the show season is starting and with 1 of the biggest shows coming up as well it makes me think that the scene has gradually died a little bit every year.
i mean in the last few years big kits and big wheels have gradually been pushed out by a motorsport theme or a more subtle approach to styling, which is fine but the actual big kit scene is getting smaller smaller and which leads to my point, clubs such as ours or cruise sites in general really dont get the wider attention they deserve as owners club sites dedicated to specific makes of cars make shows like donny and trax a joke about the actual show part and are only interested in the track side of things, i mean most would call donny,trax,usc as chav shows BUT with track action so they will attend but shows like nationals etc are completely ignored as they think it will be full of chavs with corsas,saxos,106's etc driven through ripspeed and just anything stuck on to them.
Are these the final few years of certain parts of the modified car scene,will subtle styling,motorsport themed cars and track slags take over or will things change and the big kit make a come back, only time will tell.
personally, from the fast show, and most cruises, i have seen a lot of new cars that are modded, and dont think it is dying at all.
*passes D another andrew tissue*
D that was the longest sentence ever! I think the scene is changing from the lairy scene we have known. When people get bored with the new direction it will change again. This has always happened with things such as colour themes, wheel choices etc.
I know what you mean, only reason I'm going to Donnington tomorrow is for the track events, but weather looks like its gonna be crap so wont be going. I get bored after an hour or so walking round shows to be honest so if theres no other stuff going off I usually dont bother going.
I don't think the scene is changing/dying - it's just changing.
The 'cliche' of the 'MaxPower' tribe that most owners clubs refer to is because the cars that tend to get noticed are the ones driven by nobheads and cut people up...typically these are the ones that do look like they've superglued their car and then ram raided Halfords!!
There are some nice Corsa's and such out there...but because they are cheap to get hold of and plenty of cheap (looking and made) parts out there there are a lot more sh*t looking ones!!
We've all seen them...they've spent £100's on wheels, a stereo and some stickers and a fart can and it still looks like something a 5 year old has put together.
Different people have different tastes...just at the moment subtle is the new fad.....I've always liked subtle and never gone for big wings etc (sadly the large graphic on my car doesn't give that impression!!).
The reason I logged onto here is i thought I would give other shows etc a try... some of you guys on here seem alright..not met any you yet so I cant say!!!
IMO its Maxpower that run the show and thats the modders bible and as they have moved away from lairy mods thats how people have followed.
Also the invention of CANbus has slowed the home DIY'ers down with newer cars so even the simplest things like changing headlights has made things harder and more expensive.
The price of living has also increased dramatically so people that no longer live with parents and have their own homes face outgoings of more than £1000 per month just to survive so the average Joe with low income that earns less than £20,000 per year aint gonna have too much left at the end of the month to spend on things like modding their cars.
Just because you dont see the mods in the public eye doesnt mean its not happening I work on vehicles daily which are modified to international show standard but they dont go to shows and they sometimes havent even heard of some of the big websites so they dont get viewed very often.
D get a lairy kit and stoopid install in the clio ready for when its not done anymore and you will standout from the rest. Team Dave sets the new standard
Are these the final few years of certain parts of the modified car scene,will subtle styling,motorsport themed cars and track slags take over or will things change and the big kit make a come back, only time will tell.
I certainly hope so lol its gone full circle (well almost)i hate tacky pointless mods,or cars that make you think why!!!! occasionally i`ll think yer thats not bad and i really shouldnt like it but not very often-ive been goin up town for waaaay longer than i care to remember basically 205gti/r5gtt/mk1/2 golfs s1/2rst`s era an if yad got a cossie you`d got some money-NOBODY had cars that were laughable bk then, ppl based mods on performance/subtle styling-its only in my opinion the last few yrs maxxd has become credible as from an outsiders point of view some things i used to see were errrrrrrrrrrr i`ll be polite just not my taste-yrs ago i wouldnt have even considered joining this site as a member so im glad the scenes changed.
Also the invention of CANbus has slowed the home DIY'ers down with newer cars so even the simplest things like changing headlights has made things harder and more expensive.
Has it bollocks! 1 in 3 Mercs in the Middle East that used to come through our place were modified, if anything the electronic age has made a lot of areas easier to modify...people don't even have to get there hands dirty to extract extra power. Price wise not a lot has changed, you're just spending £500 on a new ecu and remap instead of crank, rods, pistons and a cam kit like on older motors. There are a lot more mods being offered by dealers and factories now than ever too
Appearance wise, it doesn't matter whether it's brand new or 15 years old....the work involved is often the same. Typical DIY mods are few and far between on newer models because people who are buying new cars aren't that way inclined; if you've got £20,000-£30,000 to spunk on a new motor you're gonna pay for work elsewhere because a) you can afford to, and b) more often than not can't be arsed to do it. On the other hand, if you've got a small budget to spend and have a cheaper car, the only way to modify a car that makes financial sense is to do it yourself.
