny and script ones that bug me as they’re probably riding like idiots and speeding, why give more ammo to the Police to pull you?

Well I don’t mind a bit of stealthy modding, the problem is with modern cars they’re already pretty good so people just end up ruining them.

I had an old Porsche and did some mods to modernise it and lift the power and performance a bit and they were effective. I ‘upgraded’ the suspension too but that didn’t quite so successful. Great on track days but not so great for day to day driving.

My biggest pet hate are those eejits with cars that have automatic raising spoilers like TT’s and Audi A7’s, who mod them so they’re up all the time. I struggle to think of many more things that are so sad and pathetic.

There’s an Astra online that’s been done out like Thunderbird 2.

How the hell do you link images in here these days?

https://images.app.goo.gl/qbR2bfjdQC8XW1gr9

I hate all bodywork mods but especially tacky stuck on stuff and tinted lights etc, I work in motorsport though so can appreciate proper engine, braking and suspension modifications providing it’s a decent car to begin with.

Those stupid pops & bangs maps that people get done or come on some cars as standard are the most pointless though. I suppose they appeal to wannabe rally drivers that like to think they’ve got antilag.

Loud exhausts, might make 0.00001bhp more at 6900rpm, but will almost certainly have less power everywhere else in the rev range, so totally pointless from a performance standpoint.

On your average 1 litre engined boy racer car with a big bore I’d agree but on anything turbocharged with a restrictive standard exhaust it’s an easy way to gain a load of power and spool the turbo quicker, easily 20bhp on some cars.

On the flip side my friend has just bought a Maserati quattro Porto and it sounds like a Corsa with a hole in the exhaust.

I was once followed, no, make that tailgated, through a 50mph limit on the M1 by a bunch of lads in a fully slammed and delt-with Corsa (20″ wheels, “m3” mirrors, blue side lights, stick on bpnnet vents, and a “wish list” down the doors), that even at constant throttle could be heard droning away like a swarm of pubescent wasps, and as we got close to the end of the 50mph bit, he moved out and pulled level with me, ready to make a dash for it, for speed and for glory.

unfortunately, at the time, i was driving a Mclaren P1…………

(frankly, he could have nailed the brake pedal rather than the accelerator for all the difference it made 😉 )

Chap at the top of my road is an early 60s Porsche man. Went past after he had reversed his new 991.2 GT3 off the drive and was picking up the remainder of his carbon fibre splitter…I suspect he went in head first the day before…

“wish list” down the doors)

Haha yeah this is one of my favourites. There’s a dude near me with a standard rover of some sort. Looks like povo spec as well. It’s completely covered in stickers for brembo, janspeed, pioneer, cosworth etc.
Plus a shitload of aftermarket chrome badges and trim pieces edging the windows etc.
Looks like the car a magpie would aspire to own.

spent ages on mine working with the genuine font but cutting down size and margins and sizing down the flags and then putting everything back into the right proportions til eventually I had the most legit-looking illegal plate imaginable.

Motorcycles are legally allowed to have smaller fonts and spacings than cars, so I picked up a random 6 digit private plate on ebay and hey presto small fully legal number plate 🙂 the replacement tuneable ecu, k&n and exhausts were well worth the money too 🙄

For what I said about stupid suspension earlier, I really think my van would benefit from improved damping and slightly softer/shorter springs as its lightly loaded 95% of the time.

But I reckon it’s about £1k for the kit fitted, so not high up my priority list.

The T5 scene is riddled with chavsessories, such as:
Side rails (add weight, collect dirt which you then get on your shoes and trousers as you get in).
Aftermarket headlights that somehow are worse than the unforgivably bad oem units.
air bag suspension, for when you really have to rest its arse on the ground.
LED bulbs that riddle the car with canbus errors.
Bonnet bras.
Alloy wheels that aren’t load rated for a van, or even just the van itself.
Roof bars that aren’t load rated for anything at all.
And the worst one of all – surf and / or skim boards that are permanently bolted to the roofs to give the idea of a lifestyle.

A mate of mine told me once many years ago in the days when aftermarket electronic ignition had appeared on the market that a guy in his motor club had fitted it to his Triumph 2.5 PI. In addition he had crudely stencilled “EI” on the boot lid with Letraset. My mate said “if you fitted overdrive it would be a Triumph 2.5 PIEIO”.

The T5 scene is riddled with chavsessories, such as,

& also the predictable ‘T5’ somewhere in the reg plate.

All i used to do as a boy racer/apprentice motor mechanic was stick big **** off spotlights on the front & the loudest airhorns available.

stick big **** off spotlights on the front

Modern rows of LEDs just don’t look as good!

If this was in the outback , fair enough. It’s not, it’s in Sutton and I see it every week so it never goes anywhere even remotely exciting.

zippykona

Subscriber
If this was in the outback , fair enough. It’s not, it’s in Sutton and I see it every week so it never goes anywhere even remotely exciting

Is that so?

You can see that Syncro on it’s trips around Sutton in CVC’s Arctic Circle series here.

https://campervanculture.com/category/trips/arctic-circle/

Syncro around Sutton 😜

Used to be a lad on our estate with a purple 1.0 litre corsa. He put a sticker that took up half the windscreen with ‘just cruisin’ on it.
We used to say, ‘what you up to later? Just crusin’?’ And he’d say ‘yeah, just cruisin’’
We were in our teens, he was about 37.

I can kind of forgive young drivers for stupid mods but for those over 25 with changed up cars there really is no excuse.
What I don’t get us so many of the cars have mods that are not declared on insurance or are just plain illegal, how do they get away with it.
Above all, the worst mods have to be those done to expensive top end cars, see footballers etc.

Any and all ‘mods’ that are detrimental to performance – no they don’t make the aesthetics better. They make the drive look like a bellend. Just imo…..

Standard around here seems to be a chavved Fabia VRS, lowered, with a big bore exhaust and a popcorn limiter. Not far from my house is a big hill with a long straight into the village, can hear them ragging their cars up and down. Last week someone got a bit overexcited and binned it into someone’s garden, taking out a lamp post in the process.

I have a monkey on the dashboard in my Zafira. He jiggles sideways.

Had a friend in my teens who had an XR2i, replaced all the Ford badges with F’d ones and had RATM lyrics stencilled on the rear window. Loud exhaust, tinted windows and skirts. He wrote off his mums car and she had to borrow his to go shopping. Older parents and she was a proper old lady with grey hair. I’d have loved to have seen people’s faces when she got out of it.

I may stand corrected on Mr Campervan Culture. He parks it up where we store our stock ,I’m there every 2 weeks and I’m certainly aware of it taking up 2 parking spaces on a regular basis. One Saturday there were 3 vans, lots of camouflage shorts and a general air of something happening. Van was still there on the next visit.

Fair play to him if he does do  off road adventures.

My biggest pet hate are those eejits with cars that have automatic raising spoilers like TT’s and Audi A7’s, who mod them so they’re up all the time. I struggle to think of many more things that are so sad and pathetic.

No mod required, there’s a button to press to raise it and keep it raised

I may stand corrected on Mr Campervan Culture. He parks it up where we store our stock ,I’m there every 2 weeks and I’m certainly aware of it taking up 2 parking spaces on a regular basis. One Saturday there were 3 vans, lots of camouflage shorts and a general air of something happening. Van was still there on the next visit.

Fair play to him if he does do off road adventures.

To be fair that Syncro may be taking a bit of a rest as currently there is a new project that is likely getting all the love.
However it certainly wasn’t built for posing.