Had a stroke of genius the other day on the ride home from work for today's Top Ten list. I'd been racking my brain trying to think of a suitable topic for the list, when out of the blue it appeared: A second generation Ford Taurus with the ugliest canvas roof I'd ever seen. It looked like an egg wearing a cape (H/T to friend and commenter sci-fi for that description).
So in that vein, here's the Top Ten Bad Accessories people insist on putting on their cars:
1. Landau kits. Okay folks, landau kits went out in the 1970s. Even then they looked silly, but at least then the cars were ginormous and could take a ¼ landau and look decent. But not today's cars.
2. Continental tire kit. Don't see a lot of these any more, which is a thankful event. In days of old they made sense - it was a place to put the spare tire - but with today's cars, where the spare has a spot in the trunk, it just looks silly having a fake plastic tire sitting on the back deck.
3. Spinners. Um, no. I don't know who thought that spinners - the rims with internal decorations that actually spin when the car is in motion - was any sort of good idea. All it says to me is "this person has more money than brains".
4. Chrome exhaust tips. I don't mean the factory tips, I mean the cheap-assed $10 fake-chrome garbage you see at Wallyworld or Autozone. It's quite amusing to see the car from the side (for rear-facing exhaust) and note that the shiny chrome tip stops loooong before the muffler... Bonus stupid points for one-into-two tips...
5. Truck Nutz. I'm sorry. When I see these hanging off the back of some truck's tow hitch, there is one word and one word only that immediately comes to mind for the owner of the vehicle: IDIOT.
6. Gold accents. For whatever reason, both Toyota and Honda fell victim to this bit of automotive accessory idiocy. They charged extra - and people paid for it! - to have the name badges, hood ornaments, etc. with a gold-colored plastic rather than a chrome-colored plastic. I'm quite certain that, thousands of years from now, this is the kind of thing that archaeologists will point to as one of the signs of civilization's decline.
7. Chrome door handles. Seriously, WTF? You think that putting stick-on chrome-colored plastic over your car's door handles improves the look of your automobile? Let me guess - you wear a toupee, too?
8. Rear wing spoilers. Let's face it. Unless your car has a 600 HP motor and 100 different advertisers plastered over every square inch of the fiberglass shell body, there's no need for a spoiler. Extra bad bonus points if the spoiler is actually physically taller than the car itself.
9. Coffee can exhaust systems. Can anyone explain to me why it is desirable to have one's car sound like a weedwhacker? Really? I mean, I ride a Harley. If there's anything I can grok, it's putting a new exhaust system on one's vehicle for a better sound. But making your four-banger sound like it's powered by angry hornets?
10. Woodgrain paneling. It looked neat on the Ford wagons in the '30s and '40s. It became outright ridiculous on the Aries K wagon or the PT Cruiser... I'm still trying to figure out the thinking behind woodgrain. Hmm. Let's make our car look like it's made out of wood?
And that wraps up another Top Ten list for this week. I hope y'all haven't gone blind looking at these pictures of automotive bling stupidity this week. Yep, chronicling the stupid shit people put on their cars for your enjoyment, just another service we offer...
What stupid things have you seen that I missed?
That is all.
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28 comments:
My 4-Runner has that stick-on wood trim on the interior. My only excuse is it came that way when I bought it.
Curb feelers.
I love Carbon Fiber. I think its an amazing textile. However, the sheer amount of exposed carbon fiber on EVERYTHING is just insane.
Bob beat me to it, so how about this: those retarded-looking 22-24" wheels with tires that are a little rim of rubber?
My uncle runs a tire shop, & he loves those idiots. When they hit a moderate pothole, it destroys the tire. Sale!
Bonus if the idiot has a fake-shrome number on the side of the car denoting wheel size.
Hell, I thought of another: extended swingarms on a bike that's never seen a drag strip (or pretty much extended swingarms in general).
I saw a Truck Nutz kit dangling off the rear bumper of a Mini-Cooper last month.
Got a good belly-laugh outta that one.
I'll add:
Putting a screen for the in-car DVD player where the driver can see it (doubly so if you put it where the steering-wheel airbag used to be).
Louvered rear windows.
Mounting 22 inch wheels on EVERYTHING. Saw an early-80's Cutlass with at least 20's on it. It looked like it would tip over in a stiff breeze. 20 years from now, the owner of that car is going to look at the pictures of his then-sweet ride and say, "What the HELL was I thinking?"
This is the awesomest spoiler EVER. It's SO silly that it might have wrapped around into cool. But maybe not.
http://i39.tinypic.com/15mb76v.jpg
WV "evier", so maybe this is the awesomest spoiler evier.
I don't know what the real name is, but I call them axle extensions. It's whatever device or add-on they use that makes the tires stick out of the wheel wells.
I almost died from laughter one day. Think old Chevy Astrovan, axle extensions that had half the tires out of the wheel wells, rear spoiler (yes, mounted on top of the back of the van), fuzzy dice, and one of those super-tiny chain steering wheels.
I'm honestly surprised he didn't go for the coffee can muffler and spinners. But then, maybe he was saving up for that.
