On a recent trip into the city for a late night movie, it occurred to me that the density of joke vehicles has been steadily increasing over the years. Virtually every second private car driving through the CBD on a Friday or Saturday night is one of these plastic-laden mobile Look-At-Me signs. The bad-taste car fad that I had expected to die off ten years ago has just been getting worse.
You know the comedy-capers cars I mean. They're overloaded with some combination of oversized wheels, deep heavy chin spoilers and sideskirts, huge rear wings, wheel-arch extensions, oversized exhaust tips, large bass-drivers, and oversized stickers and decals. More often than not, something loosely classifiable as music reverberates out of the thing, although once again it usually matches the poor taste indicated by the stick-on parts ...
Yes, for no apparent reason it does annoy me that these people are going around ruining cars. I suppose it wouldn't matter if they were all Excels (Hyundai having sold almost as many Excels in Australia as GM have made V8 engines here), but the lack of fashion judgement is spilling over into real cars that someone with taste might like to drive. Now they may not be the ultimate in performance, but I would be quite happy to drive a Civic VTi-R, Mercedes C280, or BMW 323i. I've even seen what looks like it had started life as an M3, but then with these people it's probably safer to assume it was a 318is.
So where does the fad come from? It's obviously not for fun, because all this extra weight can only hamper performance, you can't drive a car so low anywhere, and it has no functional purpose. No, it's definitely for the "look at me" factor, which is why everything is so heavyhanded and overdone; the guys at Vileside obviously don't have anything smaller than a trowel to do their clay modelling, and yet Vileside is overpriced and popular. There are, of course, the occasional performance modifications. But regardless of the size of the performance parts, the stickers to match must be HUGE ...
No, I'm afraid a bodykit is offensive if it's the first thing you notice. A styling bodykit should complement a car's looks, not dominate it; you should say "that's a nice car" and realise that a bodykit has given that effect. But each to his or her own, I suppose. Just leave a few nice cars un"modified", thanks!
What makes a car feel old? Another Volvo has recently entered my immediate family (if I have to suffer the shame, why shouldn't others?), and it's only two years newer than mine; yet it seems so much "newer" to drive. So how, I've been asking myself, do I change my car (in the most cost-efficient way possible), to make it seem more modern and nicer to drive?
Okay, most people have five senses. Unless there's something drastically wrong with you or your car, taste and smell shouldn't enter into it. With a car, looks are probably the least intrusive of the remaining three senses (really, when has even the most disgusting car you've ever seen been so bad you couldn't look at it?), so I can live with a simple cosmetic scrub-up there. So the "Chips Away" people were called in (and they did a pretty good job too, especially as silver's the hardest colour to match), and the polishes and waxes have been dragged out of the cupboard. Oh, and the powder-coat-the-wheels guy has been contacted; $55 apiece for brand-new looking (yet original) alloys actually sounds OK to me, and I'm tossing around the idea of getting them done in a dark metallic grey ...
But getting back to the topic, to be nice to drive, a car must therefore sound OK, and feel OK. Sound is maybe more important than you'd expect, too. A helluva lot of people like the sound of an older car, rather than the muffled nothingness of a new car; the sound of a few Webers sucking hard, the decent throb of a real V8 or the sweet rasp of a classic Alfa four. And all these are fine; but not the interior rattles, the suspension groans and squeaks, and myriad other noises that a car shouldn't be making (and probably wasn't making when it was new - except maybe the aforementioned Alfa).
As a result, I've begun hunting around, screwing-in tighter what's possible (and safe) to tighten, putting wads of foam and wedges of paper in, and gluing bits of metal and plastic together in order to attach other bits and pieces to them. Basically, trying to fill any gap that's causing a rattle - and there are heaps of them! Not to mention the squea-eak of the clutch pedal, which some dry-lube seems to have silenced nicely. Once I've eliminated all rattles and graunches, I reckon the hardest thing to fix would be the feel of the car; basically, how the controls communicate to the driver. I've been amazed how much nicer even electrical switches can feel if they've been gummed-up with crud and I've then cleaned contacts and springs off with water, a bit of alcohol, or even just a vacuum cleaner.
The steering, braking, clutch, and suspension unfortunately require more knowledge to get into, and they obviously play a big part in road feel. Saggy springs aren't overly expensive to replace, although to get a more "solid" feel to the car I think worn-out bushes, mounts, and wheel bearings probably produce a lot of clunks and thuds that are best banished. Steering gear is quite important to the feel of a car, as are tyres; but as you can see, by now we're spending a fair bit for such an old (and in most cases, cheap) car.
But still, I feel that if I can replace, de-squeak or un-rattle as many of the above as possible, I'll be much happier with my vehicular conveyance. And not only that; it will last longer, and the car will seem classier and in better condition when (or if) I sell it; so it's financially viable too. Well, I'll feel better if I can convince myself of that, anyway ...
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