the car models can be whatever, I’m just curious if anyone is dressing up their cheap cars as expensive ones or if this is an industry yet?
is there a legal hurdle?
is there a limit to car decision in general?
is this sort of car case business already a thing?
People do this all the time with kit cars. The issue is that a modern corolla is a unibody design. That body style and panels are actually the frame of the vehicle. You can’t really reshape it into an arbitrary shape.
This is why something like the Fiero is so popular as a kit car base. You take the panels off and you actually have a mid engine vehicle with a skeleton steel frame and then you can bolt on whatever you want.
Many areas allow kit cars to be registered under the original vin. Most insurance companies won’t cover you for anything. You might be able to trick one into covering the original vehicle with the original vin even though it’s modified. But if you ever need anything from them they’ll refuse and cancel your policy.
In jurisdictions with emissions or regulation testing, you’ll probably never get it approved for the road.
amazing, thank you.
i really have been wondering about this for years, just thinking that there must be a car somewhere that is easier to modify as you’ve explained.
why wouldn’t it pass emissions, if the mods are all cosmetic?
why would instance companies not cover anything?
is it not a fiero if it doesn’t pook like a fiero?
Fiero is the literal go to car, there is tons of info out there.
Emmisions is usually combined with safety and road worthiness in the context of a road inspection. Emmisions also has requirements like no check engine lights, no electric faults, etc. In a modern car if you disconnect the radio you’ll get a check engine light. It might even refuse to start without additional hacks. So you’d have to go old school. And some of those old school engines are better when running with a CEL but a modern parallel system in place of the 40 year old onboard diagnostics.
Insurance companies won’t cover vehicles with extensive modifications. Making a kit car is basically a giant red flag. You haven’t crash tested it to see how safe you are or how safe the school child you accidental mow down is. You also don’t have inspections and insurance as the builder to make sure every bolt and weld is actually secure. If you get into a wreck with your kit car, you’re going to be on the hook yourself for all your damage, all the other people’s damage, and all the property damage. Even a streetlight can cost 5 digits easily, 6 digits by the time you pay a city crew to remove the old one, do environmental inspections, install new one, etc. It’s ridiculous. But you need the insurance to register the vehicle in most places, so that’s why you get it. The cheapest crappiest insurance to allow you to register the car. Then you make sure your umbrella policies cover you. That’s why this is a rich man’s game, to drive custom and one off vehicles. The other trick being you actually insure it yourself with a trust, back that with general insurance for everyone else, and personal insurance for you. But you don’t even look at this sort of thing unless you’re in the 0.1%.
You can think of it like why a salvaged title vehicle won’t be insurable by most companies. It’s a liability game. The whole western world runs on liabitly, and that’s where the money is.
thank you, that’s all very good information.
so all these modded car show people are already rich and they have some madly expensive policies in some minuscule niche high-end insurance market?
Two camps. One just runs on the insurance as if it was stock. And if they ever need their policy, they are going to be financially bankrupted.
The other camp is actually insured and yes it’s ridiculously expensive.
For example if you just have a new bumper or body kit with standard insurance, and someone tbones you, you’re standard insurance will probably pay out but will assume your car is worth less than stock because of modifications.
But if you have that body kit, and you run over a pedestrian, you’re going to personally be responsible because the insurance will say you modified the crash tested crumple and pedestrian zones on your vehicle. That violets the contract you have. Not only will they not pay, they’ll drop your policy. Then you’ll have to pay the millions for paralyzing little Timmy.
Best case scenario for standard insurance is you buy a $500 Fiero, do $50k of modifications to make it awesome. Someone crashes into you, and they total your car for $500. That’s the value of the vehicle.
As another data point one of my collector cars is a low mileage 1980’s vintage. It’s worth 6 figures and while the past few years is a garage queen, I do actually drive it on the road. I have special insurance for it that will pay to “restore” the vehicle in the case of an accident. You can’t buy parts new, and 99% of mechanics won’t even touch it. So anything in a shop is going to be ridiculously expensive. That’s what my insurance pays for. To make it back to current condition after an issue. I pay 200x to insure the vehicle than I do to register it on the road with the government.
Okay, got it, thank you for the full story, I’ve been wondering about all the practicalities but had been thinking more on the engineering side rather than considering the more practical regulations and restrictions that of course are going to be there.
Timmy deserved it, btw.