Stand Up Against Ride PimpingToday's Song Is Jacked Up Truck Song by Tim Humphries. Just to let you know, it's real bad, which seems fitting with today's topic. In 1885, a dude named Karl Benz built the first automobile. By 1888, he was producing them full time. And, by my guess and not any accurate recording of history, by 1889, some dude had probably covered one of them in chrome and put tasteless decals on the back window, like "You Can't Vote From The Kitchen".
They're laughing because they know in 120 years, they're going to run the world... Somewhere along the way we took a brilliant invention and decided it wasn't cool enough. We needed to lift it, drop it, tint it, paint it, chop it, and pimp it. We took catch phrases and covered our bumpers and windows in them. We strapped genitals to them. We put tires on them that were bigger than us. We made them sound broken. And we paid a lot of money to do it all. A pair of truck nuts can cost anywhere from $25 to $100 dollars. I found a set of spinning rims for $4200 plus shipping. Lift kit for about $2000, cherry bomb mufflers that make it sound like your truck is broken for around $150, and of course this is all on top of the price of the vehicle itself. A vehicle, which when purchased, runs smoothly, quietly, efficiently, and if it's in decent shape, looks pretty sharp, without any of that other crap.
Sometimes though, all those extras really make it look good... Now, I'm not saying no one should ever change anything about their vehicle. I'm not saying that factory settings are always the best. I'm just saying that we need to stop paying to make our stuff worse. If you put a lift kit on a truck, up to a certain height, I get that. If you put a lift kit on a muscle car designed to ride low, you should have your car taken away from you. At your expense. If you don't like the color of your vehicle, get a paint job! Just don't get some ridiculous 3 toned color changing gimmick with flames down the sides and the Oilers logo on the hood. Or to look like it's melting.
Though, the shuriken rims are a nice touch. Personally, I have a pair of mini-boxing gloves hanging from my rear view, got them last year on a vacation to Mexico. I think they're neat, my wife loves them, a good friend of mine thinks I look like a real big pile of loser. He thinks they're super tacky. Maybe he's right. Are my gloves better than a pair of balls on the back? How far away am I from having something like a stick figure family on the back window, or World 1-1 on the side of my car?
He totally missed that first item block with the mushroom in it... It's a matter of personal taste I guess. I probably won't take down my gloves, and my friend will groan every time he's in my car. But at least he's not riding in a car that says "No Fat Chicks", or one that has a romantic moment from Avatar etched in to the hood. Maybe we're all guilty of minor infractions, but I think most of us can agree on the big stuff.
FYI, this is the big stuff... Feedback time, how far is too far when it comes to modifying a vehicle? Am I being too harsh? Or have people gone too far with their accessories? You can drop a response on Twitter to me, or The Goat, of if you do Facebook, we've got that too. (Drew Dalby, The Goat). Or, look down, and make words happen in the comment box. -DLB blog comments powered by Disqus |
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