Vandalize Your Car(jalopnik.com)
jalopnik.com
Vandalize Your Car
https://jalopnik.com/why-you-should-give-your-car-a-shitty-paint-job-1795704984/
93 comments
Same here in the Northeast US. People driving work vehicles seem to be in a huge hurry to get to/from the job. It's especially scary as a pedestrian/cyclist because they're usually very large and fairly old vehicles.
My general experience as pedestrian is that while commercial vehicle drivers speed, they seem focused and give a wide berth when passing, whereas regular drivers often explore their sociopathic tendencies when passing.
To be fair much of that reputation comes from back in the day before most tradesman had logos on their vans. Back in the 90's almost every tradesman I knew drove a plain white Ford Transit van.
Source: Grew up in Essex and most of my neighbors were white van men.
Source: Grew up in Essex and most of my neighbors were white van men.
Sounds like an opportunity for someone to just be nice to fellow drivers and gain business.
I just engaged a local class company who’s Yelp reviews were atrocious. The reason was, 3 of the 4 were reviews of the guy’s driving, not his skills at changing a windshield. I went to FB, and saw reviews with pics of work and overwhelmingly positive scores. Gave him my business. Though, I did think about it a bit before hand. Also thought about Yelp’s relevance and the value of the very recent reviews that were all not for his work, but his driving.
So when he kills a kid on the way to the gig he does for you, you won't judge?
Well that escalated quickly. There's a world of wriggle room between driving like an asshole and murdering children.
"Driving a wildly painted car is like using my real name on the internet.
Is it uncomfortable?
Yeah. Sometimes it is. Honesty and transparency can be searing. But it’s also real."
Is it uncomfortable?
Yeah. Sometimes it is. Honesty and transparency can be searing. But it’s also real."
I would disagree that using your real name is more real than using a pseudonym, because it heavily pressures you to use the same filter you have in real life. On the other hand, when you're using a pseudonym there are fewer consequences for revealing what you really think.
I don't know if that's necessarily true. Look at Facebook - people say mean and vulgar things under their real name all the time, often complete with a picture of their own face. Anonymity can be a factor in the way we treat each other, but it doesn't tell us the whole story.
So you think I dare not to disagree with you because I use my real name? Plus that I filter what I say? Bold statement. I always speak my mind but that might also be because of my Dutch upbringing. I am direct and brutally honest offline and online.
Put yourself in the situation where your views go against what society may deem as acceptable, and given that it is tied to your real name there can be very real consequences (harassment/government action).
Would you speak out the same if you knew that your community would feel very strongly against you for it?
Would you speak out the same if you knew that your community would feel very strongly against you for it?
using my real name on hacker news has helped me be less ideological and more loving / selfless in my communications, more authentic and less egotistic
'We’re born naked and the rest is drag' - RuPaul
It seems like another one or those things where nobody actually cares
Long ago I read a story, which I can’t source now so it may be apocryphal, about author CS Lewis. As the story goes, after the Narnia series got popular, he made enough money to buy himself a very nice Jaguar. The first thing he did was to take a hammer to the car and dent it all over. His thinking was, if he did that himself, he would avoid the inevitable pain from every time someone slammed their door into his, or tapped the bumper in a parking lot.
Some great advice for all of those fresh tech millionaires out there is that you should always buy a car at least an order of magnitude below what you can afford, for exactly that reason.
I buy second hand cars with some visible damage for a similar reason. They tend to be cheaper and we're not that bothered about any scrape & dents our family adds.
Obviously you've got to check that the minor damage doesn't reflect more severe damage you can't see, but that's the same for any second hand car and a good inspection should reveal that.
Obviously you've got to check that the minor damage doesn't reflect more severe damage you can't see, but that's the same for any second hand car and a good inspection should reveal that.
I’d love to do something similar, but the Greek law doesn’t allow it. The car registration must clearly state the manufacturer color(s). Try describing/putting the graffiti into this field :-) We’re not even allowed custom license plates.
