It’s a familiar story: a badly modified car appears in a classified advertisement online.
The motoring cognoscenti see it, and share it, and mock it. What a munter! What appalling taste! What ruined handling! What pointless accessories!
Well, they might be right, but the discussion is not for me, dear reader – not for Prior. Because it’s a short stride from there – and I’ve seen it taken – to suggesting that there’s something actually wrong with allowing people to modify cars badly. That somehow it shouldn’t be allowed. That people should be saved from their idiot selves and spared from their own appalling taste. Well, it’s a step I could never take.
Why? Because anyone who modifies a car – even if they happen to do it very badly – has cars as a hobby. They’re using their free time on it. Spending their money on it. Quite often, they’re young. Frequently, it’s the first time they’ve tried it. Perhaps the first car they’ve had. Perhaps they can’t afford £300 a month for a PCP on a VW Golf R. But perhaps one day they will do that, so long as they like cars for that long.Only then somebody comes along and says: “Well, that’s a bag of old spanners. What a waste of your time and energy.”
Cheers, grandpa. Way to welcome me to the team.
I’m not sure why people have to take offence at something that affects their lives in absolutely no way whatsoever, but there you go. Not just cars, is it, that one?
So, anyway, I’m not ready to say to a car enthusiast just yet that their car is a total spudder and they shouldn’t have bothered because, honestly, there aren’t enough of us around to wilfully divide us. It’s your car, mate. Your rules. You like it? Then well done.
Though here’s a thing. Granted, follow my logic to the extreme and, if somebody wanted to fit a small-block Chevy to the last Ferrari 250 GTO in the world, I’d have to let them. And I suppose I would. But, look, that’s not going to happen, is it?
Cars do get rarer. Austin Sevens are still broken up to become specials and some Ferraris get chopped to become 250 GTO or SWB-alikes. Perhaps that’s a pity. Perhaps not. And a few years ago, a customer – reportedly the Sultan of Brunei – commissioned a load of Mercedes 300SL Gullwings to be modified: out went their race-derived engines and in came 6.0-litre AMG V8s, while other underpinnings were modified to suit. Shame? Maybe.
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Like putting £45 in a fruit machine which only has a £25 jackpot
As someone has already pointed out, some people take modding way too far in terms of spend, to the point you could actually buy a very well spec'd modern car or highly desirable classic car.
Remember the Max Power craze of the 1990s? I remember a TV feature on a guy who'd bought a Citroen Saxo and then ploughed 32 grand, yes 32 grand into modding it. His justification was that it was a unique car and you wouldn't see another one like it on the road. Yep, there's a reason for that.
A friend of mine spent a fortune on his 306 proudly procaliming he was never going to sell it so the money he'd lose wasn't an issue. He no longer owns it.
The real Mona Lisa
As far as the Mona Lisa is concerned, one day in the 1980s I was walking up Kensington Church Street with Amherst Villiers. He pointed to a terraced house in a side street. It had barred windows on the lower floors. He said that the real Mona Lisa was in there. "What about the painting in the Louvre?" I asked. He replied, "Oh, that's a copy."
I never understand how they
I never understand how they all afford it, I see bog standard hatches with elaborate paint jobs etc driven by just passed teens, I can't afford to paint my car to repair stone chips let alone a complete paint job and their insurance must go through the roof, it's expensive enough for my 18 yr old daughter in her standard 04 fiesta, though I did modify that for her by spraying the wheel trims black. I say good luck to them and enjoy what you're doing, there is healthy modified scene with shows and experience days etc all over the country just like with classics. I agree with others here though, keep the mods safe and legal.