Five Things That Should Never Be on Your Car
Published by Joel October 30th, 2006 in Cars. Share This
Sometimes you’ll be strolling through a Parts America or O’Reilly and find yourself in a gallery of chrome slogans and plastic accessories drenched in stick-on flames. This entire section is anathema to a well-dressed car and should be exited immediately as you mutter rejoinders to yourself for even considering the stick-on “Type-R” badge for your Corolla.
Cars should be clean, with nary an extraneous sticker, wing, or badge. Here are a few things you should never have on your car or should remove immediately as you realize your lapse in judgment.
• Aftermarket Spoilers - If your car didn’t come from the factory with a spoiler, it doesn’t need the downforce a rear wing provides. (Many cars that do come from the factory with spoilers don’t really need them, either.) If you’ve added a wing to your car you’ve not only embarrassed yourself, you’ve also negatively affected the aerodynamics and weight of your vehicle.
Exceptions: Legitimately tuned-up performance cars or cars that have undergone complete visual overhauls, especially in South Florida or California.
• Bumper Stickers - They aren’t funny and nobody cares about your religious affiliation, unless you telling us you’re a Wican means you give it up really easily. Also, in the entire history of democracy, no citizen was swayed to vote by a bumper sticker.
Exception: “Support your local precinct” or tasteful window stickers of military affiliation.
• Body Graphics, vinyl or otherwise - Unless your car is an open-engined hot rod, there is no need for flames on your vehicle, especially not the strange little fireballs seen under the driver’s side windows of Mexican-helmed minivans. Your car is not a Trapper Keeper.
Exceptions: - Show cars and race carts; Ambulances.
• Flags - Having a flag across your hood is tacky and not a little dangerous. Flying American flags from the back of a vehicle is a trend that is fading, thank god, but if you are one of the remaining hold outs, please put it away.
Exceptions: Puerto Ricans, on parade day only.
• Aftermarket badges - Back when I was in to the Honda tuning scene, I knew several folks who bought all the parts to upgrade their American Civic Si into the equivalent of the British or Japanese Civic Type-R, from swapping the engine and transmission with actual Type-R engines to importing the body kits and wheels. Those cars were awesome—as long as they kept the Si badges on. Let that be a lesson: If even those Civic tuners couldn’t pull off a fake badge, you certainly can’t convince us that your Ford Fiesta is turbocharged.
Exceptions: None.
Body kit: if you can’t afford to have it painted, maybe you should rethink putting it on. Besides, its probably ugly as shit anyway.
Oh, those badge people… like the people who put SS badges on their Monte Carlo LS from 1988 trying to fool us.
Or the people who put badges on cars that don’t even come with those designations, like Oldsmobiles with GT-R badges on them. Sorry pal, your cutlass is NOT a skyline.
The only thing that I can say would be an exception is in the JDM area… if you took say an Infiniti G35 and took the Infiniti badges off and replaced them with the Nissan badges… or a Lexus and a Toyota. That would be ok.
“Flying American flags from the back of a vehicle is a trend that is fading, thank god,”
WTF is *that* supposed to mean?
You need to explain yourself, pronto.
Uh, I mean flying an American flag off the back of a vehicle? You know, usually a flapping, tattered strip of plastic that’s covered in road grime.
Fly a flag at home or whatever, but a flag on a car is distracting, garish, and the sort of cheap fetishism that many people mistake for patriotism.
Personally I think the local precinct support is not accept-able. If you want to support your precinct- donate money in a way that they’ll actually get more than 5% of the donation. PS it doesn’t get you out of tickets.
The Onion have a great article about people who feverishly flagged up their cars after 9/11 and then had the conundrum of not knowing when the proper time to take it down was.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28169
senseigmg: sooo true
i think the same applies with rims, if you cant afford a full set, for the love of god, dont have one “sweet” rim and then your stock shit too. huge rims dont belong on your old eclipse or a neon or anything where having the rims increases the value of the car threefold.
for a collection of cars that do not follow the rules, check this
http://www.topgear.com/content/timetoburn/sections/carbage/pages/0502/
Well, thanks for the clarification.
I suggest you update your post to make that more apparent.
I have seen two of the most disgraceful things ever.
#1 - A homemade, spray painted tonneau cover for an early 80’s Chevy LUV truck with a spoiler, made out of plywood and 2×4s.
#2 - Those retarded, extremely cheap-looking, and idiotic aluminum and plastic spoilers that people buy at Shucks Auto Parts and attach to their trunk lids with sheet metal screws. Most blatant example ever: a 1998 Mercury Sable with one of those screw-on spoilers and big vinyl stickers on the side, rolling on steel factory wheels with Wal-Mart wheel covers.
I live in Kentucky. I’ve seen ALL these egregious examples and more:
* those stickers that look like bullet holes. Those are HUGE here.
* plastic spinners
* tow hitches on cars that have NO business towing anything (Dodge Neon anyone?)
* winches and huge light racks on SUVs that you KNOW have never been offroad
* those huge appliques that cover the whole back window of a pickup, usually with an eagle or the American flag
* half-assed paint jobs. Looks like the guy ran out of money half-way through the process.
* sedans on 20″ rims (Chevy Caprice, Oldsmobiles, etc.)
