Has car modding gone mad?Far from bring a new phenomenon, car customisation has been going on in one capacity or another almost as long as car production itself. Altering stock vehicles to produce 'hot rods' initially took off in the 1950's, using mainly old Ford models. Indeed the Ford Model T, which in 1908 became the first affordable private car ever, was the favoured choice among post-war modders.
Typical Model T customisations were not much different from the type we see today: tuning or replacing the engine; lowering the suspension; changing the wheels or tyres; and trimming off any excess weight. And besides pioneering all these performance upgrades, it was the 50's hot rodders who were the first to make purely cosmetic changes to their cars - leading the way with custom paintjobs and gleaming chrome. In fact, barring a few relatively minor changes to keep up with car technology and contemporary fashions, vehicle customisation hasn't developed that much at all in the past 50 or 60 years. The only aspect to see any real innovation recently concerns car interiors, and in particular in-car entertainment systems (usually abbreviated to ICE). As a result, interior mods are the source of constant controversy within the community - and ridicule from outside it. For instance, Top Gear aired a fairly derogatory segment where Jeremy Clarkson promised to outdo the efforts of the televised custom shops (West Coast Customs (WCC), for example) by modifying his own vehicle. Clarkson chose a beaten-up estate car to work with, and began by removing the seats and stripping the interior. He then levelled the floor with concrete and flagstones; installed a couple of miniature armchairs for the driver and passenger's seats and a sofa for the back; hung framed pictures on the pillars and put curtains in the windows. Lastly, he fitted a fully-functional wood-burning stove in the boot. "The idea," he said, "is to reproduce the comfort of my living room in the back seat of my car." When he was finished, Clarkson took his masterpiece to the track to record a lap time and otherwise test out the modifications he had made. And, no doubt a testament to Swedish engineering, the living-room-on-wheels actually started and completed its one lap - although the stove pipe did fall off, and the unsecured driver's armchair had a tendency to drift out of reach of the steering wheel. When it was read out, Clarkson's unsurprisingly sluggish time demonstrated his modifications were having the opposite effect to the performance upgrades of the 1950's. With the added weight of concrete, his hot rod ended up slower and less responsive than it had been before; and considerably uglier to boot. Besides giving Top Gear viewers a good laugh, the point of this was to satirise car modders whose efforts actually impair driving performance. Restyling your interior to resemble Clarkson's living room is clearly ridiculous - but by the same token so is installing a TV screen or DVD player. These items are obviously redundant in a private vehicle, yet every custom shop on the telly fits them as standard and some (West Coast Customs again) go way beyond that. Admittedly, the particular MTV show which showcases WCC's work isn't supposed to be taken deadly seriously. We see Americans teens getting their prayers answered when rapper Xzibit reveals their beat-up old dodge or chevrolet has been converted into a pool table or recording studio, or - you guessed it - a living room on wheels. The modifications are always purely cosmetic (which means it's still going to drive like a beat-up old dodge when the transformation is complete) and are often completely impractical, as anyone who's tried to play pool on an uneven surface will tell you. Sure, this silliness is part of the point - but if the end result performs worse as a car than it did to begin with, we mustn't let ourselves be fooled into thinking this 'transformation' is a good thing. Lastly, it hardly needs mentioning that most any modification will get in the way of cheap car insurance, regardless of its actual effect on a vehicle's performance. Motor insurance companies understandably see a custom car as an unknown quantity, and put up prices to cover their backs. So if you want another year of cheap car insurance premiums, put that plasma screen back where it belongs - in your actual living room.
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