People love to mod their cars in weird and quirky ways. Sometimes that weird quirk will get picked up by a car community and before you know it, it will become the norm, or the “mod” of the month. The end of that cool trend’s lifecycle is to become cliché, that this thing isn’t quirky anymore, but, dammit, it’s still cool!
So I want to ask: What cliché car accessory or mod do you secretly love?
It can be anything that got picked up and overplayed. Think of things like car bras on BMW E30s (yes, please), or the angry Jeep man on Wranglers. Maybe it’s truck nuts, or french fog lights. It could even be the roof rack fairings full of stickers. Just any mod that car enthusiasts take to heart and lovingly wear down until you never want to see another roof rack again.
Sorry to keep harping on the infinitely-useful roof rack. It’s just that in my early tenure as a BMW driver, I was still behaving like I was in the Volkswagen tribe, and had a roof rack on my ‘ti to “like, bring my mountain bike, brah.”
Clearly, E36s do not look as charming as any Volkswagen with a roof rack:
Yes, I subjected my poor hatch to that because I crossed my streams and did not respect the boundaries of the German marques, but there are plenty of other car mods like these that we can instantly recognize as being a part of that model’s culture.
Wrangler drivers, I’m going to pick on you for a second. Five times out of ten, a Wrangler will have a tire cover with a smiley face that hasn’t shaved, or a cover that reads, “It’s a Jeep thing.” The other five times, the Wrangler will ride on gaudy tires and wheels with a star in the center cap, and a matching full-size spare. I can’t even imagine what that set costs.
Or take Subaru drivers. They love their yellow (or French) fog lights. I can’t even conceive of a blue WRX on copper wheels that doesn’t have yellow fog lights. But, again, it looks awesome! Even if it’s overplayed, it plays! So what about you? What car cliche mod or accessory do you secretly love?
