Road, Track, Car and Driver: The Curse of the Body Kit

The Frankenstein Era

The 80's was a really nasty decade. And I mean that in terms of absolutely everything. Everyone loves to slag off the 70's, but they were a voyage on the Sea of Style compared to the ride on Shit Creek that was the 80's.

No doubt it would soon be banana shaped as it was draped around a tree.

And before you think I am some old fart who had nothing to do with popular culture in that decade of shame, let me tell you right now that I lived through every embarrassingly styled moment of that decade as a teenager, so I know what I'm talking about.
I cannot think of one single thing that was good about it; fashions were hideous, hairstyles were appalling, music had gone from honest rock, punk, funk and disco to the worst type of synthesizer pap and technology looked terrible and was crap.

LOVE those side graphics

But the most hideous crime was perpetrated against the automobile. Owners, dressed like Crockett or Tubbs or even Sue Ellen, could and did take their newly purchased Ford Escort, Mazda Rx7, Jaguar XJ-S, Mercedes, Lamborghini or Ferrari and submit it to the automotive equivalent of fake tan; the body kit! Badly fitting plastic extensions to wheel arches and sills, pointless spoilers and front air dams, really nasty plastic hub caps and, the worst crime af all; they would take the car and seemingly dip the whole thing in a vat of paint so everything matched! Even the windscreen wipers didn't escape! Thankfully they also tinted the windows to virtually pitch black, presumably to prevent passers-by from vomiting over the bodywork if they saw the interior, tastefully re-trimmed in assymetrical black and red shiny leather designs.
They were the ugliest things on earth. Even a Ferrari or Lamborghini could be made to look hideous; and these cars that weren't exactly blessed in the looks department in the first place. However, they looked great parked outside the clubs of the time with their fake palms and pink and green neon and clientele walking sideways through the doors to protect the shoulder pads and mullets.

Not even sure what this started life as; Panda? No wonder she's not smiling!

It's almost as if the entire history of great design and style that preceeded the 80's had been erased from our memories. Lest we not forget, the decade heralded a return to sharp creases and angular lines in European car styling. Gone were the swoopy, pulchritudinous curves of the......well, of any decade in the history of automobile design, come to think of it. It was as if designers felt they had come to the end of a chapter or even whole book in terms of the shape of cars and decided to start again and make things look modern, which inavriably means squared off.
The Americans were the first to indulge in the clean straight line look.This was in the '60's which, after the bloated excess of the typical 50's American car, was refreshing and clean. Of course, they had the size to carry it off. When you apply the same principles to a car the size of a shoebox, it just looks like a ...... er ..... shoebox.
It could be argued that cars of the 80's were so bland that they needed tarting up. But I am not convinced. I think that after the colour and vibrancy of the sixties, the seventies was, to a lot of people, dark and grey and monochromatic; industrial unrest and strife personified. The 80's flashed into existence and people wanted to be brash and shout out loud again. Unfortunately they chose to do it with clothes, hair and body kits for their cars.
Let's face it, we have artifacts, clothes, movies and music from every decade, that are seen as cool, kitsch, collectible, valuable, etc. But from the '80's? I can't think of anything. Even the much lamented video games are really naff; how could Pacman or Space Invaders be remotely good or entertaining in the face of Wii or Xbox? Of the body-kitted cars, none have survived, thankfully, for one very simple reason; they were tasteless, brash, badly designed and made and turned ugly cars into even uglier cars. Like putting a mullet on a footballer.

Started life as Golf, ended life as a...?

However, is it really the fault of the owners, who wanted simply to turn their sow's ears into silk purses? If you had bought something as naff as an 80's designed car, wouldn't you have wanted to do something with it desperately urgently? So maybe the real fault for body kits lies with the designers and stylists at the car manufacturers; they lost their way so we had to lose ours.
Of course the trend continues to this day, with the victims these days being Honda's, Nissans, Mazda's, etc. Today's extended wheelarch is the huge spoiler bolted onto the bootlid, the white hubcap of yesterday is today's 5-spoke alloy wheel with a rubber band stretched round it for a tyre.
Does this mean we have entered once again into a doldrums in terms of car design?