This post makes me think of the Volkswagen “Unpimp Your Ride” ads. (”It’s definitely sucking.”)
_Jon: Just out of curiousity, which flags are appropriate for car-flying? And what’s the point? I see football team flags and American flags and Mexican flags a lot. Are all these equally appropriate? In my opinion, they’re all equally tacky.
All time favorite bumper sticker was from the University of South Carolina-The Gamecocks. Bumper sticker said: “You Can’t Lick Our Cocks”. I swear…
I have recently seen a couple of these horrible abominations on trucks:
http://cgi.ebay.com/FOOTBALL-SHATTER-SPORT-SPORTS-WINDOW-DECAL-STICKER_W0QQitemZ320040535470QQihZ011QQcategoryZ37793QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Looks good but yall forgot one. MASSIVE coffee can sized exhaust tips on cars without any other performance enhancements!
Let’s add to the list: Little stickers representing the members of your family especially the ones of the dog and cat. Keep your demographics to yourself, get off of your cell phone, and drive.
Rice, Kraut, Apple Pie modifications. I’ve seen stupid decals, non-functional hood scoops and park bench wings on some of the greatest and most exotic of automobiles and it makes me sad to see them in disrepair. Money can’t buy you taste.
Remember when car manufactures advertised such things as “5-Speed”, “ABS” “IROC-Z” on the sides of their autmobiles, it’s back. It’s not just a Civic, a Sentra or a Pickup anymore, it’s a “i-VTEC, SE-R V-Spec, SS, SRT, Rousch 2500 with a Hemi sold to you by O’Neil Buick/GMC/Kia.
Take all that shit off, none of it is necessary and it gives you less to wax around.
Oh, here in the middle of the NASCAR capital of the world, we get all that shit…in spades. But still:
• Aftermarket Spoilers
Yeah, I’ll buy that, along with the exception. A tricked out custom job can look really sweet with the right spoiler. The wrong one — which is what most guys pick — will fuck up the whole effect beyond retrieval.
• Bumper Stickers
Oh, do bite me. Here in the redder-than-my-uncle’s-neck South, displaying my “Fire the Republicans” sticker is about as much rebellion as I can muster up without endangering my paycheck or my car, so leave me alone. Besides, a be-stickered tail end can make for a few minutes’ entertainment at a red light.
Exception: “Support your local precinct” or tasteful window stickers of military affiliation.
Oh, the military gets a break for expressing their pride, but the rest of us don’t?
• Body Graphics, vinyl or otherwise
Personally, I rather enjoy some of the more extravagant Latino pickups we get around here, and the most fun are the ones with huge airbrushed panoramas that wrap the whole way around the damn truck. I’m not saying I’d do it, mind you…but why be so intent on stomping on someone else’s fun?
Exceptions: - Show cars and race carts; Ambulances.
What, no military exception? How about cop cars? Commercial vehicles? Sheesh.
• Flags
Cheers and applause. No exceptions, far as I’m concerned. Tacky, unsafe, and incidentally irreverent. It takes about 10 miles of highway driving before that giant flag flapping violenty on the pole mounted in the back of your pickup becomes a tattered embarrassment. Show some respect. If you have to put a flag on the back of your truck, get one of those rear-window see-through decals or something.
• Aftermarket badges
Dude, I have news for you. When (if, at this rate) I finish my veg-oil conversion, the first thing I’m going to do is go to Your Emblem and buy a custom emblem reading “GREASER”.
I agree with whoever suggested that bullet holes should be banned. Not particularly for their stupidity, but because they’re over. Those stupid “ball-smashed-through-the-window” things. The hand or other human/animal body part flapping out of the trunk.
Fucking curb feelers. Why can you even buy these any more?
Blue LED washer pylons. Skated tires — particularly on cars where you haven’t bothered to roll the fenders. Those tacky-ass double wiper blades, and your goddamn Wal-Mart antenna balls (they’re already the biggest corporation in the country, and you’re advertising them for free?). Any suspension/tire arrangement that increases the ground clearance of the car to double or more the factory standard (I’m talking to you, Mr. 30″ Rims on the Cadillac).
This list could go on forever, couldn’t it? No one’s mentioned silver naked ladies yet.
cars that have wheels that stick out of the fenders, it’s stupid and it looks like something stepped on your car and the wheels popped out.
and NUTS, has anyone else seen these or is it a Texas thing, a pair of plastic anatomically correct testicles attatched to the bumper of your truck with bailing wire, the worst i’ve seen was a pair on a truck being driven by a woman, We know you bought the big ass truck and jacked it up to compensate for no penis, but adding the balls just makes it that much more obvious.
http://www.bumpernuts.com/index.html
To _Jon:
Couple of questions
How did you get so dumb?
Who turns your computer on and opens up IE for you?
How does it feel when kids with down syndrome make fun of you?
How old are you and how have you not gotten killed being such a prick yet?
Flags on cars always look bad. After living in NYC for many years, definitely no exception for puerto rican flags.
Hey I’m a fan of those “nuts” or “balls” on trucks though. I’m not sure if I’m laughing with the driver or at the driver though:
http://monstertruckman.typepad.com/monster_trucks_on_the_roa/2007/04/got_balls_on_yo.html