Are you sure? In The Netherlands you must notify the government if you change the color of the car so they can update the registry, if there's any doubt they'll help you pick.
The list of colors is finite and based on EU law[1][2], so it would be odd if Greece didn't share the same system. It would mean you couldn't import re-painted vehicles into Greece, maybe that's true, but that seems like it wouldn't fly with the single market.
The car in the article clearly has a base color of "yellow". On my street there's a car completely covered in stickers, to my eye it's mostly white, but looking it up I see it's registered as blue (barely any blue visible). So perhaps covering it in stickers is a way to get around this in some areas of the EU.
1. https://www.rdw.nl/particulier/voertuigen/auto/het-kentekenb...
2. It's: blue, brown, yellow, gray, green, orange, violet, red, white, black. Anything not listed must be whatever color is closest, e.g. pink is either "white" or "red" depending on if it's light pink or not.
The list of colors is finite and based on EU law[1][2], so it would be odd if Greece didn't share the same system. It would mean you couldn't import re-painted vehicles into Greece, maybe that's true, but that seems like it wouldn't fly with the single market.
The car in the article clearly has a base color of "yellow". On my street there's a car completely covered in stickers, to my eye it's mostly white, but looking it up I see it's registered as blue (barely any blue visible). So perhaps covering it in stickers is a way to get around this in some areas of the EU.
1. https://www.rdw.nl/particulier/voertuigen/auto/het-kentekenb...
2. It's: blue, brown, yellow, gray, green, orange, violet, red, white, black. Anything not listed must be whatever color is closest, e.g. pink is either "white" or "red" depending on if it's light pink or not.
I wonder what they thought about the 1996 VW Harlequin Golf, which was several different colors from the factory. (but they did have an official "base" color)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfYcLxCIB_E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfYcLxCIB_E
Funny. That reminds me of the License Plate xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1105/
There must be an "other" option, or at least, everyone who has to use the database will soon learn that when the model is "Harlequin", "yellow" doesn't quite mean "yellow".
There must be an "other" option, or at least, everyone who has to use the database will soon learn that when the model is "Harlequin", "yellow" doesn't quite mean "yellow".
Changing the color is allowed, but you can’t have graffiti or fancy designs(flames, clouds, waves...). You’re right about the stickers, they’re allowed but haven’t seen any fancy designs, mostly lines, stripes and a few numbers. I’m sure that if the whole body was covered you’d get into trouble here.
That's a surprise for me, in Germany you can do whatever you want color wise without having to update the car license. If a car comes with multiple colors from the factory the documentation says "multi-colored"
U do are limited in the amount of chrome and reflective material on the car.
Some searching around on YouTube [1][2][3] reveals a bunch of cars on greek plates with mixed paintjobs, fancy designs, stickers etc. Some of those (especially 70s muscle cars) are stock from the factory, so perhaps there's an exception for that, a bunch of the rest are not stock. I don't know the situation in Greece, maybe you're wrong, maybe they re-paint them to pass inspection, bribe the cops, or the cops don't care etc...
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkhFnQtJZls
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNuy95fz2yw
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uL34gY73JM
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkhFnQtJZls
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNuy95fz2yw
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uL34gY73JM
Maybe you could just list the colours from the spray cans?
I wanted to make fun of this but it's really good look at the constricting forces of conformity in our lives that we all just pretty much follow unawares.
I mean, owning a car is still a form of conforming to social norms - cars are expensive and people have good jobs to afford them (which begins an awkward feedback loop of requirements).
Try living without one. As a 38-year-old car free man, I feel almost deviant. In great shape from all that fresh and and exercise, but that also is somewhat peculiar (I don't look much like my age).
Try living without one. As a 38-year-old car free man, I feel almost deviant. In great shape from all that fresh and and exercise, but that also is somewhat peculiar (I don't look much like my age).
I have lived without one, and for that time in my life, i was limited to ten miles in every direction, unless i wanted to spend an hour on a bus. I don't think people here get how limiting that life can be anywhere outside of a huge city.
