Car enthusiasts and manufacturers are overdoing tuning: 5 of the most useless and harmful 'improvements' for cars.
Beauty, as is known, is in the eye of the beholder. However, this does not negate the fact that many car owners go a bit overboard with various aesthetic enhancements. Years pass, and citizens repeatedly make the same attempts in the intention to make their favorite car not only more beautiful but also better from all sides. What is particularly ironic is that in recent years, manufacturers themselves are more frequently stoking the fire.
What is the interior of most modern cars, including quite expensive ones? It's some endless imitation. Natural materials, even the cheapest ones, are becoming increasingly rare. In the pursuit of aesthetics, the interiors of modern cars have been filled with various substitutes for leather, wood, and other less common materials in car manufacturing. The only advantage of “fakes” is the price. As for the disadvantages, most finishing materials of this kind suffer from a lack of durability. This applies even to far from budget cars. Within a few years of intense use, such interior finishes begin to lose their aesthetic qualities.
The fashion of attaching badges that shouldn't be on the car's body was not born yesterday. The main question traditionally boils down to one: why do you do this? Especially when it comes to badges from various famous tuning ateliers. You cannot increase the car's value that way. It turns out that most drivers installing unnecessary badges are merely soothing their ego. The sense in such superficial display is incomprehensible. And if you really want to, there are plenty of affordable services and workshops today that deal with tuning and other “charging” of cars. Many of them even have their own badge, which they will definitely attach somewhere (upon the owner's request) after providing the services.
The car market has been flooded with various aerodynamic accessories for decades. Surprisingly, even today, there are people among regular car owners who cannot deny themselves the pleasure of installing a spoiler on their favorite car. If a person likes it, mocking the topic of “village tuning” is mostly pointless… Another matter is that many sincerely believe that such accessories positively affect the vehicle's dynamics and fuel consumption. The problem is that if someone installs a spoiler or fairings not provided for by the manufacturer, it's highly likely they are making things worse, not better. Aerodynamic accessories can indeed improve the ride, but only if the model in question was designed for a specific body by the manufacturer itself. However, such accessories are usually sold with the car as part of the package.
Besides installing aerodynamic accessories, many people still practice mounting fake grills and air intakes. It's believed that all these give the car a “dashing” and “sporty” look. We won’t argue about tastes (or the lack thereof) again. Instead, we should focus on the fact that in the case of real sports cars, neither additional grills nor air intakes are ornamental elements. On high-speed cars, all these are quite functional parts of the structure, existing on the body not for beauty. Therefore, installing fake intakes is at least somewhat odd. The same applies to “custom” exhausts with numerous additional pipes. As practice shows in such cases, out of 4 “fashionable” exhaust pipes, usually only 1-2 are operational.
Lastly, we cannot overlook the fact that in recent years, car manufacturers have been increasingly overtly abusing glass in designs. However, the latter neither improves the aesthetic qualities of most cars nor their technical characteristics. The only thing these design decisions benefit is the cost of repairs! This is especially true for those cars (mostly SUVs and station wagons) where corporations have started covering part of the roof and all pillars with glass. In case of even minor accidents, the restoration of all this designer marvel will come at a serious cost.