The hot rod community came into its own in the United States with the availability of cheap pre-war cars that young people could buy and then jam big engines in to go fast. This set the stage for youth car culture for years to come. Cheap available cars, from Model Ts to Chevy Novas, become platforms for speed and customization. Some of the cars we think of today as street monsters were sold in dealerships as economy or family cars. Eventually, manufacturers caught on to this second life of their cars and some of the cars at the bottom of their ledger and started offering hotter options for their econobox offerings.

The Honda Civic started life as a cheap and efficient offering for the gas-starved '70s. Once the tiny car was imported into the United States, it changed the face of the automotive world for the country. While Europe had already had their own small car options, the Civic managed to create its own market with its simplicity, reliability, and efficiency. It was only a matter of time before hot foots got their hands on the tiny lightweight package and started bolting go-fast products on them. Japanese youth were just as eager if not more to take their parents' second-hand grocery getter and put some hot parts on it.

Speed is speed, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Since the legendary Hirohata Merc, drastically altering the car's look has also been a staple of the custom car culture, although not all mods are for everyone. Here are some more dramatic Civic alterations that might be tough to love.

20 Hinge-y Civic

via cardomain.com

While the Transtop trunk on the del Sol was a factory option, this weird hinge up on the Civic is straight custom. It's part of a strange custom trend that works better on garish lowriders than anywhere else. The idea on a lowrider is that there's nothing on the car that shouldn't be touched by the custom fabricator, that every inch of the car is special.

Without that 'excess for excess's sake' perspective, it just becomes a weird thing that the car does.

When such things are offered as kits, it makes it that much worse. Add overused scissor doors, which look worse on a four-door, and it all just doesn't work. Points awarded, however, for the fact that when closed up, it looks like an unassuming lightly modded Civic.

19 Dayglow Tattoo

via carthrottle.com

There are two trends that came out of the '80s that managed to stick around in one way or another even if they lost their initial luster. One is the dayglow look, colors so bright that they appear to glow even in the light of day. The next is taking the 'tattoo' design look, using tribal-influenced designs popular in tattoos and applying them to other art. This Civic has collided those elements with a tribal-tattoo fire look with dayglow green and red. The flame look is a standard of hot rodding, but this one has combined it with eye-straining colors, a bee-sting body kit, and a front spoiler that probably makes following this car in a parking lot a pain.

18 Barnyard Takeyari

via carthrottle.com

In Japanese car culture, there's a wild custom trend called 'takeyari,' the bamboo shoot exhaust. It involves extending the exhaust pipe to ridiculous lengths with sharp angles with angled ends that resemble bamboo shoots. The designs have become more and more elaborate over time to include shapes and other designs.

Takeyari exhausts have become the pride of their fabricators, though with this oddball junkyard extension, 'pride' doesn't appear to be a factor.

It's not clear whether the owner was going for a junkyard takeyari or what, but it's certainly unsightly.

17 Double-Axle Civic

via encyclopediadramataica.rs

In the late '80s and the early '90s, there was a segment of compact pickup that became popular with lowriders and customizers everywhere.

Mazda, Toyota, and Chevy S-10 pickups were lowered and cut up with massive stereo installations and dancing beds.

One of the more outlandish touches was to add an extra axle on the back of the truck. This Civic owner has opted for the custom mini-pickup look by adding an extra axle to his little Civic. While we can grant the benefit of the doubt that the sloppy bodywork is a result of a work in progress, it's hard to get behind the idea of the three-axle Civic with its faux knock-off wheels.

16 Underglow

via hondacivicforum.com

There are plenty of custom car shows, big and small, across the globe. While these formal affairs are all well and good, the real show is on the street on a Friday night. For these late-night cruises, standing out is a social imperative. One of the ways to accomplish this that have become popular is the addition of neon on the underbody. Xenon and LED headlights have also become popular. This car employs leaving the actual light duties to the fog lamps. The owner has added some light faux racing aerodynamics and a tribal tattoo design. It's actually a pretty clean and reserved Honda in context, but the juxtaposition of lowrider and hot rod means it's not good at either job.

