You’re stuck in the usual 9:30 a.m. traffic on North Boulevard waiting to get into Thomas Parking Garage and hoping you’ll have enough time to get to class. As you inch up the road over the train tracks you hear a muffled bass line coming down the road toward you.
A low-riding, blacked-out Nissan cruises down the boulevard. The driver warily guides his investment over the tracks and you hear a sharp scraping noise. He wasn’t successful in surpassing the speed bump.
After you park in the garage and you rush toward the stairs noticing plenty of cars that are lowered, have body kits or have extremely large, shiny rims, you wonder why anyone would invest so much in a car.
Recently, there has been a growing population of modified, “souped-up” cars at the University of Tampa. Michael Raffia, a senior international business major and president of DRIVE UT, owns a modified Volkswagen TDI and says club membership has definitely been on the rise. “The community is growing, and as this year has gone by we’ve gone up a little bit. The first years of DRIVE we had a big group with highly modified cars. It’s slowly coming back,” Raffia said.
Bruce Mizener, a senior sociology major and a member of DRIVE UT, is in the process of modifying two BMWs. He feels most people fix up cars to grab the attention of people they drive by. “[I] just like making the car stand out in a crowd. I think all car guys want other car guys to notice the work that’s been done to get a car looking and driving the way it does,” Mizener said.
A current trend in the car community is extremely lowered vehicles. Raffia explained the appeal of a lowered car from a driver’s perspective.
“I guess to start, a lowered car just looks better than a straight off the car lot car. Often there are driving benefits to lowered cars too, if they’re done correctly,” Raffia said. “Low cars lower the center of gravity, and usually in the process owners put in new suspension or stiffen the current setup to give the car a more controlled feel in corners and under braking.”
Brianna Brooks, a freshman nursing major and member of DRIVE UT, loves the lowered look of her 2006 Nissan 350z but confessed it does come with a price. “Driving with a lowered car, you have to be very cautious of speed bumps and pot holes or anything you can scrape on,” Brooks said. “Like, because mine is lowered I scrape [the ground] every time going in and out of the West Parking Garage, and it’s definitely messed up my bumper. But overall I like the set up I have right now.”
Some drivers have gone so far as to “camber out” the wheels, which is a fancy way of describing how far the wheels stick out to lower their cars even further. William Reilly, 25, is a UT graduate and manager of social media for Reeves Motorsports. He explained how these modifications work. “Camber is used on the track quite a bit to improve performance,” Reilly said. “For example, the body of the car will want to lean to the right if you’re making a hard left turn. Camber is installed so that [the tires] can have more contact to the ground on the track. It improves handling on the track.
However, car enthusiasts have found a way to take this performance upgrade and turn it into a new look. “It’s turned into putting on extremely wide wheels and tires and lowering the car as much as possible,” Reilly said. “What they’re doing is beyond what [camber] is intended for. It’s completely pointless from a performance aspect. It’s completely for looks.”
Frankie Ortega, 32, is the head mechanic at Pete’s Automotive in Tampa and has seen a lot pass through the shop in his 15 years. He knows drivers are doing what they can to achieve a better looking car, but he warns cambering out can put a lot of stress on it as well. “It may look nice to the person, but it’s actually really bad for the suspension and really bad for the tires,” Ortega said. “A lot of guys will do what is called ‘flipping the tires.’ After about five or six thousand miles they’ll flip the tires so that the side with the tread will go on the inside and they’ll be able to get another five or six thousand miles out of it. You’ll have to enjoy buying tires if you do that.”
When it comes to how these lower looks are achieved, there’s a lot of technical wordage thrown around. According to Chris Layman, 23, who has been working on cars since he was 15 and is currently modifying a 1987 Camaro, there are three methods that are easy to understand. The first is by changing out the springs in the car. This gives you a slight change in height, nothing extreme. The next method uses coil overs, which have been used since the ‘90s and is one of the more popular ways to lower a car. “It has the same design as suspension, but it’s adjustable so you can spin it to adjust the height to where you want it,” Layman said.
The third method actually comes standard on some high end cars like Cadillac and Range Rover, which is air suspension. There are good and bad aspects to this method. It does give a smoother ride and you can adjust how much air you want in the suspension bags to determine how high or low you want the car, but if the bags pop there is no way to raise your car, and you will be stuck practically riding on the ground.
Ortega recommends any of these three methods and advises against cutting corners like some mechanics do. “There’s a lot of what we like to call ‘butcher ways’ where we get these guys that cut the coil springs. It’s horrible because you can get the lowered look, but you get a really horrible ride,” Ortega said. “Another way these, what I like to call ‘hacks,’ do is they heat the coil springs. It’ll melt a little bit and brings [the car] down; it takes away the spring action.” Essentially, both of these methods do serious damage to the suspension and the only way to undo them is buy brand new coil springs.
Another trend that has been on the rise in the car community doesn’t concern the stance of the car but focuses on the curb appeal. Many drivers are applying a satin finish or plasti-dip to their cars, which gives it a dull, matte finish.
Lucas Tapply, a freshman finance major and a member of DRIVE UT, drives a 2006 Mitsubishi Eclipse GT named Mila and feels plasti-dip is a good investment. “What draws people to plasti-dip is its durability and that it is removable. It is a cheap way to spice up the look of your car but it isn’t permanent in case you have a change of heart,” Tapply said.
Reilly explained an advantage to doing this, especially for newer cars, is it acts as protection for the paint underneath. “What’s interesting is some of the factories, like BMW and Maserati, will sell cars with a flat paint job. So now it’s been recognized as something popular by the major car companies,” Reilly said.
If anyone is interested in getting into the car modifying business Rielly recommends starting with an import rather than buying a domestic car. “Back in the day the muscle cars were the vehicles to modify. Parts are much cheaper for a domestic vehicle so it would seem like they would be more popular [today],” Reilly said. “However, you’ll notice most of the cars that are being modified are very base modeled import vehicles. They’re cheaper to buy to [start off] with and then [the drivers] will want to improve what didn’t come on the car. People who are younger are paying cheaper insurance for a Civic verse a Camaro so they’re able to afford the parts they want to upgrade to.”
Katherine Lavacca can be reached at katherine.lavacca@theminaretonline.com