Now I know this is a tad extreme, but come on people!

In this week’s blog, I intend on addressing a number of issues in the automotive industry; ricers, wings on a front wheel drive car, and finally the deeper issue of subjectivity versus objectivity.

Let’s face it, ricers are disgusting.  Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with import cars, especially when they are sport tuned with some excellent body kit and paint work.  The problem lies with 9 out of every 10 ricers out there – they’re just bad.  I have come to the conclusion that there are a few faux pas that no home tuner should ever commit.  Let’s call them the 10 Afermarket Commandments:

1. Thou shalt not use hubcap spinners.
2. Thou shalt not bear false witness in form of sticker, vinyl or paint.  (No “Type R” or “Greddy” stickers unless you own them.)
3. Thou shall keep thy rims proportional to the size of the body of the car.
4. Thou shalt not damage thy neighbor’s hearing (with your coffee-can exhaust kit).
5. Thou shall never use spray paint on a car.
6. Thou shalt not use hubcap spinners.
7. Thou shall refrain from exceeding 6 inches in height on a wing.
8. Thou shall never use obscure, obscene or ugly colors.
9. Thou shall keep thy speaker system humble.
10. Seriously, no hubcap spinners.

Again, everyone must think I am anti-ricer, but that is hardly the case.  Which brings me to the next issue: wings on a front wheel drive car.  The popular consensus of this is that it is a silly idea for performance, and strictly an aesthetic improvement, however, this notion is completely incorrect.  Sure, you’re not going to get an extra 50hp from a wing (contrary to what many seem to think), but your car will get that magical force in the automotive racing world we call “downforce.”

But Andrew,” some of you may ask, “what use does a front wheel car have for downforce?”  Well my silly, pre-judging scallywag, this magical and mysterious downforce can become quite useful in the corners, where FWD cars are quite notorious for lifting the inside rear wheel.  As you may have guessed, lacking a rear wheel on the ground makes breaking in the turns quite a fun experience!  Even moreso, more downforce means you can break faster going into the corner – which means a faster lap overall.

This really leads me into my last point that I wanted to touch on, which was subjective vs objective.  In particular, it’s subjective coolness versus objective coolness.  Subjective coolness would be like adding a really loud muffler just to sound cool, when it is likely that you’ve ruined the engine backpressure and thus caused a performance loss.  Objective coolness includes any upgrade that increases the performance of your car – because fast cars are inherently cool.  Let me give you a better example:

Notice, the picture above has subjective value (I spent good time in Paint on that), but no objective value.  This is like adding a huge spoiler to my mom’s Honda Civic – sure it may look cool to me, but it makes everyone else have the same reaction as they would to dog vomit.  The picture on the right is intrinsically cool because it actually has an artistic value.  This would be like modifying a car with low-weight rims and racing tires.

Really, to sum up everything, I leave you  with this simple axiom: If it makes your car go faster, it is highly likely that it will make your car cooler.  If it adds nothing to your car’s net performance, then it’s not cool and you shouldn’t do it.