WTF Friday: Sins of Yesteryear

For the second year in a row on New Years Eve I asked “What trends of 2012 would you rather not see carry over into 2013?“. A loaded question to be sure, but always an interesting one to pose.

For today’s WTF Friday I’ve pulled out four of the answers from the fan page, and one of my own, to discuss in slightly more detail.

Bikes/Roof Racks As Car Show Accessories

The roof rack trend has been creeping up steadily for a few years now but it hit situation critical when I started to notice more roof racks at car events then at the local skate park.

What makes this trend particularly vexing is that the vast majority of bikes at these events are of such low quality that it’s not even half believable they are used as anything other than a ‘show accessory’.

As both a rider and a car enthusiast I really hope this trend starts to fade away in 2013 because it’s a damn shame to see otherwise clean cars tarnished by bargain basement quality bicycles.

Camber

There’s really no easy way to say this without perhaps offending a reader or two but in 2012 people really started to go crazy with negative camber.

Approaching this one is a little tricky because “too much” is entirely subjective but we can all probably agree that there are extreme cases like the one below.

Personally I look  at camber like salt, it should compliment the dish and not over power it.

Poorly formed criticisms/opinions

If you’ve spent anytime on forums or fan pages (especially fan pages) then I’m sure you’ve seen poorly formed criticisms like; “Low cars are stupid“, “Needs different wheels“, “That’s a waste of time“, “All Civics are Garbage“, “Looks like smashed assholes” etc.

These comments are conversation poison, and whenever posted the conversation inevitably goes downhill until the word ‘hater’ comes out and people are using sexual vulgarity and homophobia to describe inanimate objects.

We are not children, and this isn’t kindergarten, so the “if you don’t have nothing nice to say don’t say anything at all” rule doesn’t apply but I really hope in 2013 people take the time to appropriately phrase their comments, opinions, and criticisms.

The Wheel Debate

Another calendar year has passed and the wheel debate continues rampaging through the scene with no end in sight and personally I’m pretty well over it. Why? Because I feel it’s gone from an issue that was originally about the theft of intellectual property, and an inferior product, to something used for one enthusiast to take shots at another.

Wheels are stating to become a sort of status symbol, a talking point, and something you need to fit in, instead of what keeps the car rolling down the road and to some people no matter how incredible a build is if it’s not on “real wheels” it’s not shit.

This argument doesn’t seem to be such a heated debate in other scenes (classic, muscle, minitruck, etc) but among the aggressive fitment community it remains a hot button issue.

I’m not supporting the moral wrong doing and downright theft of some of wheel companies but I am saying lets stop dragging remnants of a beaten dead horse from year to year and let people decide for themselves what wheels work best for their budget, project, and needs.

Closed minds

Don’t like a particular style of car? That’s cool but don’t write off the entire crowd based on a limited perspective. I’m fairly certain I have said this before but I think many –especially those new to the hobby– could benefit from looking over the fence at what’s going on outside of their scene of choice.

To paraphrase from Andrew Moon’s comment on the fan page just because you don’t like a particular style doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate the work that has gone into it. And please stop judging cars by what the badge on the rear says. The owner knows his or her car is “just a…” so don’t try and use that as a way to undermine their hard work.

Anyway on wards and upwards for 2013. Let’s not take all of this too serious.

It’s just cars after all.