We'd Rather Forget These Car Trends
Car trends come and go, but some age like milk in the sun, and we’d be glad to see the back of them forever. Here’s some of the first offenders, mostly gone but sadly not forgotten.
Excessive Chrome
We’re not just talking about accents here - back in the 2000s, chrome was on every surface. If you weren’t blinding passers-by with your grille, mirror caps, giant 22” wheels or even your door handles, you weren’t trendy. Matte finishes rule supreme now, and chrome overdose is resigned to the “tacky” spectrum.
Aftermarket LED Washer Nozzles
Tiny LED lights installed into your windshield washer jets (and often powered by your lights) haunt 2000-era trend nightmares. Thanks to “Need For Speed,” any extra lights felt like boosting your car’s performance - even if they were spraying windshield fluid. Let’s pray we never see a comeback.
Body Kits That Didn't Fit
Adrenaline-fuelled movies such as “The Fast and the Furious” turned body kits into a way of life, and while some were tastefully done, the bad ones outnumbered them ten to one. Nothing says “fast” better than a misaligned kit that doesn’t match your paint held on by drywall screws, right?
Ridiculously Loud Subwoofers
The 2000s were loud, and part of that was due to the massive subwoofers everyone and their grandmother had installed into the trunk of their car. Sound systems were used to assert dominance - the louder the better - but thankfully clarity matters more than volume in the modern era.
Underglow Lights
It used to be fashionable to try and make your car look like a “Tron” vehicle with an underglow light show; it made even slow cars look fast and was practically mandatory in the tuner community! They’re considered garish these days, and some are actually illegal.
Fake Hood Scoops
When “Fast and the Furious” fever was sweeping the vehicular world, everyone wanted their car to look fast… even if it wasn’t. Decorative hood scoops provided aggression (when done right) with zero airflow, and actually slowed cars down in some cases by ruining aerodynamics.
"Lambo Door" Conversions
Lamborghini-style scissor doors were the height of style in the 2000s, and they could attract attention to any car. It sounds exotic in theory, but most of the time they were clunky, awkward and screamed “overcompensation.” You can dress up a Cavalier like a Lamborghini, but it still won’t fly.
Oversized Rims
In the 2000s, size mattered - it was an era of “go big or go home.” That applied to rims too, so drivers would squeeze 24-inch chrome monstrosities onto their vehicles with blatant disregard for their fenders or suspension. But who cares about your spine when you look that fashionable?
Tribal Vinyl Decals
Tribal designs were everywhere in the 2000s - people decorated their body and their car with spiky, abstract designs in equal measure. It was seen as edgy and rebellious, even if no one knew what they meant! The fad has faded now, and clean lines the fashionable aesthetic.
Altezza (Euro-Style) Tail Lights
The Lexus IS300 inspired a wave of “clear” or chrome-accented tail lights that popped up on the vehicle of everyone who craved a sophisticated, European aesthetic to their ride. They looked high-end at first, but when everyone had them they lost their charm; they degraded badly, too!
Sticker Bombing
Whether you class it as artistic expression or a visual headache is up to the individual, but it wasn’t uncommon in the 2000s to plaster the surface of your car with random decals, announcing what you were into and what your political views were to the world.
Racing Seats in Non-Racing Cars
It didn’t matter whether your car was sporty or not, slapping a colorful bucket seat in there to pretend you had a race car was the in thing - even though those things were less comfortable than your stock seats. Now it’s a try-hard move, but back then you were ready to race… in your mind, anyway!
Removing Rear Seats for “Weight Reduction”
Race car designs remove every unnecessary weight to go faster, so that works on your Honda Civic too, right? Out come the back seats, and you can tell your friends it’s “track-ready.” Without performance mods it didn’t just give you less seating; it actually made the car noisy and uncomfortable.
Flip-Out DVD Players
Before you could stream everything on your phone, flip-out DVD players were the ultimate flex - you could watch “2 Fast 2 Furious” on the school run (hopefully not while driving). They were rare, expensive and a serious status symbol, but time has moved on and thankfully, so has this trend.
Fake Carbon Fiber
Carbon Fiber was futuristic and expensive, so what better way to introduce it to the masses than selling plastic parts with a carbon fiber print? It was shiny and you could give yourself a space age-looking cupholder - you know, for “performance.” These days it’s real carbon fiber or nothing!
Extremely Tall Antennas
Antennas were so tall in the 2000s they looked like they were trying to pick up extraterrestrial signals - and some of them probably could, but most people were just listening to their Limp Bizkit CDs. They were statements that transcended brand or car model, though they also transcended taste.
Donk Conversions
Lifted big body American cars on huge rims with candy paint jobs often advertising products, Donk conversion was a subculture of its own, flashy but ultimately terrible for the vehicles and now consigned to internet memes. It’s for the best.
Canned Mufflers
The “fart can muffler” whose drones transcend zip codes were popular among drivers who wanted their car to sound fast without having the performance to back it up. They belong in the 2000s, but we can still hear them echoing across time.
Excessive Engine Bay Dress-Up
Accents and highlights were fine, but there was a time in the 2000s when drivers turned their engine bays into over-enthusiastic melting pots of painted plastic and eyesore decorations. It didn’t make the car go faster, though.
Fake Badging
It doesn’t matter how many crooked red Honda badges you slap on your civic or how strategically you apply that “M” badge, it’s fooling no one except maybe an uninformed passer-by. Car folks knew, and they cringed.
