Good, bad or ugly? The biggest automotive fads

Some were practical, many were ridiculous, and a handful have endured. Here’s our pick of the best, worst and downright weird:

Matt paint finishes have been used by the military for decades for its ability to improve stealth by absorbing rather than reflecting radar. On cars, it’s a more recently styling choice to make them stand out from the crowd and offer contrast to the usual shiny paintwork offered.

BMW and Ford were among the early adopters of the matt paint fad with special editions of the second generation Focus RS and E90 M3 range respectively. The German firm offered it with its Frozen Edition models, but like all matt paint it has proved difficult to look after as just simply cleaning can ruin the finish. There’s also the small matter of cleaning off bird droppings immediately as they can otherwise eat through the finish. Kind of takes the shine off this fad, and ensures that it will never go mainstream.

Spinner wheels emerged from the custom car culture on the west coast of the US, giving the car the appearance of moving even when it was standing still. An outer rotor would carry on turning when the inner wheel came to a stop.

Like most trends, it died a natural death after a brief moment in the limelight, largely due to another fad arriving to replace it. There were also some concerns from safety groups that spinners could confuse other drivers into thinking a parked car was moving and the spinner might detach at higher speeds.

Ever since the dawn of motorsport, drivers have adopted the style of racing cars for their roadgoing machines. One of the most enduring trends has been the motorsport-style rear wing. As racing cars’ wings have become larger and more complex, so have the bolt-on aftermarket variety.

There’s a big difference between the carefully crafted race wing designed to maximise downforce and airflow and the ones stuck on the back of the average hot hatch. That difference is the latter almost certainly only adds weight and aero drag, though this was also the case with the rear wing supplied to buyers of the Lamborghini Countach.

Many a childhood conversation started with ‘breaker, breaker one-nine’ in the 1970s and ’80s when Citizen’s Band radio was its peak. This fad’s popularity stemmed from a number of movies about trucking, such as Convoy and Smokie and the Bandit. It brought the mysterious world of American heavy truck driver slang into the mainstream and suddenly every Ford Cortina owner was in on the act.

The advent of the affordable mobile phone in the 1990s put an end to CB radio in cars, though many truck drivers carried on with it as a useful means of communication.

Visit any motorshow in the 1980s and the chances were high that another exclusive hand-built rarity would be launched with Lamborghini-style scissor doors. Everything from hum-drum hatches to Rolls-Royces were modified in this way, with varying degrees of success and engineering integrity.

There are firms who still offer scissor door kits, but it’s a trend that ebbed away as the modified car scene sputtered out in the mid 2000s.

Long before the world wanted crossovers, 4x4s were much more about off-roading. The need for greater ground clearance led to the development of ‘lifting’ the suspension. This raises the body of the vehicle and offers more clearance over the tyres and axles in extreme conditions.

Drivers of road-bound 4x4s liked the look and soon it was the done thing in the 1980s to have anything from a pick-up to a luxury SUV sitting so high you needed a step-ladder to get in. The ultimate expression of this trend is the monster truck used to race over huge jumps and crush cars to entertain the crowds at off-road shows.

The trend for stanced cars, which sit low over wide wheels and tyres, emerged from the desire to make cars handle and grip more effectively. Sharing much with the drift car scene in looks, stanced cars soon developed their own extreme look where form was more important than function.

Stanced cars began in Japan, where drifting also started as an illicit sport, and many stanced cars are based on Japanese models. The look has been adopted around the world and led to sub-sects such as the Euro-look of stretching tyres across as wide a wheel rim as possible to achieve a low and mean appearance.

There have always been car owners seeking to differentiate their car with gold-plated or even solid gold badges and bonnet ornaments. Then Lexus fitted its cars with gold badging and suddenly a rash of cars could be spotted with glittering bonnet, boot and door jewelry. The aim was to confer a message of subtle class. The effect was more blatantly crass.

McLaren upped the gold stakes with the 18-carat white gold badge fitted to the Speedtail model. It could also be ordered in platinum if you didn’t fancy bumping into another Speedtail driver at the petrol station.