Re: # 6 - Spoilers
You've gotta see this one...
http://peopleofwalmart.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/57.jpg
TBG
Ground Effects! They look stupid brand new...they look even worse cracked and chipped from bottoming out on bad roads!
Also how about non-functional scoops!
It's all good if you have a cold air intake right there, or you mounted a tall supercharger...but just putting a scoop that isn't functional is just stupid!
Truck nutz were mildly amusing the first time I saw a pair, however many decades ago that was. Not so much the second through millionth time.
To me, the PT cruiser is one of the few places where fake woodgrain is OK-it fits with the pseudo-retro look.
My addition to the list
Chrome numbers to tell everyone how big the goofy looking wheels are.
Colored lights, whether they are neon underneath or LED lights stuck on random parts of the car, like windshield washers
Hubcaps on steel wheels trying to look like aluminum wheels. Especially spinner hubcaps.
Yellow painted brake drums
Big Guy,
That's not a spoiler, that's a mounting bench and work table for reloading at the range.
ASM826
Borepatch,
That's a factory spoiler. I remember a row of them at the dealer back in the day.
ASM826
In no particular order:
Fake air scoops.
Fake spoked wheel covers.
Fake wool seats.
Fake tan-mobile brown tint windows on old Niisan Maximas.
Totally blacked-out windows on every window (in one case, the windshield too).
Low riders that can't clear a speed bump.
Import pick-up trucks so massively jacked, they're unstable.
Tires so wide they extend a foot from the bodywork and into my travel lane, usually mounted on vehicle above.
Dingle balls on anything.
Last: Vinyl retractible sunroofs, I had one on my 1972 AMC Hornet wagon. Needless to say it won ugliest car, hands down, no contest. The warning read: "Do not open while vehicle is in motion". I wonder what would happen if I opened it going down the freeway...... It was a fitting end to a real toilet of automotive engineering. Wasn't thinking with my dipstick when I bought that bucket of bolts.
I actually saw a pair of "cute" truck nuts.
The guy had a pair of 3" or larger, chromed hex nuts on a chromed chain.
He also had a chromed alien in the "reclining naked lady" pose on his mud flaps. As well as a Flying Spaghetti Monster "Darwin fish". . .
Now there IS one place where a spoiler makes a lot of sense on a street-legal car.
Station wagons and similar "flat back" vehicles, where it bleeds airstream to fill the draft void behind the vehicle. It has a noticeable effect on gas mileage.
Of course, when properly designed, THOSE spoilers are practically invisible, and can be mistaken for a seam where two pieces of body metal meet.
Shiny aluminum roll bars on pickup trucks; all they were good for was mounting the fake lights that seemed to be popular about the same time.
When my younger brother was about 10, he saw a car with a landau roof and asked what it was for. I said that people thought it made the car look better.
There was a pause, then he asked "No, really, what are they for?"
I can actually tolerate some of this stuff--ground effects, lights on the undercarriage, even hydraulics--on show cars. But maybe you have to grow up around it for it to seem normal.
The only time I was ever amused by TruckNutz was the guy in Wal-Mart who had 'em on his wheelchair.
Heh... when Squeaker got her PT, Spoon and I made a special trip to Sprawlmart to find woodgrain tackpaper for it...
Spoilers can be ok: our old Saturn SL2 had one from the factory. It's the aftermarket folks that seem to get carried away...
Ground effects? I remember the first time I saw that, at NTC: a place where ALL the parking lots were raised higher than the road. Guy tore the front effects off, first time he tried pulling into a lot...
for more fun, try www.laughatrice.com
WV: ingert. Yeah... lots of these folks are...
Phony convertible roofs -- you know, they were solid but made to look like canvas, so from a distance the car looked like a ragtop.
I'm not sure this qualifies for this topic, but the drop dead funniest automotive add-on I ever saw was an added-on roofrack on a Honda CRX.
Big rig style exhaust stacks in the bed of a pickup truck. Bonus bad points if they are not even hooked up.
Oh, brother. I'm asking for it here... Hey, Jay, a friend of mine gave me a set of the truck nuts (in motorcycle size) for my bike for Christmas. Finally mounted them a few weeks ago. I actually think they're funny as hell... I certainly don't take them seriously.
So if you see an Airhead Beemer with balls... wave. That's me.
Ooooh, good one mopar. That's one of my favorites - right along with the roll bars mentioned earlier.
Way to ruin the utility of a pick-up truck by needlessly limiting the bed space!
Another favorite is seeing a tow hitch on a Corvettes...
The spinning propeller for an unused truck hitch. The only time this ever looked good was when I saw one on the back of a motorized wheelchair owned by a retired cruise ship captain.
Oh, boy. Where to start?
Fuzzy steering wheel wraps.
Wood bead seat covers.
Crown air freshener on dash or in rear window.
Jacking up a normal car to a 4X4
Speaker system that costs more than 20% of the car value.
Adding a camper shell to a car (I have a story on that one).
Christmas decorations.
Most political bumper stickers.
Any Obama bumper sticker.
Confession: I added louvers to the rear window of a 1977 Datsun 200sx back in the eighties.
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Truck Chrome stacks
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