Bad News for Car tuning / modding scene !!!

[boy bernard 0]

This is why I'm thinking of moving to the US - they let you do pretty much anything to your car/truck out there (you can make your owb banded steelies and no one bats an eyelid) - and its such a massive place, legislation like this would take a lifetime to get in place and enforce. Add to the fact most the traffic cops I met when I lived out there (quite a few to be honest :oops ) are either die hard car nuts, backwards or more well up for a bit of bribery.

 

We may slate the yanks, but they tend to leave drivers to themselves (apart from Calafornia) and gaaaaaaaaasooooooooline is cheap as chips.

 

Also I can have a gun rack in my rado then.

 

B

[bristolbaron 10]

"but bbs splits were an option on the rado.. just means oem+ would dominate "

 

Nothing wrong with OEM+ BB - Just ask OSV!

 

i didnt say there was anything wrong with oem+ :wink:

it would certainly stop s!t like the fast and furious style unpainted bumpers i saw on a mk3 golf today!

[gsbellew 0]

I don't know, I can't help but think that this would be a good thing.

 

There needs to be some form of regulation in relation to what people can or can not do their cars, manufacturers are forced to spend millions designing safe cars yet as things stand you can buy a car and then undo all of this perfectly legally.

 

Should the same standards not have to apply to aftermarket parts as to OE parts? When you think about it we already have some of this legislation in place, take lights for example, under EU law any light for road use has to carry the "e" mark along with its approval number to show that it has been tested and approved, whats wrong with applying the same standards to brakes, bumpers, body panels, suspension and so on?

[Tempest2 0]

Should the same standards not have to apply to aftermarket parts as to OE parts? When you think about it we already have some of this legislation in place, take lights for example, under EU law any light for road use has to carry the "e" mark along with its approval number to show that it has been tested and approved, whats wrong with applying the same standards to brakes, bumpers, body panels, suspension and so on?

 

In principle you may be right, but there's one big problem with this:

 

Big car companies can pay the big fees to have their stuff approved. Because they're looking at knocking out large quantities of their cars, they only need to slap on a few pence per car to recover the approval costs.

 

Modding is usually aimed at a much smaller, individualist market, where the quantities sold of any item are much much smaller. But the cost to pay to have such a tuning item approved is roughly the same as for big car companies parts/items. Small modding / tuning companies have to spread the high approval cost over much smaller quantities of items sold, and hence each item will need to have lotsa pounds, not pence, per unit slapped on, making it unaffordable for us, the modding-enthusiast. Hence the company does its sums, and cancels production, and even goes out of business, if their main source of income is development and sales of tuning items (eg. Rieger, Seidl, ATS etc.). Modding companies normally don't have the mega-budgets that big car companies have. Even the smaller car companies will struggle and are struggling with all this legislation.

 

You can see where this will lead to: We're all driving the same mass-produced sh*t, a monoculture of sh*t cars. We have no modding possibilities other than possibly using whatever the big car companies offer them themselves, making the modded cars all look the same again. this defeats the object of modding, which is all about individuality. The car is one of the most important items that humans (well, enthusiasts anyway) use to express their individuality.

 

Tempest

[dr_mat 0]

Note that if full safety type-approval was applied to the small car manufacturers they wouldn't be in business, but the government realised it would be counter-productive to force such heavy costs upon low volume businesses. I can't help but think there will be a similar arrangement for very low volume parts, too.

 

I suspect that it won't be quite as bad as you seem to say, tempest, but I can't help but think it would be good if there were *some* standards applied to suspension kits, aftermarket brakes, that sort of safety-critical items SHOULD be rigorously tested.

I mean, even a set of Koni TA dampers only cost about £40 each to manufacture. Some of the rest of what they charge should rightly go on making sure their products are safe ..

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Yet another storm in a tea cup.