Judging by the amount of ridiculous and riced-up cars on the road, we can conclude that car modding is, in fact, a fine art that requires a sense of balance and taste. It’s easy to slip up, turning your car into a rolling joke worse than the one you started with. If you are planning to do some mods, here are some you shouldn’t bother with!

Resprays

Changing the looks of your car often means changing the colour, and there are several ways you can do it. Most beginners will think respraying the whole car is the only way to do it. To be perfectly honest, this is usually unnecessary. Respraying a vehicle is a very time-consuming job that requires a lot of skill and effort to do. Unless you’re restoring a valuable classic car from the ground up, 9 times out of 10 a vinyl wrap is the better choice.

Vinyl wraps give you near unlimited possibilities for a fraction of the price of a paintjob and the best part is you can remove it without any damage! Unless a paint job is done by a pro at a very high cost, it will look good from 10ft, fair from 5ft and terrible from 1ft where you will notice all kinds of stuff like peeling, orange peel, overspray and even parts that were not painted. For smaller bits, you could even try plasti-dip.

Huge Spoilers

Nothing says, “I have a fast car” than a big chunk of plastic/carbon on the rear of the car. Also, nothing says, “I have no taste in car tuning” better than an overly large aftermarket spoiler, which you have bolted on the boot lid. The logic of big spoilers can be problematic since if you’ve got a fast car, it’s likely to already have a spoiler that is factory-tested, tastefully designed and elegantly mounted. If you built the fast car yourself, you only need a big spoiler if you are going to race it.

Lip spoilers and small wings can look very good, especially if you know what you want from the spoiler and can adjust it yourself. Setting up the wing is about balancing drag and downforce, depending on your vehicle. Don’t listen to people saying you don’t need a spoiler if your car is front wheel drive either though. Yes, the rear wheels aren’t driven but a well adjusted wing might help increase rear wheel traction or reduce the tendency for lift-off oversteer. Just don’t go overboard!

Performance Air Filters

One of the classic car tuning myths is that performance air filters will give you a significant amount of power because you will allow your car to “breathe” easier. Any newbie car guy with their first car knows the experience of going to “Halfords” (in the UK) or wherever you guys go in America and buying an air filter as the first mod.

In theory, this is true, but in real life, there often aren’t any noticeable advantages of swapping the OEM air filter with a “performance” one. Messing with the air filters of modern cars can also cause problems since current models all have finely tuned intake systems and MAF sensors for emissions purposes. If you use a less restrictive air filter, you might even get a “check engine” light on your dash, a lumpy idle, or even a poor throttle response. Modern engines are more finicky than engines 50 years ago, so tampering with the airflow might actually cause more problems than it’s worth.

Cheap alloy wheels

This one is important to mention since more and more car enthusiasts are buying cheap, mostly Chinese copies of brand-name alloy wheels. Yes, it is very tempting to get a set of brand new 18-inch BBS RS wheels for 400 to 500 pounds, but you shouldn’t do it. There are several reasons, the first one obviously being safety. The cheap, knock-off wheels are poorly built, very fragile, and will shatter into pieces if you hit a pothole.

They’re usually made of low-quality alloy, unknown compounds and fit and finish is rarely great. Yes, they look almost the same and for show purposes, they are enough, but experienced car fans can spot them from a mile away. There is a good reason why the set of well-preserved original `80s BBS RS wheels cost up to 2500 pounds. Because they are worth every penny.

Body Kits

Body kits seem like a good idea at first, until you realize what’s involved. Attaching fibreglass or plastic to your car`s wings, doors, hood, and bumpers will often improve the looks, although sometimes not, but it comes at a cost. Firstly, many people who choose to go this route soon regret it when it comes to selling their car.

Unlike a lot of Youtube commenters saying “AdD a BoDy KiT” like it’s an easy task, body kits require extensive modifications to install which often involves drilling, cutting, and welding parts to the car`s structure. This means that it’s often irreversible, expensive and that’s if you don’t make a mistake when fitting! Before you go the body kit route, consider the massive depreciation, bondo, filler and repainting required should you ever wish to go back to stock!

Extra loud exhausts

Fast cars are usually loud, as they should be. As car people, most of us love a good exhaust but it must be said, there is a big difference between a powerful sound and a deafening racket. Fitting a loud exhaust is a ricers way of drawing attention to themselves and if you knew a thing or two about cars, you would avoid making that mistake. Don’t be that guy whose car sets off car alarms three blocks away or worse, starts up a naturally aspirated straight piped vehicle at 4 am for the morning shift! Well-designed performance exhausts are readily available anyway for most cars these days.

Straight pipes are usually ill-advised, however for turbocharged engines that are naturally quieter, they can often get away with it without being too loud. For naturally aspirated stuff, just get a less restrictive muffler, delete the mid box if it’s got one and call it a day. If that’s not loud enough, fitting some less restrictive sports cats might help you as well!