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What Can You Do To Keep The Real Cost Of Car Customization Low? |
Turning a street car into a serious-looking -- and high-performing -- hotrod can cost. The accessories cost money. The installation can cost money. And sometimes maintenance can cost money too. For most motor fans though, those dollars represent not an expense but an investment. In return for their hard earned cash, they get a personalized vehicle that's both unique and unmissable. But what car fans can also get with their customization is a slashed resale price, a target for thieves and giant fights with insurance companies when it's time to file a claim. While many car hobbyists are aware of the price of the latest accessories, few understand what their changes can do to the price of their car or the cost of their insurance. Boom Box Or Blue Book? The biggest misconception about customizing a car is that it automatically adds value. If you've spent several thousand bucks installing a state-of-the-art sound system and making your engine roar like a lion with a loudhailer, you might expect to be able to add those dollars to the ticket price. After all, they cost you money and they made your car better, right? Well, they made the car better for you... but not everyone wants to drive a car with extra-loud pipes and a stereo that's more powerful than their home theater system. In fact, the more you personalize your car -- the more it becomes a reflection of you -- the harder it's going to be to sell it to someone else. Instead of receiving Blue Book value plus the cost of customization, you're more likely to get a fraction of what you paid for the car. Attracting Eyes... And Thieves And that's if everything you've installed makes it as far as resale. One of the risks of building a car that attracts eyes is that it can also attract thieves. Expensive music systems, built-in DVD players, even the wheels themselves can be hot targets for roaming criminals. Leave your customized car outside your house and you could wake up to broken windows, bare wires and an axle on cinderblocks. And an insurance company that doesn't want to know because you didn't tell them what your car contained. Drop The Extras And Lower The Costs Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to lower your expenses. The easiest is to focus on customization techniques that are easy to uninstall when it's time to move on to another model. Un-souping your engine might be difficult and expensive but uninstalling your speaker system could be little more than an afternoon's work, and cutting out the underglow would just be a matter of playing with some plugs. In no time, you'll have restored the look of the car, and its resale value. Similarly, unless you're prepared to pay the insurance company a small fortune every month, it's a good idea to avoid tune-ups that radically alter performance. Giving your Cortina the power of a Corvette, for example, will give you a premium to match. The bottom line is that accessorizing your car might not be as much fun as increasing the acceleration but it can still give you a serious-looking car for sensible cash. This commentary was composed by Urban Neon Car Lights. Kindly travel to our site, http://www.urban-neon-car-lights.com/LED-Automotive-Lights-p-1-c-35.html to see a bit more with regard to aftermarket car accessories and to peruse our goodly selection of neon and led automotive lighting.
For more car customization information from John Douglas, please visit <a href="http://www.urban-neon-car-lights.com">http://www.urban-neon-car-lights.com</a>
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