General Motors chief designer Harley Earl (1893-1969) takes most of the credit for introducing the tail fin as a styling phenomenon, though many think his junior Franklin Quick Hershey (1907-1997) did the real work. Either way, the tail fin made its first small appearance on the 1948 Cadillac and rapidly grew in size and prominence on all manner of American cars through the 1950s.

The tail fin made its way into the looks of cars around the world and reached its literal and figurative peak in the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado (pictured). By the start of the 1960s, tail fins were strongly associated with the previous decade, and they became smaller, before fading away by the end of that decade in favour of more practical designs. 

Wood was used extensively in car body production up until the 1950s, so it was common to see estate models with exposed wood on the outside. Known as ‘woodies’ in the USA, these cars inspired the wood panelling that was used by many US car makers to add a touch of luxury to many otherwise dull station wagons.

As demand for vast estate cars with vinyl wood-effect trim waned in the US with the arrival of minivan people carriers in the 1980s, car companies simply offered the wood look on their exteriors. The trend finally bit the dust with the Chrysler PT Cruiser that was the last mainstream production car offered with plastic wood.

Competition cars have larger exhausts for the simple reason they need to shift more gases out of the engine as quickly as possible to deliver maximum power. Adding this size of exhaust to a road car usually only succeeds in making it anti-socially loud.

Ever since aftermarket tuning took hold in the 1960s, larger exhausts have been a feature of the go-faster crowd. It may give the impression of increased performance, but without all of the engine modifications that a competition car has, these big pipes can end up having the opposite effect and result in less power.

A staple of the modified car scene for years, dark tinted lights give a more aggressive appearance to a car. That’s the idea, but the reality is most cars given this makeover end up with reduced lighting and visibility.

A light tint professionally applied is fine, but some of the home-brewed methods for achieving dark tinted lights are less successful. They include covering the lights in a pair of black tights and even slathering them black with household paint. This is a fad that can end in trouble with the law if the lights are not clearly visible from behind.

A lot of cars come with privacy glass straight from the factory now in varying shades. In most countries, this can only be used for the rear windows, offering a shelter from the sun and prying eyes while leaving the front windows clear for maximum driver vision.

The fad for slapping on tinted windows was at its peak in the 1990s and was easily spotted by the rippled and air bubbles left in the tint material by its owner’s efforts. If you really want aftermarket tinted windows, get a professional to apply it smoothly and safely.

Bull bars and Chelsea tractors were common phrases when 4x4 vehicles became the must-have car for city dwellers. As time moved on, the SUV evolved and the bull bar faded into obscurity by the end of the 1990s, left only to those who truly needed them for off-roading or driving in the Outback.

Increasing awareness of vehicle safety and the dangers of bull bars to pedestrians in a collision combined to consign this fad to the history bin. In the UK, it’s not illegal to drive a car with a bull bar fitted, but the Department for Transport says they are not recommended.

Spot lights have been in the spotlight for decades, becoming popular with Mod culture on scooters in the 1960s. On cars, the trend started with rallying and its need for better illumination at night to maintain high speeds. Car makers soon cottoned on to the demand and offered spot lights as an option on many cars.

As headlight technology developed in the 1990s, demand for spotlights fell away. However, off-road drivers still often equip their cars with LED light bars for greater night-time vision. In Scandinavian countries, it’s still common to see cars fitted with large, powerful spotlights to combat the long, dark days of winter.

Just like the neon underbody lights themselves, this fad burned brightly for a short time and has now faded away. Unusually, this was a trend that spanned the automotive spectrum from cheap hatches to high-end supercars as a way of drawing attention to yourself.

Some owners went the full hog and also kitted out the interior with more lights than a Christmas tree.

Another motorsport-inspired add-on that thankfully seems to be receding into the time that taste forgot. Where racing drivers use broad safety straps to spread the load in any collision, these wraparound seat belt appendages do nothing for safety.

For those who prefer a more luxury-leaning seat belt padding, you can also acquire them in leather, faux fur or even sheepskin.