15 Carved-Up Del Sol

via bestcarmods.com

The del Sol was the replacement for the CR-X variation of the Civic. It offered the same two-seater configuration but with more of a roadster look complete with a targa top. The lifted trunk lid isn't actually a custom add, but it was an attempt to make a targa top (a removable roof) automatic like those on modern convertibles. The Transtop, as it was called, was only offered for European and Japanese customers; Americans had to do it by hand. This del Sol has a confusing collection of swooping and ducted bodywork added with the import tuner requisite giant wing attached to the robot trunk.

14 H.R. Geiger-esque Blue No-Post

via carbase.com

In American hot rod parlance, a no-post car is one where there's no 'post' between the door and the rear window, giving the hardtop a convertible look. Thanks to the wife of a GM designer early on who liked the look of convertibles with their top up but didn't like the noise of actual convertibles, the faux-convertible look caught on. The no-post look on this Civic is only the beginning of the disjointed look of this Civic. The admittedly amazing and intricate paint job is distorting, like the prototype camouflage used to hide new bodywork from spy cameras. The trend of 'bigger is always better' wheels also throws off the proportion on the car. It's all very well done, though.

13 Old-School Modern

via imugr.com

The original Civic changed the automotive world. Its Model T-like success forced American companies to adapt in ways that the equally popular Volkswagen Beetle and other European compacts hadn't. While we don't think of it in the same way we do now with Civic Rs and the like coming from the factory with fast intent, there were, even at the time, people making the little Civic go fast. This is another clean and well-done job, but there's something jarring about taking a classic car and applying modern customizing styles to it. The 'resto-mod' is a delicate balance of respecting the old look and adding modern touches.

12 High-Revving Lawnmower

via PicsLook

Group 5, a loosely production-based racing category in the '70s and '80s, allowed for dramatic body modification from production models that resulted in some wild-looking sports car racers that featured flared fenders and giant wings. This look is especially popular in Japan.

Hillclimb cars, cars built for time-trial runs up difficult mountain roads, are also known for wild wings and widebody looks.

Given this car's position on a dirt road, it seems like its intent is the latter, which would suggest that the garish wing and comically large flares might serve a purpose, but that doesn't undercut the bizarre look.

11 Batman Fan

via internet-tokens.com

It's almost strange to think of it now, but there was a time when superhero movies struggled to be taken seriously. Richard Donner's Superman ran aground quickly after the second movie, and Tim Burton's Batman, almost a decade later, more or less did the same thing. The difference, however, is that Batman inspired an animated series by showrunner Bruce Timm that took the modern retro look with a simple animation style and noir feel that outlived the movie's popularity. The series has fans to this day, as it introduced Batman rogues-gallery favorite Harley Quinn. This fan has apparently decided to translate that into a wrap mural on the side of his Civic, making his car look like a rolling Trapper Keeper.

10 Racing Civic

via japanbullet.com

The Hoosier tires are a dead giveaway that this is no boulevard cruiser; this is a car built for the race track. While many racer-look cars spend more time in front of coffee shops than at speed, for real racers, most of the added bits serve a purpose. The bolt-on fender flares house a widened track and larger tires that provide more grip in a turn.

The car is meant to be run at speed, speeds that might be high enough for that rear wing to actually affect the air that comes off the car.

The front splitter actually will see fast-enough air to help plant the car as it enters the twisties. This car isn't so bad, as it's a yardstick that shows how off some street customs actually are compared to the real thing.

9 The Way of the Ellipses

via madwhips.com

When designing the 300SL, which was meant to be a production-based race car, Mercedes engineers found that crucial chassis strength happened to run right along where the door hinges would traditionally be. Being practical Germans, they simply moved the hinges to the roof of the car. This simple decision created one of the most beautiful cars in the world, but it also started a chase to come up with pointlessly unique doors that led to the Lamborghini scissor door. The scissor-door look has become a custom staple that makes every car its done on look ridiculous.

8 Bodywork

via madwhips.com

The bodywork on race and performance cars has evolved over time, but it's always, more or less, had the same function: to cover up the mechanical bits that have gone into the car and help slip the air around the car. The evolution has been side by side with the evolution of the mechanicals and our understanding of aerodynamics. Mimicking that look has been a thing for almost as long. Like a model maker for a spaceship, however, functional pieces end up as busywork on the model if the builder doesn't know what they're supposed to actually do, like on the faux racing bumper on this scissor door custom.

