I remember when some brochures used to have a page at the back dedicated to dealer-fitted accessories. There would be mud flaps, custom floor mats and numerous other fairly useless things including these: guards to protect against stone chips.
Now, maybe I haven’t been looking closely enough, but I haven’t noticed many cars with noticeable dents and chips on their front end because the owner didn’t pay a little extra to get one of these babies fitted. What I have noticed, though, are numerous cars with these guards fitted and absolutely clogged with detritus and debris. It frustrates me to look at, because most owners don’t seem to clean them out. Is it even easy to remove the guard? These items just strike me as useless and ugly. So, tell me, what is your least favorite automotive accessory?
I only scanned comments quickly and there may be some repeats, but in addition to the aftermarket anything and especially donks, the seasonal crap drives me nuts. School and pro team clip-on window flags, holiday wreaths mounted on the grill, and any kind of political bumper sticker/window adherent. In the Upper Midwest and elsewhere, Ole and Lena still think attaching a hunk of brown cardboard between the radiator and grill will somehow warm up their vintage LTD or Impala a bit faster….
I hate those huge steering wheel covers that turn up on most older cars now. And I am with everyone on the chromed plastic ventiports.
Thankfully, some old offenders have disappeared, like the bird hood ornaments with colored plastic wings or the gold crowns that people put on dashes or in the back window.
And this one may have been local, but after the Indianapolis Star went on a rant in the early 60s about the need for daytime running lights, we saw for years cars with a little round white light attached to the middle of the grille. It always seemed to be on 62 Bel Air sedans.
I remember those. My grandma had one on her 1960 Impala. There used to be a lot of those around.
Didn’t they always show pictures of them on Studebakers ?
I know how the star is with their self righteous rants. A place I used to work at was on their receiving end a couple of times.
It happens everywhere but there’s a large number of restored classic cars in Australia that are absolutely covered in period accessories and I hate em. I know the owners are free to do whatever they want but can’t some of them must realise their cars would look better not covered with all that shit? It’s not as if it was normal for all cars in the 50s,60s,70s to be like that. I’m even seeing 70s and 80s cars at shows with those stupid placebo anti static straps fitted to them as if to represent some kind of period charm.
Mudflaps, towbars and maybe even fugly external sunvisors I can understand because they serve some purpose. Curb feelers, wing mirrors, wheel spats, bumper bar overriders, door handle scratch plates, canvas water bags (in this day and age), headlight and windscreen insect screens and unused roof racks I cannot see the reason for having all on one car.
While I’m on a roll I’ll also add that getting some unloved shitbox from the 70s because it’s “oldschool” and lowering it till it scrapes on the tiniest of bumps, putting whitewalls on it, painting the rims, making the shifter 2 foot long, clearcoating over surface rust, and putting a shitload of the aforementioned accessories on it, does not make it a hotrod or a rat car or a classic and you would have been better off leaving it the hell alone.
Car alarms – do they deter crime, or just call attention to the idiot who has set it off yet again. Especially the aftermarket versions that would go off on a whim.
Must a classic car be compelled to have big fuzzy dice hanging off the rear view mirror?
Donks – the less seen the better. It ruins the asthetics of a CC candidate. Either go full ricer (for maximum ridicule), full pimp (ibid), or not at all.
Most after market hub caps. Also, I rarely saw those spinning rims (“sprewells?”) that didn’t look like cheap, poorly finished or balanced chrome. That fad has faded, fortunately.
I happen to like fender skirts. Like for Girls, a well-tailored skirt matched will make her look good. And the opposite is true. My fantasy ’55 4dr Bel Air will have them. But I never cared for continental kits.
Cheap paint jobs, regardless of reason.
People commented on dark tint. I seem to recall that may be illegal in some jurisdictions. But poorly applied after market tint (see the bubbles?) is really tacky.
End.
JC Whitney made these popular when I was a kid and I received one as a Christmas gift during my teen driving years. Needless to say, it did not make it into the back window any car we owned:
A few from when I was a young hooner/driver back in the mid-’70s:
Curb feelers – while these are somewhat more limited to a certain demographic today, they were more widely popular for a while.
Dixie Horn – made popular by the Dukes of Hazzard television show. I wanted one of these *so bad*. Glad in retrospect I could never afford one!
Wink Mirrors – often combined with rear louvers over the back window.
CB radio – had one of these! We were definitely part of the CB craze…
And I’ll finish with a photo of the dash of my Vega, which included the CB, 8-track player and analog meter power booster. The paper attached to the dash has the “Achtung! Das machine is nicht for gerfingerpoken…” text on it.
Ah, youth!
I installed a CB and a 10′ whip antenna on my first car, an ’84 Rabbit. The CB was really cool; had a telephone-style handset. (I still have it somewhere.) Probably saved me from a speeding ticket or two on the highway.
Black “chrome” wheels: always look like the hubcaps have flown off [ the Nissan Versa look ] and make a car look like a beater no matter how expensive the wheels were or the car they’re on.
Spoilers. Body kits. They always seem to make a car look worse.
The only accessories I added to my car is the hood scoop (needed to make room for carb) aftermarket wheels (they don’t make wheels that big for my car, but they fit in) factory spoiler (keeps the back end down at speed) and the rear window louver (keeps the car cooler in FL sun) THe ones you can’t see is the engine 3 times bigger than stock, 5 speed trans over the auto, and 8 3/4 rear as I had to put the power to the pavement somewhere.
Oh yah I remember those cats in car back windows, maybe we could do a story on automotive fads that arn’t cool anymore. Like painting the rear end cover flourecesnt orange and skinny tires on the front with the rear end rake.
Locking gas caps are not only to keep gas from being stolen….but to keep bad stuff out of the tank…..Years ago a friend of mine had sugar or dirt dumped in his gas tank by some kids up to mischief……He had to get the carburetor cleaned along with the gas tank and gas lines……so he went out and bought a locking gas cap afterwards.
Weathershields as we call ’em in Australia. There was a place for them when drivers where required to give hand signals. Yet I still see them on modern AC equipped cars.
My Commodore had them on both sides when purchased. They lasted the trip home and then straight to ebay.
I hate those stupid headlight “eyelashes”. Every time I see them, it makes me want to rip them off the car
Fake arms/legs hanging out of the truck, stick figure families stickers, balls hanging from the trailer hitch, “Baby On Board” signs, carbon fibre hoods/trunk lids/gas doors, flat black body parts, huge rear wings/spoilers, fart can mufflers..the list is endless
Might have been mentioned above (TL;DR), but it seemed like *everyone* had a (back half of a) Garfield cat hanging out their trunk for a couple years…
Actually, I like plastic bonnet guards like that, but with the following proviso: only as period pieces on 80s/90s cars. To that end, I recently bought a factory-accessory pair of plastic headlight-protectors for my magnificent Sierra, as well as the driver’s door monsoon shield from this Cosworth that’s being broken for parts in Bryce’s neck of the woods. Not because they’ll be terribly useful, but because they give the Sierra a nice period look (like whitewalls on 50s cars that didn’t originally have them!).
Touchscreens and-from the `80s-synthesized voice vocal warning systems.Also those Calvin and Hobbs characters “peeing” on a Chevy or Ford logo,and “my kid is an honor student at….” bumper stickers.As they used to say in Mad magazine-yeeeech!
I really dislike window visors. It always kind of useless Accessories ever I had