Rolling coal is the nickname given to the trend for diesel pick-up trucks in the USA for belching out black smoke. The idea behind this fad is perhaps easier to understand by another name – Prius repellent. In a country built around the car, some US drivers are resistant to the idea of cleaner, greener cars and converting a pick-up by removing the diesel particulate filter or fitting a smoke stack is all part of this cultural fad.

Many US states have legislated against rolling coal or vehicles modified to create more smoke than is standard from the factory. Even so, it doesn’t stop owners of these pick-ups from dowsing hybrid and EV cars in a cloud of sooty smoke.

The joke was funny once, mildly amusing the second time, and just plain old hat by the third sighting. Yes, it’s that comedy oldie, the fake hands that look like someone is trapped in the boot.

Some of the more gruesome stick-on trapped hands have fake blood and can look quite realistic. However, unless you’re Tony Soprano and have made an error in your boot packing, nobody leaves a pair hands poking out of the luggage compartment.

Anyone who has witnessed the carnage caused by a bullet passing through a car’s bodywork will wonder why someone would want to add this effect to their car. Yet there was a fad for just this sort of stick-on ballistic damage in the early 2000s.

While the stickers themselves could not cause any harm, there were several incidents in the USA where drivers were stopped by the police at gunpoint after the car was mistakenly thought to have been in a shoot-out. That makes a good old-fashioned bumper sticker seem a lot more appealing.

Knowledge is power, so having a bank of dials and instruments telling you every facet of your car’s engine health must make it extremely potent. There’s been a penchant for extra gauges going right back to the 1920s, when early motorists needed to monitor their car’s health closely just to get to their destination.

Then, the arrival of turbochargers in the 1980s made a boost gauge the must-have display. However, the increasing complexity of modern cars and widespread use of digital dashes has consigned all those add-on gauges to the past.

The vinyl roof was a hangover from a golden age of coachbuilt cars, adding a frisson of elegance to many a dull saloon. Rolls-Royce persisted with this style with the Everflex roof on the Silver Shadow as an option, but the vinyl roof’s days were numbered by the 1980s.

There was a shadier side to the vinyl roof, too, as it was a way for the less scrupulous seller to cover up rampant rust in the upper portions of a car.

There are two types of eye lashes when it comes to car design. There are those used on the Lamborghini Miura which delicately frame the headlight. Then there are those rubber eyelashes that seem to be very popular on older retro Fiat 500s, Minis, and Volkswagen Beetles.

These extras add nothing to the ability or looks of a car, other than making the vehicle look startled that someone thought it improved the styling.

This is one of the few motoring fads that has a practical application beyond singling out its driver as someone who like to spend money adorning their car with extras. The windscreen sunshade does exactly what it claims to do, though some were more effective at filtering out the sun’s rays than others.

When cheap printing for these stick-on additions arrived in the 1970s, it quickly became popular to customise them with the name of the driver and their beloved. Fortunately for those less lucky in love, car makers started to offer their own factory-fitted windscreen sunshades blended into the top of the glass.

Rear window louvres are another fad to have a truly practical basis. To combat the glare and heat of the sun coming through steeply angled rear windows, a series of thin, stepped slats reflected the rays while allowing decent rearward vision for the driver.

Lamborghini was an early adopter of this style with the Miura and Lotus went on to use louvres on the Esprit. These neatly blended in louvres were in contrast to the stick-on slats offered by every car parts store. Many of these aftermarket offerings had louvres that were too thick to see between and only added to aerodynamic drag.

In the hierarchy of cars in the post-war years, a sunroof was considered rather uppercrust. Aftermarket options were limited to the fold-back Webasto type of sunroof and were expensive, until advances in glass, plastics and mass production meant a new pop-up style of roof could be offered cheaply.

The pop-up sunroof arrived in the early 1970s and instantly added a touch of chic to any car, though it was also usually accompanied by a drip of water when it rained. Car makers soon offered their own more substantial and better sealed versions, which were superseded by more versatile sliding sunroofs that saw an end to the pop-up sunroof by the start of the 1990s.

