- People love doin' things to their cars.
If they didn't, I wouldn't have a frickin' job.
Sometimes people do really bizarre things to their cars,
and today we're going to look at some of those trends.
We've got fake rust, we've got ironic license plates
and make up for your car.
Why do people do it, and where did it come from?
Hold on cuh, 'cause I'm going to tell you.
This is D-List.
A big thank you to REC Watches
for sponsoring today's episode of the D-list.
Everyone knows that we love driving fast and loud cars
but my love for vehicular driving splendor
extends far beyond the asphalt.
I'm talking about getting vehicles muddy,
down and dirty dusty ol' donuts, and what better to do that
in than a Land Rover Defender, but you can't race
or off-road if you don't show up on time.
That's what they always say.
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That's right, REC Watches are back, and this time
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The R&R collection consists of two distinct models
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James, I don't like watches that represent
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I like speed.
Well, buckle up, cowboy because I know you're going
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You don't like Land Rovers or RWB Porsches.
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Now let's go talk about some more weird car stuff.
If you're a city slicker like me,
you might not know about this funky trend,
but if you're from the South, like also me,
you've probably witnessed these oddly-stanced pickup trucks.
I'm talking 'bout the Carolina squat.
Yee-haw!
Despite it being named after the Carolinas,
this truck trend actually originated
from trophy trucks down in Baja.
Turns out the real reason that the rear is lowered
and not the front is that it helps
when you're flying over them sandy dunes of Baja.
This angle makes your truck more likely to land
on its rear tires and that's important
when you're Baja blasting because nose divin'
while going a hundred miles per hour is not good,
but like a lot of these truck trends,
most of the Carolina squat trucks don't ever venture
off the road at all and just end up looking like
they have broken suspension driving down the road
on the way to Baja Fresh, and because of that,
a lot of people like to hate on these Carolina squatters,
but as we'll soon learn from the rest of this list,
lots of car trends start as something for motor sports
that quickly devolves into something more aesthetic,
but who am I to judge?
Can I get a #squattersrights?
- [Narrator] Fake patina.
- A nice patina can add a lot of character to a car.
Ask Nolan, he's a registered patina-phile,
but the thing is you can't just snap your fingers
and have a beautiful natural paint rust mix.
That's up to mother nature, but if you want
a distressed look and don't have time to let your car
oxidize in a shed, there is another option.
You can always paint your car to look like it has patina.
In the age of endless resto mods and dwindling
classic car resources, now you can make any car
look like a bird has been pooping on it
for the past 40 years.
A nice oxidized finish looks great on your uncle's
old Dodge truck, so why not a 2015 Hellcat?
And if you don't have the cash to hire
an artisan patina painter, you can get vinyl wraps
that come pre-rusted.
I wonder what Nolan thinks about patina wrap.
(goofy music)
- Look, I know we all here at Donut, we're all about
respecting all cars and all that.
Every, every car is cool.
That's our stance but I gotta, I gotta say
it's one thing to like have someone paint a fake patina.
That does take some skill, but to have a printed wrap
to make it look old don't sit right with me.
I don't like that.
Patina is earned, guys.
That's what makes it cool is that you had to find a car
that had been sitting out somewhere for,
in my case 70 years.
- [Max] Sounds kind of elitist, dude.
- It is a little elitist.
I will say you're right, Max.
- [Max] That's gatekeeping, Nolan.
- No, it's not gatekeeping though, 'cause at the end
of the day it's just a rusty car.
Back to you, James.
- Race cars got big fat letters on their tires.
That's a fact, and you can't argue with science.
Look at this one, look at this one.
Look at this one.
Tire companies pay a lot of money for that real estate,
and now thanks to fancy modern technologies
that we have yet to understand like paint, stencils,
and stickers, your car can have big old letters on it too.
- [Narrator] Tire lettering.
- This is a trend that's been super popular in the last
couple of years, but really people have been
painting letters on their tires for decades, all right,
and just like anything that becomes really popular,
people are inevitably going to start hating on it.
I mean, you should see my DMs, but there are some
seriously cool examples of this trend in my opinion,
like when Akira Nakai, one of the coolest dudes
on this big fat earth, spray paints Idlers on the tires
of the RWB cars he builds, just because it looks cool.
He made up a fricking tire company.
That's awesome.
All right, and sometimes looking cool
is what it's all about.
Just ask Zac Efron.
- [Narrator] Truck nuts.
- Speaking of looking cool, nothing's cooler than putting
realistic human genitalia on a truck.
We did an entire episode of Wheelhouse
on truck nuts a while back and it made the trending page,
which is insane to think about because it was
partially demonetized because no one was just talking
about bumper plums for 15 minutes.
This is another trend that makes
an embarrassing amount of sense, all right.
It plays right into that old adage
that the bigger the truck, the smaller your wa, your wiener
and it's the next logical modification after a lift kit,
knobby tires, light bar, Monster energy drink decal.