Or how wearying. I walked to work, and it took 45 minutes. I had to do that walk during 90 degree heat, 6 inches of snow the ground, heavy rainstorms etc, unless, like other people I knew without a car, we begged our coworkers for a ride. If we couldn't, we had to call out of work.
We have plenty of people in my small town who walk or moped to work because they are poor. They usually buy cars the first thing they can get, because walking sucks.
Or how wearying. I walked to work, and it took 45 minutes. I had to do that walk during 90 degree heat, 6 inches of snow the ground, heavy rainstorms etc, unless, like other people I knew without a car, we begged our coworkers for a ride. If we couldn't, we had to call out of work.
We have plenty of people in my small town who walk or moped to work because they are poor. They usually buy cars the first thing they can get, because walking sucks.
Bicycle infrastructure would be a comparatively cheap solution to this problem for most people.
I never felt not owning a car was limiting in that way at all. I've actually crossed the US three times by bike! It feels more... liberating!, than anything else!
It depends where you live. I'm roughly your age, and have never owned a car, but I live in NYC so it's not much of a limitation.
I'm carfree downtown in a big Canadian city. Bikes + Uber + public transit work for most things. Pogo car is a decent "mid-range" option for ~1 hour drives.
Honestly it's not bad, save for deep winter, which can be rough. Walking keeps me in shape, and it's saved me a ton of money in terms of monthly payments and insurance.
Honestly it's not bad, save for deep winter, which can be rough. Walking keeps me in shape, and it's saved me a ton of money in terms of monthly payments and insurance.
Whence comes the desire to ridicule?
The ideas about noticing other people are nice but if customized cars were common nobody would notice them either.
And yes people would still zone out while driving, sorry.
And yes people would still zone out while driving, sorry.
If everybody had tattoos, they would still be identifying marks.
But we already have identifying marks: license plates. What the paint job here does is make the car stand out, which is a different thing.
Just make sure not to vandalize it as much as much as Linus Sebastian's car at LTX 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCSyNKbapdE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCSyNKbapdE
I have a recognizable crazy wrap and the license plate “fart gas” and pretty quickly realized I’m not really “anonymous” anymore and it does make me at least try to drive “nicer.”
The ugliest thing about that car is the godawful off-center front license plate.
Being a symmetry fan I sympathize, but Mitsubishi Evo has a big front radiator and so they’ve placed the license plate off center. Many sport cars follow the same logic.
It is unfortunate, but the Evo has a front-mount intercooler to cool the turbocharger, a necessary and large piece of performance equipment.
EVO X is a turbo 4 cylinder and there's a FMIC to cool the compressed air (~25 psi stock). This offset license plate is also common with some high performance AUDI RS cars and Alfa Romeos.
Being recognizable is maybe one thing I could get past for the cool factor of having a unique paint job.
But that's also a commitment to nuke your resale value. If you plan on replacing the car before it's scrap, vandalizing it like in the article could be a ~$10k decision.
But that's also a commitment to nuke your resale value. If you plan on replacing the car before it's scrap, vandalizing it like in the article could be a ~$10k decision.
You can get it vinyl wrapped before “vandalizing” for a few hundred bucks. That actually improves the resale value since when you peel it before selling the original paint job will be in much better condition having been protected.
Um you could always repaint it, right? (~$1500-ish??? Maybe???)
But she made it clear it already lost a significant resale value before the paint job - "heavily modified and long suffering"
People also don't generally custom modify their expensive possessions unless they are committed to ownership for the long haul.
But she made it clear it already lost a significant resale value before the paint job - "heavily modified and long suffering"
People also don't generally custom modify their expensive possessions unless they are committed to ownership for the long haul.
On the other hand, if your unique paint job makes the news, you might have increased your resale value by $5k to $15k.
Idk, the average EVO owner is... different.
Well, it's no uglier than my stock gray Focus.
[deleted]
Well glad to see this went ok.
A local art museum had a "Art on tap night" with a free style area. A bunch of guys with paint and ipa's quickly devolved into 1st grade styled wieners scribbled everywhere. Sort of what I expected when clicking on this article and strangers.