In relation to the scene, no I don't think it's dying, just shifting trends as it always has done. I think it's less "fashionable" or socially acceptable now to deck your car out with a Veilside or "Mingdom" kit so it's less in-yer-face and maybe not as noticeable. There are forums full of "sleeper" style cars with engine and chassis mods that may not have been performed a few years ago when the focus was on wild looks. I think the modified car scene is just as healthy, just that the focus of the modifications has changed and not so noticeable....maybe it's true to suggest that the wild body mod days are slowing down though.
Let's not forget that it's a lot harder to "cruise" now too, what with the authorities trying their best to outlaw the boy racer culture.
personally, i hope things do die off. that way all the people who aren't actully into cars will piss & find something else to do, instead of tarring us all with their bad name. nothing worse than someone who isn't really a car person, creating a monster of a car, just so they can be part of the 'in' crowd.
Also the invention of CANbus has slowed the home DIY'ers down with newer cars so even the simplest things like changing headlights has made things harder and more expensive.
Has it bollocks! 1 in 3 Mercs in the Middle East that used to come through our place were modified, if anything the electronic age has made a lot of areas easier to modify...
i think i partially agree with andy here. just as an example, a friend recently wanted to change his alternator for a much bigger unit. he had sat at home a 250amp alternator with an intelligent off-board regulator. he simply could not use either as the engine management on his audi would not allow it. currently he is stuck with the standard charging circuit, with is only capable of charging lead acid batteries & does no where near the current he really requires.
Has it bollocks! 1 in 3 Mercs in the Middle East that used to come through our place were modified, if anything the electronic age has made a lot of areas easier to modify
Anyone that has actually worked on mercs would know that even the most simple of faults will bring on the Engine warning light ABS light ESP light etc, even the battery being disconnected will put a supply voltage fault in 80% of ecu's on the vehicle so modding them is very difficult especially when you dont have equipment like Star or the like to keep removing the fault that is stored, so your DIY'er wont want to pay someone like me £40 to clear the faults or take it to Merc and spend £100+ to clear the faults or chuck £6500 on dignostic equipment.
Altering ECU map characteristics is the easy part I change them daily and have been known to use a nintendo DS to download the dump to the vehicle but there is very little scope on newer vehicles to alter anything.
Headlights have ECU's controling them nowadays so altering a Xenon system for eg is gonna throw body computers into shutdown.
The new genereation of BMW's have computers controlling the amplifiers for the stereo which in turn is controled by a body computer so if you go altereing the spec on amps etc the body computer shuts down and in my experience a lot of the time also shuts the light control module down.
New Peugeots no longer have a switched 15 feed as it is all CANbus controled so adding a none stock stereo is going to put a drain on the battery unless you have a way of tapping into the CAN system to get the unit to power down.
Older vehicles are of course easily modified but getting hold of a good chassis that hasnt seen the test of council sodium being chucked allover the place.
Youve either got to be very clever with microprocessor and digital electronics these days or have money to pay someone to do things on new vehicles.
Anyone that has actually worked on mercs would know that even the most simple of faults will bring on the Engine warning light
If not done properly yeah, there's ways round it. Oh, I'm a factory trained Merc maintenance, systems and diagnostic technician and ran the workshop for the only dealer in Bahrain..........I know all about "actually working on them". You'll not win a willy waving contest on that subject, ta.
I reckon as far as tuning goes I've done all manner of bits and bobs and I'd much rather fit a stand-alone ecu and visit a rolling road than pull the engine and start swapping pistons and working out cam profiles.
The new Nissan GT-R is a perfect example, Nissan supposedly made it inpenetrable to the after market with various different bits of electronic trickery...low and behold within a few months Mines, Top Secret and Amuse have all found ways around it and have engine and chassis tuning packages available. Once the car's been out a while these software mods will be no doubt cheaper than buying a Garret or HKS turbo for an older Skyline to attain the same output. Same price, same outcome, just a different method.
Yeah so changing to aftermarket stereos and headlights is hard, who wants to ponce around with those anyway? Body mods, brakes, suspension, engine tuning are no different on a car whether it's new or old really. To lower something like a new W221 S-Class takes 10 minutes to install a Brabus chip to the AIRmatic unit; an older car takes heating up rusty bolts, jacking the car up and swapping springs....which method would you rather go with? Yeah you disconnect the battery, but all you'll get is a stored undervoltage fault...there'll be no lights on in that respect, and if the ESP light does come on it's a doddle to extinguish. More's the point though, as already covered, people with money to spend on new cars wouldn't think twice about nipping in somewhere to have something installed or an ecu reset anyway.
To suggest modern cars are causing a decline in modding is lunacy, there's still a million cars out there that can be modified in a million different ways. Yeah some things are hard to do on modern cars, others are easy.....exactly the same as modding an older model. Whoever said it was a piece of piss to mod a car???
No D! Its not dying. You're just getting old and growing out of it. lol
Like i said to dave yesterday, the scene has mad e a big change this last year or so, but the shows havent kept up with that change..
If there was a dwyb and a track or drag strip at every show then they'd always be rammed, always!