Then what do you do?
I don't know, where do you go from there?
I don't know, let's put balls on my truck.
Oh, that's a good idea.
We all know the kind of person who puts balls on their truck
and here in the U.S., people love being identified
as that kind of person.
These plastic pecker pouches come in
all colors and sizes up to 18 inches, 18 inch balls.
They even make Cybertruck nuts now.
Frigging Cybertruck's not even out yet.
That's the kind of innovation you can expect
after 30 years of testicles for trucks, all right.
You want to know more about truck nuts?
Check out the episode of Wheelhouse that Nolan did.
It's a really, really great.
I'll put a link at the end of this video.
If I own a truck and I do plan on owning a truck
within the next year, I would have a big fiberglass butt
on the tailgate and be like the centaur of trucks.
- [Narrator] You know that peeing Calvin sticker?
- You know that we couldn't do a list
of the most bizarre car trends without mentioning
the fricking Calvin peeing on stuff sticker.
Don't like something?
Let the world know by putting an image of a child
peeing on the logo for the thing that you don't like.
Which child should we use?
I don't know.
Maybe the one from the (farts) newspaper.
Perfect.
This one's been around since the '90s and Calvin's peed
on a lot of stuff since then.
Are you a Ford guy?
Don't worry.
There's a Calvin peeing on a Chevy sticker for you.
You a Dodge guy?
Don't worry.
There's a Calvin peeing on a Chevy sticker for you.
Got some examples here of some Calvin truck nuts.
This one's good, I agree with this.
It's Calvin peeing on COVID-19.
I mean, I think we can all agree.
Not huge COVID-19 fans.
Oh, dang.
This is like an alt Calvin.
This one's not a great Calvin.
It's like a bootleg, bootleg, Calvin,
and he's peeing on his ex.
Now. I don't know if that's saying, like,
I don't like my ex, or me and my ex still see each other
from time to time, and we like water sports.
Oh, Calvin peeing on ISIS.
Yeah, that, take that ISIS.
Oh, and here we go.
Calvin peeing on Bill Waterson's legacy.
Now why would I say that?
Bill Waterson has come out and said that he never wanted
to do any sort of merchandising
and the Calvin peeing on stuff kind of goes against
the whole point of the comics, which was like,
understanding and childhood wonder.
So one, these are all bootleg and built,
basically plagiarism, and like a lot of things on this list,
you can go too far with this trend, okay.
I've just been informed that Nolan has another counterpoint.
- All right, so yeah.
Bill Waterson, great guy.
You know who wasn't thinking that same way?
Jim Davis of Garfield fame.
Jim Davis had a very cynical approach to Garfield.
He wanted to make as much merchandise,
merchandise as possible.
He wanted to cash in as hard as he could,
which is why there's, there was the Garfield cartoon.
There's been Garfield movies, all this kind of stuff.
I don't know, man.
We should, we should drink before these.
- I love how Nolan's talking trash about merchandise
as he wears his own shirt.
- [Narrator] Tacky trim.
- Automotive designers spend years going to college
to learn how to tweak little details in a car's design
to make it cool, practical, and sleek.
So why on this fat earth would you go and buy a $12
fake plastic vent that does nothing
and slap it on the side of your car?
Look, I'm not here to #modshame anybody, all right.
There's plenty of cool things you can do
to make your stockish-looking car your own
but there's gotta be some rules or else
we all live in chaos.
Let's take a look at just what the heck is going on here.
Oh my God.
Skulls, check.
Is that, it's a skull bash bar, skulls on the hood.
The most offensive thing to me is the scale of
the World War II fender paint,
because this thing is obviously,
the guy wants it to look aggressive but the mouth
and the eyes on this Jeep animal are very small
and not intimidating at all.
See what we got here.
It's a Nissan Altima with, I think those are canards.
I actually love this one.
No notes.
That, that Metro's awesome.
That's like a really cool Gambler car.
Shouts to Tate and the rest of the Gambler 500 crew.
One of the best weekends of my life.
The craziest part though is that this is not just like,
a fringe group of people doing this.
They wouldn't make this stuff if people didn't buy it
and even major car companies are now putting
fake trim on their cars.
Say what you want, nothing speaks louder than dollars.
You know what I mean?
Now, Max threatened to sue me over this one,
but I said, screw it, it's worth it if I can finally give
these uppity West coast elites a piece of my mind.
- [Narrator] Tesla vanity plates.
- Please don't sue me, Max.
I'm running out of money.
Driving an electric vehicle is fine.
Doing your part to save the earth is cool.
Ludicrous mode is fun.
Getting a snarky vanity license plate for your Tesla
is not cool, and it's not funny.
I know this because I'm a retired professional comedian.
Nothing makes people who already don't like electric cars
dislike electric cars more than a license plate
that says, why buy gas, got watt, LOL gas.