7 Battle of the Bulge

via photobucket.com

It took a long time to understand aerodynamics. The car grew up side by side with the aircraft as the compact internal combustion engine provided 'portable' power small enough to move craft smaller than a locomotive. Before wind tunnels and computer models, designers more or less made educated guesses at the shape of their designs. While that period resulted in some of the most attractive cars of any generation, it hasn't always had the best results, like with this hodgepodge of splitters and ducts and hood bulges that, while cleanly done, comes together as a copy and paste all-options look.

6 Dayglow Tiger Shark

via reddit.com

The 'Shark Mouth' has an interesting trajectory. It was first used in World War II by a German bomb squadron but was quickly adopted by a Royal Air Force squadron in North Africa that was having a fair amount of success shooting them down.

What really solidified the look, however, was when the American Volunteer Force in China known as 'The Flying Tigers' adopted it for their P-40 Tomahawks.

Since then, the Shark Mouth has become a ubiquitous piece of pop art that found its way on everything from sneakers to cars. While this Civic doesn't use the more garish body panels common in custom jobs, the dayglow green with the shark mouth just seems out of place.

5 More Scissor Doors

via ricecarmods.com

The Countach was an exercise in excess. Everything about it—its wedge design, its giant tires, its screaming V12 engine—was over the top. A wild car like that had to have everything about it be wild, including those wild iconic doors. Those wild doors have inspired so many tacky customs that it's hard not to roll one's eyes when the door shifts out and up upon opening. It's a tacky flag that then points towards other obnoxious touches like the giant intercooler opening in the front and the flared fenders that don't house a wider track but allow the car to sit lower over the tires.

4 Race-Ready

via the drive.com

This is another case of a Civic meant for actual speed instead of show speed, though this one doesn't feature quite as massive a front spoiler and lip.

Fender flares are a more ad hoc affair and hood bulges are passed over in favor of simply cutting open the hood and letting the built-up engine into the open air.

These are the kinds of things that are the hallmarks of a garage-built racer, the privateer in search of speed during amateur club racing events. Sometimes, that leads to some oddly mismatched or weirdly applied elements. What draws the eye most on this is the tiny sharp-angle wing on the rear deck.

3 Monster Civic

via hondabeautifulcars.blogspot.com

Car wraps have done a lot for the custom-car market. For a fraction of the price of a premium paint job, people can add increasingly elaborate designs to their car, making them into rolling murals. There's no need to hold back; the design can be as complicated as you desire, and it makes no difference. It's just as easy to do as anything else. With fiberglass add-on bits like hood scoops and wings, the only limit is taste. Taste, as it turns out, is subjective. For this person, that taste is a wild jungle/feather scheme with sharp fangs in the intercooler grille at the bottom that makes the whole car kind of hard to look at.

2 Blue and Gold

via xclusiveautopartss.com

Subaru won the hearts of speed freaks with the WRX version of their compact Impreza that would rip through the backroads of the World Rally Championship with its 555 blue livery that would become the car's signature color with standout gold wheels from the factory. Like with scissor doors, a look associated with one brand doesn't always stay with that brand. Honda, like Harley Davidson, has adopted the custom car trends of its flagship product into the factory designs, giving license for customers to bolt on even more garish-looking bits that fit in with the car's factory look. The end result is generally something that can be summed up as 'too much' most of the time.

1 Aftermarket 'Vert

via pinterest.com

If you wanted a convertible Civic, the closest you were going to get from the factory was the del Sol. Convertibles add weight and cost to a car, and they make the car's structure suffer. The Civic is ultimately an economy car, and ultimately, the drop-top doesn't lend itself to that. For those who want that 'wind in the hair' feel in their Civic without a del Sol, they'll have to cut the top off themselves. Home chops tend to be a rough affair. The fact that this one is well done actually underlines perhaps why the Civic isn't a factory option. It's an odd look for the car made worse by the single-piece body mod that makes the car look like it has a plastic radio-controlled car body on it.

Sources: jalopnik.com, motor1.com, ricecarmods.com