Crazy ideas for modified cars

We take a look at the craze of custom cars and modified cars. Take an ordinary everyday car and transform it into something amazing. Ever since cars existed there has been a very active customisation scene.

People like to feel they are driving something unique and want to put their own touch and styling to their car.

Back in the past panels had to be hand beaten and shaped. The livery was often painted by hand and there are some really beautiful cars around. Now there are many off the shelf products that are easy to fit to your car.

Some cars are based on popular TV show cars like the General lee look alike above which has actually been based on a Plymouth Sport satellite.

Big block engines are great to work on and have a lot of tuning potential and we often see cars running the quarter mile strip in under 12 seconds.

There are generally two areas for modification, visual modifications and performance tuning modifications. Most people will go for one or the other but there are some nice examples of modified cars around which fall into both camps. Personally I prefer the go to the show everytime.

Here are the most popular engine modifcations arranged in order of the power gain on offer from each one.

Adding two or more exponentially increases the power gain on offer

• Turbo conversions and supercharger kits
• Fast road camshafts
• Remapping (After 2001 this was a software update before this it requires a chip swap or piggy back device)
• Gas flowing and porting the head
• Sports exhaust with a sports catalyst
• Induction kit (air filter)
• Wider wheels and soft tyres
• Large brake conversion kits
• Suspension upgrades

There is no limit to the visual modifications you can do on your car. Chrome has always been popular. There are a wide selection of paint finishes and paint effects on offer.

The most popular mods are usually alloy wheels which look much nicer than steel ones and bodykits.

Bodykits can affect the cooling of the engine so you have to be careful and check that suffient cool air is still getting under the hood.

The latest trend appears to be moving towards getting the car as low as possible, air or hydraulic suspension is often used. Read more on exterior styling mods here.

For further information on the fascinating world of modified cars we suggest you have a look at the following sites.

If you are planning some modifications to your car then we suggest you get as much information and advice first and plan it out carefully.

If you want a really big power gain then you should add a turbo charger to your engine. It might sound easy but there are a lot of other changes that need to be made to the engine. It will need to be strengthened, the compression ratio will need to be lowered and you will need to completely rewrite the ignition map.

The Honda Civic turbo conversion has been done a few times and really does take some fine tuning, but when it is setup right you can get around 280bhp from your 1.8 VTEC engine. Expect this to be a costly project. The parts alone with cost in the order of £3000/$5000 and the labour is likely to double this.

Joining a forum like the one at www.TorqueCars.com will prove invaluable and you can get tips and pointers from other people who are undertaking similar projects to yours.

Even run of the mill cars can be transformed into something special if you have some imaginative sprayed art on the bonnet.

Here are some of the latest and greatest modified car videos from the TorqueCars youtube channel.

You can, with a little imagination fit parts from one car onto another with great effect, here we have an MR2 fitted with Celica headlights which have had a heavy black tint applied to them.

We'd be interested to see how many of our readers have modified their cars.