Time has taken us on a wild journey in respect to the automobile. We drive our cars through a vast and diversified prism of trends and phases throughout the decades; people have always been thinking of ways to make it faster, stronger, better. We’ve watched the evolution of the car, in just our own lifetime, traverse more than a few odd styling fads that may or may not have already died off to make room for the new trends of the day.

Eventually, everything we do to goes out of style to some extent as something else cutting-edge comes to take its place for the next five minutes. Some mods are super rad and stick around longer than other mods. Some urban legends keep people erroneously searching for horsepower in ways not soundly based on any type of logic. The glorious part about all of this is that you, the observer, get to watch everyone else burn out all the bad ideas before you go sticking your tailpipe into someplace it doesn’t belong.

Since the things you and I may laugh about today may be the cornerstone of the next guy’s biggest accomplishment, it’s only fair to give each of these popular mods a fair chance at scrutiny. I judge not whether they belong on your car – that’s for you to decide. I’ve just compiled some popular ones up in a list with my own two cents for your consideration. Maybe you already have these mods done to your car. Hey, more power to you. I’m just here to tell you what’s not going to make a difference and what’s actually going to slow you down. This is the pinnacle of consumer reporting at its absolute finest.

18 Aero-Matic Body Kits (Does Nothing)

If you have a bumper that has to slither sideways across speed bumps; if your front air splitter is low enough to hang up on stray zip ties and shuffle cigarette butts around a parking lot; if it hangs cockeyed on that one side because you installed it with the same zip tie that you just ran over in said parking lot – you probably own a jalopy.

If you have a paint job with more metallic than the body it covers – you probably own a jalopy.

If you have an aerodynamic-looking body kit installed on your car, but it was designed by the same guy that gave you the zip ties to install yours with…you probably own his old jalopy. If all of the above conditions are correct, assume the guy who rolls like this isn’t gaining anything but massive amounts of reward points at wherever he buys his zip ties.

17 Turbonator (Does Nothing)

Here’s a classic gem and a lesson in snake oil sales for all you enterprising young scoundrels out there looking to heist a buck from a poor fellow too dumb to know better. But before I go any further, let me just share with you how they are marketed on eBay – these are the actual titles of some of the listings (look them up!): “Single Fan Turbonator,” “Supercharger Tornado Air Intake,” but the best ones are when they combine both of those wonderful words into one highly-advanced induction modification – “Supercharger Dual Turbonator Cold Air Intake…Turbo Charger Fan Fuel Saver.” What in the blazing-hell is a turbonator? If this happens to be you – cut it out right now.

16 Inverted Camber (Makes Cars Slower)

There is an epidemic plaguing the nation’s streets today, and your youth are at risk. It could strike when they are walking home from school, or at the movies with friends. It could happen at any moment and there’s nothing you can do but educate your kids of the dangers and pray that they are sensible enough to resist the temptation. Someday, someone is going to ask your child if they want to participate in a life-changing activity from which there is little hope for a full recovery. Someday, someone will ask your child if they want to ‘stance’ their car.

15 High-Performance Race Tire…Paint (Does Nothing)

Here’s a mod that never fails to inspire the speed demon within every one of us – stenciled sidewalls. Seeing racing tires roll mesmerizingly down the road, lettering blending into a blurry haze as they speed up. Makes you wonder just how fast the car can really spin them.

Sometimes, the answer would disappoint you as sidewall painting has been used to give the appearance of a higher rated tire since the beginning of time (literally, like the second wheel ever made).

Whether or not they are actually race tires can be found out the good old fashioned way – and even better yet if you have your sidewalls painted too; you’re the guy who falls for this in the first place.

14 Additional Air Flow (Does Nothing)

One thing that has severely limited hot rodders for thousands of years is the inability to jam more air into various parts of their racecars. Induction air into the motor is the bottleneck of bottlenecks, for you can out-proportion the air/fuel mixture with fuel long before you’ll ever get too much air in the chambers; this same principle also happens to apply to cooling of various components like brakes and coolers. So many systems have undergone the scrutiny of well-educated (and well-paid) engineers for alterations to get the final product perfect. The development of a new radio, for example, can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The willy-nilly sticky vents on the fenders of your F-150 aren’t fooling anybody, Guadalupe!

