5 Reasons Why I Hate Driving Highly Modified Cars

I want to start this piece by saying that I love the modification scene. I love to see what people come up with when given free reign with nothing but a car and their own creativity. I love to see what people build on a shoestring budget, and I love to see the absolute monsters that come out of big sponsored builds.

But there are a number of reasons why I’ve never really been bitten by the modding bug myself, and they’re mostly to do with the fact that modified motors are an absolute pain in the backside to drive most of the time. Such cars generally only make sense within a small set of parameters that need to be explained – “sure it drives horribly, but it looks great at a car show”, or “yeah, I know the steering is impossible at low speeds, but it comes alive on the track” are two examples I’ve heard on my travels.

Below are a few aspects of modified cars that bug me, and are the reason I’ll stick to fairly restrained modifications on my own car in the future.

Yeah, I know I sound like a massive wuss right now, but have you ever actually spent a lot of time in a car with a crazy loud exhaust? The novelty wears off really damn fast. I have so much respect for people who are either dedicated or stubborn enough to put up with a ludicrous exhaust.

The problem is that most sound amazing under full load, but drone like you’ve got a wasp nest in your ear the rest of the time – I drove a Toyota AE86 with a bonkers exhaust for three hours on a motorway, and as fantastic as that car is, I refused to drive it for the rest of the shoot!

The great thing about manufacturers pumping millions of pounds, dollars and yen into research and development is that you can be pretty confident that everything’s going to just work. When you leave a car stock you’re never too worried about clanks and whirrs and groans from under the hood, but when you’ve invested time and money into modifying your car you’re constantly listening out for signs it’s about to die.

If you’re the kind of person who’s happy when stuff goes wrong because it means you get to fix it, that might be fine, but for the rest of humanity being permanently on edge while driving, it isn’t that appealing.

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