Literature Review

Kameron Moshier

Terms: Car Modifications: These are basically any intentional or even unintentional

change to the stock factory settings of a car. For example replacing you car’s stock air

intake with a thing called a Cold Air Intake is a simple modification many car enthusiasts

do to increase MPG and gain overall horsepower.

DIY Mods: This is simply “Do It Yourself” modifications to a car, in other words it is

changing a feature of ones car without the assistance of a professional shop.

Safety and Modifications With Cars

Cars have developed significantly in terms of safety over the years and now more and

more are expected of car manufacturers when it comes to safety features in the cars they

produce. Here I will go into how changes or modifications to cars are made to make them

safer whether it is done on a small scale like an individual car owner or if it’s done on a

larger scale by an auto manufacturer. Car companies today make changes to the cars they

produce both before and after the car even leaves the factory it is built in. These changes

before the car even hits the dealership lot are definitely still modifications because the

changes made are significant to the particular model car compared to the way it was the

model year before. Many companies have always added air bags to cars to make the

passengers safe in an accident but we are seeing now that many companies are adding

safety features to cars so that accidents can be prevented all together. Many companies

like Audi, BMW, Mercedes, and now even American companies like Chrysler, Ford, and

GM have added features like blind spot detection systems where a light on the side mirror

of your car will light up if there is a car to your side in the vehicle’s blind spot (Valdes-

Dapena 2009.) Another amazing development in automotive safety is where

manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz and Lexus have developed a system where your car

can detect if you are veering off of the road or into another lane or if you are about to hit

something head on the car can correct your mistake and can even stop itself (Valdes-

Dapena 2009.) If something needs changing in a car that a car company realizes after the

car is released to the public a company will issue a thing called a recall in which the

company claims responsibility for a problem with a car that they will modify free of

charge to get the vehicle up to date safety wise. An example here is when Toyota issued

recalls on millions of cars a couple of years ago due to brakes randomly failing or air

bags failing to deploy during an accident (Bae, Yong-Kyun 2011.) When the recall is

issued, as long as the actual owner of the car will take the time to get the issue fixed, the

defective part will be changed for free to restore top safety to the vehicle. Aside from

what the “big guys” in the car companies do to modify cars for safety, there are also Do It

Yourself mods that can be done by any “Average Joe” car owner to increase the safety of

one’s car. In an article about DIY Mods, Bill Machrone mentions how adding certain

things like a backup camera or even a collision detector to a car can dramatically improve

the safety of the vehicle while also being easy enough for most car owners to do on their

own (Machrone 2006.) Adding these kind of small things to a car is a good example of a

modification that actually makes a positive difference to the way one’s car is in terms of

safety and like mentioned before, often these mini projects are quite easy to accomplish.

A final point with modification and its relation to vehicle safety is people’s choice when

buying a car and modifying or not modifying it. What is meant here is that the type of car

someone chooses to drive and what someone chooses to do to it make a serious impact on

how safe one is one the road. For example if there is an accident and one driver is in a

SmartCar and the next driver is in a large customized lifted truck, the driver who chose to

lift his truck would probably be safer. This goes on to show that when someone does

something like lift a truck and then chooses to drive it on the road it does impact safety,

not only for the driver, but for others as well (Shanjun 2012.)

Modifying Cars and Performance

Often when someone thinks or talks about modifying a car one of the more important

thing to a bigger car enthusiast is how the mod will impact a car’s performance. These

mods can be engine mods, body mods, or other types of changes to factory settings of a

vehicle like the transmission or suspension. For example, in a study conducted, a group

decided to take a normal 1.4 Liter gas powered Volkswagen Polo and change it so that its

engine runs on Hydrogen rather than fuel injection (gas.) Once the group did this they

noticed that the car had a dramatically different impact on its surrounding environment

releasing not nearly as many harmful gases into the atmosphere as when the car had the

gas powered engine. This is one of the larger perks to the hydrogen engine, some of the

areas where the new engine fall short to the gas engine mostly relate to performance,

which is normally a very big deal to car enthusiasts or “motor heads.” The group noted

that the hydrogen powered Polo was able to contend head to head with the gas powered

Polo but if the driver really wanted to put their foot down on the gas pedal and get going

the engine would take longer to respond and would not accelerate nearly as fast. Aside

from this though the group working on this experiment did note that some areas like

brake efficiency of the Polo and also costs to fix many potentially expensive issues

notorious to a gas engine like spark knock where the fuel to air mixture in the car is

thrown off and it creates a bad metallic chatter from the engine, where exceeding the gas

powered polo (Sopena, Dieguez, Urroz, Guelbenzu, Gandia 2010.) This complete engine

modification does have its positive and negative effects to the performance of this

particular car and this is the way it is with almost any car modification done. Another

example of how car modifications affect a car’s performance comes from NASCAR. In

NASCAR to make each race fair for each driver and their team, each car has to undergo a

pre race inspection and is expected to meet the certain parameters given to each team by

NASCAR. Here explained is that before NASCAR’s biggest race the Daytona 500 in

2006, many race teams where being fined by NASCAR because their cars failed the pre

race inspection normally due to something as simple as a bumper modification. The

teams where making the bumpers larger than the NASCAR limit for the bumpers in order

to make the car more aerodynamic which makes a huge difference in NASCAR. The big

thing to note here is that although these are race cars, the cars still have a “factory stock”

like setting when they are first built by the teams and are given the ok by NASCAR to

use the car to race. It is when anything is done to the car after this point to change it to

make it faster or more efficient on the track where modification comes into play. This

article makes it easy to see that with any car, doing something as simple as changing the

bumper of a car can make the car perform better or worse in some cases (Bernstein

2007.) Anything done to a car that changes the car from how it originally is built will

change the way the car performs. A lot of times people will try to make exhaust system

modifications to cars to make the cars louder but often the people that do certain mods

like cut the exhaust or completely take it off don’t realize that they are actually ruining

the way there car runs and performs by taking away MPG and horsepower (Peters 2002.)