13 Shift Samurai (Makes Cars Slower)

Don’t feel like gripping that big, fat knob all day long while you whip it around and jam it into gear? Maybe you want something more battle-oriented for your four-cylinder to war on the streets with. It’s been proven that having your samurai sword handle sticking out of your transmission makes you the least dangerous samurai on the planet (ever).

It’s also proven that more people would rather see you sit on it than shake your hand when they find out that’s what you do with it all day long.

The day this mod will become cool is the day you can switch a little lever and pull the handle out to reveal that it is, in fact, attached to a real sword that you do, in fact, know how to use. Until then, you’re a tool and probably not shifting as fast as you could.

12 Spoiler (Already So Slow, Might As Well)

So this guy…where do we begin? We could start with the winglets, or we could sum it up by calling him a lost cause with poor taste in more than his hat – he’s either 19 or 39, there’s no in-between for him and at least if he’s a kid you can forgive this nonsense a little easier. I’m just trying to understand how some of these spoilers evolved into such exaggerations of what they came from, where they always supposed to act like a parachute? Was it a slow evolution from something OK to something this retarded? Maybe like a fraction of an inch at a time, over the course of decades? He might have actually paid money for that.

11 Stadium Lighting (Does Nothing)

Not only is this highly illegal to drive like this in some places – where are you even going to use this thing? I suppose if you decide to do a roadside watch repair while standing outside of your truck and just so happen to drop the watch; this would come in handy to retrieve all them little gears and stuff. But what are we really supposed to look at here? A little lift on a medium truck with a crazy shadow on the ground? If you’re down to go this far, you might as well just put lights inside your muffler too – that way the exhaust can see where it’s going. Actually, that would probably be cooler.

10 Space Ship Wings (Makes Cars Slower)

(Don't even think I was gonna let this list get away without throwing a wing on it!) The wings are simultaneously the most hated and loved mod in the entire universe. Even aliens are polarized by this (because A: They exist, and B: There’s that one alien that has that super-wack wing on his UFO that all the other aliens hate on because he thinks his JDM UFO is so fast). If you were to really stop and think about it, a wing on a BRZ is just about as dumb as a wing on a spaceship; it’s as dumb as a screen door on a battleship. (If that Back to the Future reference is lost on you, I feel for your deprived childhood.)

9 Titanic Hood Scoops (Does Nothing)

For some reason, the Titan-buying demographic seems to allow this to proliferate amongst its ranks like no other truck line I’ve ever seen, and I do not know why. It seems that the truck, newly introduced into the full-size market by Nissan in recent years (2004) has a lot to prove; rather than pull stumps and haul equipment up 4% grades for six miles at maximum gross weight, the Titan’s proving techniques are somewhat different, to say the least. These are the trucks that get chrome exhausts and the vent treatment…all the good stuff – yet I am still waiting to see a Titan be able to lay down some rubber like a good ol’ 6.0L Chevy small block. I guess the fake vents only give you horsepower when you’re talking about how much horsepower they give you.

8 Fender Flares (Does Nothing)

Here’s one that can go both ways depending on where you buy it from, how much you pay for it and who you let put it on. Usually, the mod is a crap-shoot, jabroney-looking mess that shows the world more or less how handy you are not with a set of tools (which, in turn, tells me exactly whom not to let borrow my tools).

When done correctly, the mod looks great on a stanced car that’s been doctored just right and tweaked precisely where tweaking was needed.

Some of you go wild with 2” spacers, custom-anodized, aluminum lug nuts that strip the first time you take ‘em off and those wheels that you swear would look so much better slammed…And now you need to attack your car with an angle grinder to eat away the sheet metal destroying your tires. After all that magic happens, your car is thrashed and is worse off than had you left it alone.

