- Last week, I took a car off of a racetrack
and I felt a little bit like Richard Hannon,
but with less damage and at lower speeds,
because turns out, when you try to power through a corner,
it usually doesn't end up the way that you want.
And do what you will with that information,
but I did think that I may have probably had it.
It was really close.
It was like being in oversteer control,
and then voila, it was gone and there was grass everywhere.
Kind of like body kits.
If you remember back in the day,
body kits were all the rage.
Like, every Chevy Cavalier you could buy in 2010,
had some form of ZZP looking ass bumper
and some double cheeked up rear bumper,
that was way too soft for the rest of the body.
And it made you feel like you needed to play little John
any single time that you got into the car,
because it was probably your big brother's car.
I'm Alex, alex@fi on Instagram.
And today, we're gonna be talking about that thing
that was on every single one
of my "Need For Speed: Underground 2" cars!
PS, the 3000 GT was and still is my favorite.
I have it on my computer and I play it
for two week binges every single year.
It was sick as,
and totally looked better than all of Dakota's,
if Dakota even actually played the game.
Anyway, we're talking about the history of body kits,
and just why?
Just why did they seem to disappear
just as fast as they popped up
in pretty much every single 2002 video game?
(upbeat music)
I got a watch now that yells at me,
that I need to stand up and breathe.
And apparently, having 130 BPM
when I'm sitting and talking, isn't healthy.
I don't know what that means, but okay.
Welcome to "Fitment Industries",
where we got wheel slap and tire loving suspension,
having people that talk about cars on the old YouTube.
And if you're interested in a bunch of wheel and tire
packages on the website, you can check that out
over at fitmentindustries.com.
In addition to that, we also have suspension,
things like coilovers, air suspension, and alike,
and accessories and more.
So if whether you're looking at some sort of lug bolts,
lug nuts and things like that,
we also have that going on as well.
We also have something on the website
that has a quick delivery icon,
so you can get your wheels and tires
shipped to you in as little as seven days.
And we've been doing that just because,
and we're talking about it because the world is nuts, okay?
And we wanted to just get you your wheels and tires faster,
so you don't have to wait for like six months.
And we do have a new giveaway going on
with Artisa ArtFormed Wheels, our very own wheel company.
You can actually pick up one of these t-shirts,
and it helps us make a difference
into the American Cancer Society.
It's pretty exciting.
Now, let's talk about the polyurethane pumpers,
the DuraFLEX Deckers, the plastic puffers,
the grill top cutters.
Every single thing I just said makes me uncomfortable
and the opposite of moist,
but body kit history can trace back all the way
to the mid 1950s and early 1960s.
Essentially, you had two different types
of body kit activities going on,
those in the United States and those in Japan.
The USDM market found themselves
kind of lobbying off good chunks of their car panels
for the single sake of making them faster
in the desert straights.
They'd cut their steelies, they'd flip them inside out,
or they'd even go as crazy as to say
that they would cut 'em and weld two wheels together
to make a wider wheel, then slap a bigger tire
onto their car and then take off their fenders
so that it was lighter.
But while a ton of people loved making their car
look like a death coach with wheels,
eventually people tried to make it
so they didn't need to rip off fenders every single weekend
to make their car lighter or faster,
and maybe just look a little bit more aggressive.
Ergo, came the good old body kits.
Performance companies were relatively new in the day,
but they were trying to,
in addition to motorsport engineering companies,
to develop lightened body panels
and exterior body modifications
in hopes to bridge the gap between lightweight components,
style regulations, and professional racing,
which was spawning into the world.
And well, at top of all of that, honestly,
it also looked really fricking dope.
And the USDM market was really taking to it well.
The Japanese market was a little bit different.
With the Japanese market,
You had that coming from the Bosozoku group of individuals,
more so in the '70s and '80s,
especially with a lot of the motorcycle
aesthetics and designs moving over into the car culture.
Essentially, as the Bosozoku transitioned
from the previous generation, from the '40s and '50s
in the post-World War II veterans into their children,
that they ultimately did have,
you had people changing a lot of that aggressive styling
from motorcycles over into cars.
And a lot of regulations was passed with vehicles in Japan,
specifically relating around performance improvements,
which meant that a lot of the Japanese car culture
was much more focused on aesthetics.
In addition to the fact that there was a lot of people
in Japan that were really trying
to find ways to express themselves,
because the country was more so known as fitting in.
