Sports cars are the ultimate expression of automotive freedom. Most cars you can buy from a dealer are compromises. Despite plenty of advertised claims saying how sporty and fun the latest SUV or sedan may be, mainstream commuter cars and SUVs can't touch the pure driving experience of a sports car.
Whether you're after handling, pure speed, or just a more engaging driving experience, buying a sports car is an experience that will provide owners with years of joy. Of course, once you own that sporty vehicle of your dreams, you'll want to make it your own, with personal touches. Thankfully, the modifications industry is booming, offering a huge variety of parts to customize and improve your car with.
At the same time though, those modifications can easily ruin the car, either by destroying the meticulous design that years had been spent perfecting, or obliterating performance in favor of looking different.
Whether its a horrible set of wheels, ugly wrap, or performance destroying stance, here are 15 sports cars ruined by a horrible modification:
15 Porsche 911 - Floral Failure
Remember Ed Hardy? The Clothing brand that made tattoo inspired clothing? Well, clearly this Porsche owner took inspiration from their trendy (for the '90s and early 2000s) designs, customizing this 911 Carrera in a full body wrap that would look far more appropriate on a shirt or as an actual tattoo. On a subtle sports car like a Porsche 911, it just looks gaudy.
14 Dodge Viper - Body Kit Butchering
Often times with car ruining modifications, there's some semblance of logic or indicators of personal taste. This Viper though is just horrible. The Dodge Viper is an iconic car, yet the body kit covers up the well-designed tail lights to announce that it is indeed a Viper. The rest of the body kit is worse, with fender flares hiding the wheels and random design elements that have 0 harmony or good looks to them.
13 Nissan GTR - Hulk-Zilla
Commonly referred to as Godzilla, GTRs are awesome and iconic sports cars that perform like nothing else out there. Part of the GTR's appeal is subtlety, offering supercar performance without the flashy style or price of typical supercars. This GTR though, ignored that subtlety, annihilating it with a Hulk green wrap, even worse, its a chrome wrap, making the car look more like a Hot Wheels toy than a serious performer.
12 Nissan 370Z - Help! My Wheels Are Falling Off
Look, I get it, camber is a matter of taste, and some people like having their wheels tilted. There are some performance gains to a slight bit of negative camber, but once you go down this route, it makes the car useless. Only a fraction of those wheels are touching the ground, destroying any usable performance, and even then, it looks like the wheels are about to fall off of the car.
11 Chevrolet Camaro - 32 Inches Of Ugly
Donks aren't to everyone's taste, but they make some sense as a subculture of automotive customization. Giving the Donk treatment to something based on performance, like a Chevy Camaro, just makes no sense though. Those 32-inch wheels may stand out, but any notion of performance is thrown out the window, they're also just plain ugly and cartoonish.
10 Lamborghini Aventador - Shinier Is Better? That's A Load Of Bull
Even if you personally think chrome wraps look good, the issue is that they're just too shiny. Cars will be exposed to sunlight if you want to drive them, and when wrapped around the sharp angles of the Lamborghini Aventador, it basically becomes a rolling mirror, blinding anyone you drive past. It also just screams "pay attention to me!" And not in a good way.
9 Ferrari Testarossa - The Stancing Horse
Look, people have a right to do what they want with the cars they own (so long as it stays within the law), but as car enthusiasts, we also have a right to voice our concerns that they ruined the car. Being an iconic classic of the Italian performance world, its almost blasphemy to stance a Testarossa like this, as all that performance has been traded on a quest to look different. Different indeed, but not in a good way.
8 Mercedes McLaren SLR - The Body Kit From Hell... And Switzerland
While many modifications can be subjectively argued as to whether they've ruined a car, it's nearly impossible to argue that this looks good. The Mercedes McLaren SLR was an awesome car and a subtle monster. Throwing all sense of good taste out the window, Swiss designer Ueli Anliker decided to mutilate his SLR into the flashiest thing possible with that horrible red body kit, and then proceeded to list it for sale for $11 Million.
7 Toyota Supra - Japanese Domestic Mistake
An icon of JDM sports cars, the Toyota Supra has earned itself a legendary reputation for good reason. With subtle yet good looking body lines, the Supra is a great looking car, with tuning potential to be a supercar killing monster. However, throwing on such a weird body kit obliterates any notion of good design, replacing it with questionable taste and strange triangular holes.
6 Chevrolet Corvette - Stingray, Not A Shark
Revisiting a legendary name in the Corvette world, Chevrolet named the C7 generation of Corvette "Stingray." This owner must either have misheard or doesn't know what a Stingray is, as they've installed a frankly disgusting looking shark tooth insert on their grille. It may have looked funny if it was in a cartoon, but it looks horrible in real life.
5 Aston Martin Vantage - Lying License Plate
To be fair, "Style" comes in many forms, this one just happens to be a disgusting style. Looking like a coat of paint that has sat in the sun for years, cracking all throughout the car, this wrap is flashy and ugly - a great combination to ruin the looks of a car. The neon yellow/green doesn't help either, making it look like it drove through a highlighter factory.
4 Dodge Viper - Wanted A Wing, Accidentally Installed A Bench
Dodge Vipers look awesome in this copper color, the wheels as well are fitting for a brutal beast of a sports car as well. All that would have been left to do was add a spoiler or wing... And that's where everything went wrong. Big wings can look good sometimes, but this is not one of those cases. Looking more like a park bench, this wing is too big, simple, and ugly to ever belong on one of the best American sports cars of all time.
3 BMW I8 - Proud To Be Scrap Metal
The BMW I8 is a rather interesting sports car. Offering hybrid power, it was intended to be a vision of the future, showcasing the cutting edge of car design and engineering, and what the car of the future may look like. Skip farther into the future, and the metal begins to rust. Clearly this owner was aiming for both of those futures, covering the I8 in a wrap meant to imitate rust. Why? Who knows.
2 Audi R8 - "Let Me Just Blind Everyone On The Road"
As mentioned, chrome wraps present a hazard to everyone else on the road. As you can see by the wall next to the car, this Audi R8 is as reflective as a chrome wrap can get. On top of the reflectivity, the flashiness from the neon blue color just makes it look like its screaming for attention, and it'll get it regardless once it reflects the sun into the eyes of passing drivers.
1 Chevrolet Corvette - The Wheels Will Hypnotize You Into Thinking They Look Good
Another unfortunate Donk, the paint on this Classic C3 corvette looks awesome, with a perfect gloss finish, and retro color. But look down at the wheels, and things get way worse. To begin with, the tires are almost nonexistent, meaning it'll be one rough ride inside the car, but the hypnotic design is also just way too flashy, and that's not even mentioning how they're taller than the actual body of the Corvette they are attached to.