7 Vents On Vents On Vents (Does Nothing)

Here’s one I’m going to rip on just because it’s so crazy, but deep down, I really think this is an awesome build, done very well, and with a clear vision that has made it through the build, intact. Most visions get obscured halfway through, or the builder gets distracted – whatever have you – and the build ends up a far cry from what it should have been (sometimes that randomness is good, but a lot of people end up with jalopies). This one is one of the coolest S14s I’ve ever seen – themed to no end and devilishly styled. It is a good example of how things are done properly but ask yourself anyway: could any other car have so many vents in such close proximity to each other and not look horrible? This guy earned his vents.

6 Induction Systems Gone Wrong (Makes Cars Slower)

OK, so why am I saying induction systems make you slower? I’m obviously high, right? Alas, the all-time, most popular and vigorously regurgitated mod that most young, aspiring car modifiers love to throw around a conversation is the “cold-air intake.” Why it’s precisely called a cold-air intake is mostly beyond them for a technical explanation, but they sure know what it’s called. As the principles of physics dictate that colder air is denser – and a straight, unobstructed line is the path of least resistance – one could reason that small-diameter induction with kinks and bends laid across the top of a hot engine is the worst type of induction modification – but you’d be surprised what people have hidden beneath their fake hood vents.

5 Just One Racing Seat With A Factory Belt (Does Nothing)

Ahh yes, this classic maneuver; how could we forget such a blisteringly tacky way to lop-side your car? It’s like the commitment to performance is only halfway there. Simply feeling the racing seat tuck your body into its tight embrace is enough to give you the thrill you so badly seek. What’s better than just one racing seat however, is when the factory seat belt harness is used, but can’t be routed through the seat belt slots, thus hovers uselessly above your lap rather than tucking you tightly in. Was this never considered when you decided to upgrade to a performance seat or did you just not care?

4 Two Seats, Two 5-Points (Still Does Nothing)

OK so maybe our subject in question is spotted with two matching racing seats (bright-red in a black interior, mind you) rather than one; hopefully accompanied by the follow-through to continue on with the next step – the matching 5-point harnesses to go along with them.

Now we’re cooking! This is what you want to see!

Although this guy isn’t going any faster, he still spent the few extra bucks to make sure his passenger enjoys the thrill of speeding down residential streets just as much as he does. The only problem with this mod now is, no cage – but we’re taking baby steps here.

3 This Guy (Again) (Does Nothing – None of it)

We’ve likely seen this gem floating around the interwebs at some point in time as we aimlessly scrape the low-quality corners of the internet dry for some cheap entertainment.

It’s the product of what happens when a man retires, has too many tools in his garage and a wife that he has to hide from by pretending he needs to do one more thing to the old Camry.

Once he ran out of things to fix, he continued to ‘fix’ things with his own engineering. This engineering includes rims, exterior speakers, pillar-lights, multiple flags, a bumper guard and 10 million pieces of 3M chrome. You know those pipes make you jealous.

2 Stance Nation Mods (Does Nothing)

Here’s a clean example of a good BRZ gone rogue, and someone isn’t done modifying. The funny thing about this car is, in spite of all the stance-nation dressings it’s already received, it somehow looks bare. If you shared the same, strange sentiment, perhaps what we subconsciously realize is that something is definitely missing. The answer is probably a wing big enough to eat lunch on. Seeing as most BRZs are slower than you think they are, there’s no need for an aero kit; it still doesn’t stop it from looking unfinished, however – as if the car was built for rice burning. Of all the mods you can physically see on this car, not one of them increases performance, except for the camber, of course.

1 Stinger (Does Nothing)

Here’s a classic mod that has taken the tuner side of the playground by storm like tomorrow isn’t going to come – and it’s getting out of hand. I understand a handy-dandy hook on a track car for easy extraction when you plow into the sand – that’s understandable (and because you suck at driving).

But affixing an anodized or polished extraction device to the front or rear of your car that’s never seen a race track isn’t fooling us into thinking you it has.

It actually makes you look slower by trying so hard to look faster (maybe try looking slower?). At least the fools that bolt on a body kit have the commitment to finish it. You put two bolts in and think its sick.

Sources: stancenation.com, speedhunters.com, superstreetonline.com, titantalk.com.