Drifting started as a subculture in Japan and one of the styles to come out of this is the extended gear lever. The original idea was to make the lever easier to grab hold of when changing gear mid-drift. As with many function features, it soon became more about style as drivers wanted to show off their characters.

Still popular with some drifters, these large levers offer no particular advantage, even when paired with a short-shift kit. Many find the extra weight of these gear levers hamper a rapid change.

The Garfield cartoon was the brainchild of the American Jim Davis. He wanted to create a character to rival Snoopy and give cat owners something to enjoy. He succeeded in this and then looked to merchandise to maximise profits. The idea was a stuffed toy Garfield with Velcro paws so it could hang on curtains or cushions. However, a mistake with the prototype saw it arrive with suction cups instead of Velcro.

Davis ran with the suction cup idea for the launch in 1987 and millions of drivers bought a Garfield to sucker to their car’s window. Amusing to some, David had the last laugh as the Garfield Stuck On You toy earned him $50 million.

Car owners have been adding bits to their cars since before the Second World War, usually a sunscreen or extra lights. It wasn’t until the 1970s and greater expertise with cheap glassfibre moulding techniques that aftermarket bodykits really took off. Most were inspired by motorsport and car makers joined in with the likes of Ford’s X-Pack models.

The zenith of the bodykit fad came during the 1990s modifying craze surrounding Max Power magazine. Any car was fair game and no alteration too wild or impractical. This trend burned brightly, but faded rapidly in the early 2000s as affordable, insurable new hot hatches made a return.

Dump valves serve a vital purpose in tuned turbocharged engines, allowing compressed gases to escape when the throttle is lifted and letting the turbo spool up again quickly to give a more instant response. They came to aural prominence in rallying with the chatter and whistle that were quickly adopted by anyone who fancied themselves a bit of a High Street hero.

Easy and cheap to install on most turbocharged cars of the 1990s, dump valves could be heard chirping and whistling all across the land on a Friday evening. However, they add nothing to the performance of most cars, so dump valves were a triumph of noise over tuning.

Vintage cars came with bonnet vents as a simple method of keeping the engine cool, but it wasn’t until the Ford Sierra Cosworth arrived in 1986 that vents on top of the bonnet became a go-faster must-have. On the Ford, they helped draw air through the engine bay, but many an aftermarket vent was just stuck on.

If a hole was created for the rivetted or glued-on vent to function, it was often accompanied by a raw edge of metal sharp enough to dice off an unsuspecting digit. Fitting a larger radiator is a more effective solution than any of these vents.

Advances in paint technology made flip colours easily and more affordably possible in the 1990s. It doesn’t use two paint colours, but uses a polarising effect to give this impression when the paint is viewed from different angles.

TVR was one of the first to adopt this technology on its cars, followed by MG and others. Lots of modified and custom cars were resprayed with a flip finish, but the trend ebbed away as customisers looked for other ways to make their cars stand out from the crowd.

Beloved of taxi seemingly drivers everywhere, the beaded seat cover has its origins in the hotter climes of Asia in the 1960s. The idea is it allows cooling air between seat and driver while still offering good support. Some have even claimed the beaded seat cover has back-healing qualities, though this is wholly unproven.

Held in place with a tie around the base of the headrest, the beaded seat cover has turned out to be one of the most enduring motoring fads. You can still buy them, usually finished in the same cream and brown colour scheme that epitomises this trend.

Of all motoring fads, none sums up fashion over taste better than the fluffy dice. It’s a shorthand for letting other drivers know you don’t take life too seriously, and they remain enduringly popular as a comedy gift. They are also commonly spotted in classic cars of the 1950s and ’60s.

The origins of the fluffy dice are routed in fighter pilots of the Second World War, who would often take a small toy with them as a good luck token. The idea was used by Mark Shepherd Jnr of Texas Instruments as a joke for colleagues. He gave the furry dice as presents and they caught on, remaining a light-hearted addition to any car’s rear-view mirror.