On the show Top Gear which is my main topic for the semester it is shown quite often

how certain modifications that the hosts do to cars on the show can seriously impact the

way the car runs, often making the car a lot worse than it was from stock settings since

Top Gear is meant as an entertainment show. A good example here is where the show’s

main host Jeremy Clarkson adds two rear tires to his Mazda MX-5 to make it more off

road ready to drive through a Syrian desert but in turn it makes the car run a lot worse

than it did before (Moshier 2014.)

Car Modifications and Environmental Impacts

With performance being most people’s top reason to modify a car, environmental impacts

are often overlooked. For example as mentioned earlier with affecting performance, when

someone messes with the exhaust system of a car to make the car sound louder, they

aren’t only hurting the car’s performance, but they are also hurting the environment.

When a person modifies or more messes with their car’s exhaust system they are messing

with the emissions system as well. A stock exhaust system or even a properly modified

exhaust system on a car is meant to meet EPA (Environmental Protection Agency)

standards given to all car companies so when this system is changed incorrectly like just

cutting the whole system off, the car releases a significantly larger amount of harmful

gases that you can normally see driving down the road when a really loud annoying car

has a lot of blueish gray smoke coming from the rear of the car (Peters 2002.) A lot of

times also, on a larger scale there are things that car companies as a whole can do and are

currently doing to car engines to make them more “environmentally friendly.” Started

largely by European companies like Audi and Volkswagen, many American companies

like Ram Trucks and Ford are giving many of their vehicles mainly smaller trucks more

diesel engine options. For example Ford and Dodge both have given their smallest model

full size pickups (the Ram 1500 and the F-150) options of a eco-diesel engine. A diesel

engine on American trucks has historically just been a larger engine used on the largest

models of the companies trucks (often work trucks) and the use of an “eco-diesel” engine

is a relatively new idea to bring to the field. Diesel engines in any engine is known to get

significantly better MPG and is often proved to be less harmful to the environment than a

regular gas engine (Twigg 2007.)

Car Modifications and Re Sale Value

One very important aspect of modifying cars that many people tend to overlook is what

the particular modification(s) will do to the re sale value of the car. Now given there are

some certain “high grade” modifications that can be done to cars that can possibly

actually raise the value of a car, 9 times out of 10 any modification will make the car’s re

sale value drop because although the person modifying the car may like what is being

done, the average car buyer may not want a car that has say a loud exhaust or really dark

tinted windows or blue headlights. This is taken into account by any car dealer that is

buying a car from a person, because most other people that come to look at the particular

car are going to not buy the car just because certain mods are done to the vehicle.

Another more obvious fact is that some people’s modifications that they do to a car may

actually even hurt the car and this is where being a careful and picky shopper comes in

handy when buying a car. Luckily more often now many dealers will thoroughly inspect

a car before they put it on the sales lot but one can never be too safe when they don’t

know what the previous owner of a vehicle actually did to it (Anderson 2010.)

Entering the Conversation

We often see displays of how car modifications can affect cars often everyday; a

lot of it being through personal experience or even shows about cars. Seeing the effects

through these ways is fine and all but what about the “Average Joe” car drivers or

modifiers that aren’t so educated on cars? It would be very beneficial in my opinion to

create a show that goes more into basics of modifying cars along with the effects that

come with the modifying because yes we do have shows like Top Gear that often show

modifying of different cars and how it affects the cars but this really reaches to an

audience with at least decent amount of experience or knowledge on cars. A more basic

show to demonstrate car modifications would be set up similar to the way a show like

Top Gear is set up because it would still be useful to go over so many different cars while

still making the program a little bit entertaining. The show in mind would have different

segments such as a segment dedicated strictly to how to actually perform certain

modifications, kind of like a step-by-step type of approach. After the basic how to type of

segment would be a section of separate following segments that really go into detail on

individual effects that are associated with modifications. For example, there would be a

segment to the show that specifically goes over how doing certain modifications to cars

would affect the car’s performance. The show can go into specific mods, like tampering

with the exhaust system to make it louder and it can show to the viewers the negative

effects that can come from this modification (Peters 2002.) The show can also include

real data during each segment about problems or benefits associated with each kind of

specific mod to further inform the viewer. Another segment can discuss modifications

that came from the factory on some newer cars, like blind spot detection sensors or

backup cameras because even though the people on the show most likely won’t be the

ones installing this feature or modification to a car, the show’s audience will most likely

predominantly be less experienced car enthusiasts so even demonstrating how the

features work would be very informative (Valdes-Dapena 2009.) Developing this type of

informative television program would be a very good way to show that modifications to

cars can be both beneficial or a pretty bad idea in some cases. I for one definitely