We get it.
Just be happy driving your Tesla because there are
a ton of people who can't afford to drive one,
and there's no reason to rub it into their face.
This is so ingrained in Tesla culture that there are lists
on Tesla forums with a bunch of snarky punt,
a bunch of snarky puns you can choose from
to put on your vanity plate.
I don't have a problem with Teslas.
I like Teslas.
I think they're good, but come on.
Who decided that tech guys have to think that they're funny?
You're not funny.
You're rich.
This one, actually I do like, it says panel gaps
and that's like owning a flaw of your car.
That is self-deprecating and that is funny.
- [Narrator] Car lashes.
- Okay, okay, okay guys, I got an idea, hear me out.
Eyelashes for your headlights.
I'll admit, I think they're very pretty cute.
There's really no reason for it other than it's fun,
and sometimes you want to give your car
a little bit more personality.
I mean, the front of cars do look like faces
and headlights are definitely the eyes.
Wheels are the feet, tires are the shoes,
exhaust is the anus, duh.
What you might not know is that it goes beyond eyelashes.
You can get eyeliner for your headlights,
which can shape then to whatever expression
you want your car to have.
Angry, (growls) alluring, all types of expressions.
There's even little eyebrow decals you can put
on your headlights to make your car look like that
one actor with the big old eyebrows.
A lot of people like to hate on these and make fun of them
but don't let people tell you what you should
or shouldn't do to your car, unless it is
an unfunny pun on your Tesla.
This next car trend is a crontroversial one.
- [Narrator] Extreme camber.
- First, let's talk about camber for a second.
Negative camber means the bottom of your wheel
is farther out than the top, and it's not
necessarily a bad thing.
In fact, most cars, especially race cars,
have negative camber because it helps
with handling and drivability.
Negative camber has also been a pretty important part
of stance culture because it lets you fit wide wheels
under your low car, and you know I like big wheels
on little cars but just like pretty much everything else
on this list, some people like to take their camber
to the extreme, sometimes to the point where the car
is barely even drivable.
There's a whole subculture in Japan called Oni-Camber,
which literally means demon camber.
It's been described as an offshoot of bosozoku,
which is all about vehicular absurdity
and throwing function to the fricking curb
along with your front splitter.
I'm not going to lie, this is a very silly thing
to do to a car.
Extreme camber will destroy your tires way faster,
and if you're not the best at parallel parking
you're probably going to bend your wheels,
but I mean, it's not like they have veiny human testicles
dangling off of their bumpers, so it could be worse.
Now this is the reason that we made this video, all right.
This is the best.
We didn't even know that these existed
until a couple of weeks ago, when we saw them at a car show.
- [Narrator] Car show dolls.
- If you've ever been to a classic car show,
you may have noticed that some of the cars have like,
these little dolls in overalls with their arms crossed
in front of their eyes, crying against the grill of a car.
Hey, you know what my car needs?
A child crying on it.
So what the (farts) is the deal with these things?
Turns out they have a bunch of different names
like crybaby dolls or punished dolls,
but the most common and only slightly less creepy name
is timeout dolls, and these creepsters were super popular
in the crafting and quilting community
before making their move to car shows.
No one really knows why they became so popular
but some people think it was a way for the whole family
to get involved in the car scene.
While Papa Bear was busy waxing the old Bel Air,
Mama Bear was sewing together a matching doll
for the car show display, but timeout dolls are just
the beginning of this weird trend.
There's another style of doll that's super popular
in the low rider scene.
These things aren't just in overalls.
They're dressed like the owners, like a miniature version
of them, which makes them cool, I guess, and not as creepy.
Let me know in the comments if you know someone
that I can commission a crybaby doll version of me.
I'd love one.
You ever think, dang, I want to do some cool stuff,
but I don't have the right hat?
Boom, problem solved.
Introducing the first official Kentucky Cobra hat.
Perfect for doing anything in.
Perfect for doing stuff like this.
(exploding)
Perfect for climbing ladders.
Perfect for shredding.
Perfect for chilling on the couch with your boo.
She's in the bathroom.
I've been waiting so long for these to come out.
We've been working on them for a while
and I'm really really, really stoked on how they turned out.
High quality embroidery on the front.
That's the new official Kentucky Cobra logo.
Donut hit in the back, also embroidered.
Mesh back, I love the fit.
It's my new favorite hat.
I can't wait to see you guys wearing 'em.
Post pictures on Instagram, tag me in them.
I will repost.
(groovy music)
That's how you're going to look when you buy one.
Now there's millions more car trends
that we didn't cover on this one.
Let me know down in the comments which ones we missed.
We'll, maybe we'll do a second version of this video.
If you want to learn about manufacturer car trends
check out this episode of Wheelhouse.
Follow me on Instagram at jamespumphrey,
follow donut at donutmedia.
Love you.
(upbeat music)