So, you had a more aggressive body panel, body kit style
world come out of the JDM or Japanese tuner culture,
than you did on the USDM side.
Now, those body panels would begin
to truly start making differences,
once the big boy brains started to learn
that with proper design elements,
air dams could be developed to improve engine cooling.
Wow!
That is so neat, you!
Widened fenders allowed for wider regulatory wheels
for racing, which was also pretty neat.
These were new rules, so like
if you just made the fender wider,
you just put bigger wheels.
Lip splitters, diffusers and more,
helped with pushing air down, up to the side
and smoother through the increased speed
that was coming up in the automotive industry.
Essentially, they started to change the car
as close as they could, if the regulatory issues
and the people with white wigs, would allow them to,
which was actually pretty neat.
It spawned a lot of controversy with every
single regulatory racing committee that existed
in the '70s and '80s, because people could just change
the body panels, make cars wider,
race 'em, and absolutely demolish.
And with the USDM going at it from that degree
and the Japanese coming at it from this degree,
you really started to have some very interesting styles
and cultures getting to grow around this body kit thing.
But people like you and people like me,
really didn't start getting eyes on it
until a very different means.
And that would be the old video games, all right?
The good old coach potatoes,
the things that your parents yelled at you for.
Raise your hand if your parents told you,
video games are bad for you and rotted your brain.
I learned more about macro economics and "Moonscape"
than anything else in the world.
And I will say that to my macro econ teacher.
I don't really care.
Keep 'em raised if you're sitting too close to the TV
and they said it was bad for your eyes.
I remember that too.
I remember when you got really close to the TV,
you feel a little static feeling,
you can put your hand on it,
and then you got yelled at for putting your hand on the TV,
because they thought the oil was going to ruin it.
Whatever.
That didn't stop me from grabbing my slim controller
and blasting some classic "Born Too Slow" or "Static-X",
until I was ready to whoop some MPC ass
with my cars in "Need For Speed".
Okay, and if you don't know that song,
how do you not know that song?
♪ Just a little too slow ♪
Games like "LA Street Racing", "Street Legal",
"Need For Speed Underground", "Wangan", "RPM Tuning",
and even "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas",
started to introduce body kit modification
in the late '90s and early 2000s in their video games,
which of course, you just had to do in the game.
And that introduced and influenced,
a lot of young automotive enthusiasts
into the thought of doing that.
Now, you're not gonna have a stock body in a video game,
we all know that.
When you can get the Armageddon TT Kit
in "Need For Speed", which was God awful now,
but it was beautiful then when you were playing the game.
I'm not entirely sure why everything in that game
glowed so weird, like "Need For Speed Underground Two",
it had a lot of glow.
Have you ever looked at the game now?
Everything glowed for some reason.
Anyway, the Vapor Kit was also awesome,
because it added side intakes with any actual intakes.
If you ever look at some of the names of these kits
that they had in the videos, they were atrocious.
Life was good, because eventually
it made its way into real life.
It really started to introduce itself into the community
more for so everyday people.
You had "Mad Max" style, crazy stuff happening, and more,
some big boy kits were getting copied.
And there were the likes of the Shogun,
an introductory kit that was made by VeilSide
in the mid '90s, which was built for their A80 Supra.
That was eventually just copied in the USDM market,
specifically with like Ford Mustangs,
which is actually pretty interesting.
Because a lot of these older, authentic body kits
were really coming through the way in the early '90s,
and these video games were trying to replicate
them in the early two 2000s,
you had a lot of people getting creative
with trying to make body kits
for every platform out there in the early 2000s.
You had Bomex, which began making the Civic community
super excited through the use
of like slightly widened flares,
which was copied literally by anyone
with the ability to make a mold.
And lastly, you even had Blits.
And if like, if you were my age, Blits Kits were everywhere,
or at least rep Blits Kits were everywhere,
because every Mitsubishi Eclipse had a fake Blits Kit on it.
In Wisconsin specifically,
nobody was paying authentic Blits Kit prices, okay?
Don't lie to me, everyone bought a rep kit.
It's just what you did.
Andy Autosport, that was like where everyone went
for a lot of these kits.
But over time, and more specifically
right into the early 2010s,
these massive, bulging, beastly bumpers
with uncomfortable amounts of creases and lines,
just kind of, sort of got up and disappeared.
Gone!
