Modifications: Generally Worse

The seemingly inevitable end to a teenage boy's car is a crash. OK, maybe not all the time, but it's a fair assessment that teenage males get into some pretty gnarly accidents.

And while a fair number of cars do end up bifurcated by a White Birch, a larger portion of them, I reckon, are ruined far before their demise.

Yes, I'm talking about modifications. High schools are riddled with stupidly lifted off-road trucks, ridiculously lowered econo-cars, and 60's junk with 24 inch chromers. And more often than not, one can hear these cars coming before they actually arrive.

I'm not saying that every modification to a car is bad. In fact, I am a wholehearted supporter of altering stock cars to take to the track - performance modifications. Things like less restrictive exhausts, headers, and intakes, as well as lightening the car, upgrading brakes, and fitting stiff, lowered suspension are all fine by me. My biggest support goes to performance tires, a modification that everybody should do to his/her car...it's just safer.

When a car starts to become worse at being a car, though, is when problems occur. For example, lowering a car an inch, even two inches from stock height can be beneficial to the handling. But slamming the car serves no purpose whatsoever. A car's suspension needs a small amount of travel to absorb impacts from the road. While  less important in a race, the need to avoid unsettling the car is even greater. Riding in a slammed car tells the story. If you've never ridden in a seriously lowered car, you probably have never felt serious back pain.

Next is huge wheels. Maybe a 20 inch wheel can improve performance and ride quality over a 16 inch wheel. But, to be frank, there is a reason Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, and all the other great car companies fit 20 inch wheels max. Most of them spec no larger than a 19 inch wheel. This is for a very simple reason; when rotating mass is transferred farther away from the center of rotation, it's inertia increases. This slows acceleration and severely degrades braking performance.

Alright...on to exhausts. This is a sore subject as I nearly ruined my first car with a ridiculously loud exhaust. Yes, a less restrictive exhaust system can free up a few horsepower; and yes the car will be louder than stock. But the reasons escape me why somebody would use a cutoff exhaust pipe instead of a muffler. Racing is one thing, but if a car is on the street...Noise is bad, a sonorous engine is good.