Okay, were the body kits,
only then replaced with over fenders
and grass grill tops that were pretty much just cut to fit.
So, what exactly happened body kits?
Why did the backward doors disappear,
and in the triple vented, nonfunctional side skirts
just dissipate from the world?
Was it the fact that they were just ugly?
No!
Kind...
Well, we're here to find out, okay?
In the early 2010s, there was a shift in interest,
mostly because of the changing styles
that were going away from a lot of the molded,
widened fenders and just less of that stuff as a whole.
The market was kind of changing.
And with it, a lot of people's perceptions
about the automotive community was changing with it as well.
And it was changing incredibly fast.
The introduction of the early two 2000s
sped up a lot of automotive culture
and likes and styles and things like that,
because of the introduction and the widespread gain
of the worldwide web.
But body kits began a chunk of their historical of decline,
after car manufacturers were really starting
to get the hang of what enthusiasts wanted.
Remember, the early 2000s were jumping board
for a lot of people loving sports cars.
And people started adding wide arches and sloped nose,
and wide tail lights, out of the manufacturer's pocket.
You had cars like the Hyundai Genesis,
the 350Z, the G Series, the M Series, and more,
starting to make their way into mass production.
And with the initial need for the same
wide dump trucks of a rear end,
they just weren't as prevalent
as a lot of their previous generation narrow bodied cars.
They were able to start making some wide boys,
that you really didn't need fender flares for anymore.
The USDM was still playing around with a lot of body kits,
and you had things like the D3 CTSV Kit,
but even with auto communities, they were starting to lean
into how smooth you can make the whole build look,
with air suspension and ride height,
versus body kits and backward doors
and more aggressive fender flares.
They were starting to just get away from the fact
that it looked too bubbly.
And with the introduction of the worldwide web,
essentially, it sped all of this up.
Instead of things taking 20 years
to kind of fade in and fade out, it faded in like five.
And I know I keep talking about backwards doors,
but that was a thing.
And unless you have an RX8, backward doors,
I'm not sure if they're ever gonna come back,
or you have like an old school Cadillac or Lincoln,
in which case that's super cool.
Good guy, RX8, good guy, Lincoln,
good guy, old school Cadillac.
xB even had fender flares, the 370Z had wider arches,
the Corvette of the early two...
It had fender...
They all were flared fenders.
People were starting to...
Manufacturers, they're slow, but they ain't that slow, okay?
There was an OE fender flare kind of business.
And a lot of the businesses supporting
these wide variety of fender replica businesses,
also started to wane along with them.
Essentially, when you have less fakes out there
in the automotive industry, you have less overall cars
that had oddball wide body kits on them.
Essentially, the amount of suppliers waned,
and kind of came down a little bit from the early 2000s,
because they just couldn't keep up with the times.
And it just wasn't as expected over time.
And let's be honest, there's a few kits
coming from big boy brands that plenty of us
don't really understand what's going on.
And it's not to say that they're an excellent company,
they just make some weird stuff.
The excessive polyurethane and headlight changing kits,
just aren't in any more, as more as people
revert back to a more simplified look,
or a look that still retains the OE
design elements of the manufacturer.
And that's the final big piece
as to why you don't see a lot of body kits anymore.
The car scene has adapted.
While over fenders and some body kits are still out there,
it's not as massively reflective in the industry right now.
People prefer to kind of keep the heart or body
of these cars with some piece of resemblance
of their stock counterpart.
Whereas, back in the day, in the early 2000s,
the late 1990s, and even into the 1980s,
going hard in the paint could mean
an entirely different front and rear end.
It could mean changing the entire look of the car
without you even knowing what the car was to begin with.
It was a way more excessive, crazy out there idea.
And now a lot of it has kind of reined back.
But what do you think about body kits?
And at what point do you remember
them being a big thing or not so much of a big thing?
Let us know in the comment section below.
And of course, if you're looking for aftermarket wheels,
tires, or suspension, be sure to hit us up
over a fitmentindustries.com.
And if you have an idea on what you'd like us to see covered
next, be sure to drop it in the comment section below.
I know there are still wide body kit companies out there,
we're not saying that they're not.
We're just saying that if you were to go back in time,
about 21 years, you'd see about 180 of them.
And nowadays, if you go look out there,
you're gonna see about six.
Let us know what you think.
And of course, we'll talk to you later.
Peace!
(upbeat music)