I drove a yellow Audi A4 for almost 20 years and felt a bit like the person in this article. Now quite that extreme, but yeah, I could tell people were looking and they always knew who I was. It did make me think twice about parking out front of the adult bookstore once or twice.
I drive a Very disticnt custom car. The random people that 'know' me from traffic is staggering. It has changed me as a person, but like a mokawk, is not for everyone.
ggggtez(3)
AKA How to get pulled over at every traffic stop you ever pass by.
This rings true to my anecdotal experience: was driving a badly plastidip-ed car in a politically red neighborhood and was falsely stopped for not signaling right; I had, but I prefer not being shot so I expressed general confusion when confronted by this falsehood. The police person quickly turned the conversation to drugs and shining his light in the car but gave up without indulging in a full search of the vehicle and wrote me up a warning. That was not a fun experience.
You could ask the cop to check that your blinker is working when you turn it on, in case that reconciles both of your experiences.
Be clean, put a camera on the dash, sue the police, profit.
The world does not start and ends with the US, one of my colleagues had one of the first 10 model S’s in the UK he haven’t been pulled over for like 5 years before that he still jokes about being pulled over 13 times during the first week because the cops just wanted to take a peek at the car.
Driving a flashy car has implications like it or not, driving an obnoxiously flashy car is even worse.
And in the US it’s likely even worse since a traffic stop is one of the most dangerous interactions you can have with the police.
It also has other implications, parked at a block you don’t live on around the time a crime occurred? Well take a guess which car would be definitely reported as suspicious during the testimony sweep...
P.S. I’ve seen conflicted studies about the benefits of a dash cam or stating to the police you are filing the engagement; while some studies show it reduces the “aggression” officers might display others show that it increases the chances of them basically wanting to fuck with you; if you think you can never be baited into acting out or they can’t confuse you during questioning to give a contradictory statement e.g. asking where you’ve been and where you are going multiple times then by all means drive what ever you want.
I would rather minimize my interaction with the police because I can’t think of a single interaction with them that would be objectively pleasant under all conditions and I can’t guarantee that they won’t catch me on a bad day when I’m in a pissy mood and I might act or say something that could be taken as aggressive or suspicious.
Driving a flashy car has implications like it or not, driving an obnoxiously flashy car is even worse.
And in the US it’s likely even worse since a traffic stop is one of the most dangerous interactions you can have with the police.
It also has other implications, parked at a block you don’t live on around the time a crime occurred? Well take a guess which car would be definitely reported as suspicious during the testimony sweep...
P.S. I’ve seen conflicted studies about the benefits of a dash cam or stating to the police you are filing the engagement; while some studies show it reduces the “aggression” officers might display others show that it increases the chances of them basically wanting to fuck with you; if you think you can never be baited into acting out or they can’t confuse you during questioning to give a contradictory statement e.g. asking where you’ve been and where you are going multiple times then by all means drive what ever you want.
I would rather minimize my interaction with the police because I can’t think of a single interaction with them that would be objectively pleasant under all conditions and I can’t guarantee that they won’t catch me on a bad day when I’m in a pissy mood and I might act or say something that could be taken as aggressive or suspicious.
But that's kind of the point of the article. if everyone's flashy everyone would need to be pulled over.
> And in the US it’s likely even worse since a traffic stop is one of the most dangerous interactions you can have with the police.
Can you expand further on this, or provide some statistics/sources? It seems highly unlikely that a traffic stop could be at all dangerous unless you're not cooperating.
Of course there are extremely rare cases where accidents happen, but without doing any research would be willing to guess it's less than .001% of all stops.
Can you expand further on this, or provide some statistics/sources? It seems highly unlikely that a traffic stop could be at all dangerous unless you're not cooperating.
Of course there are extremely rare cases where accidents happen, but without doing any research would be willing to guess it's less than .001% of all stops.
> It seems highly unlikely that a traffic stop could be at all dangerous
Is a rare event but it seems that is still dangerous for both drivers and police
"It is not uncommon for routine traffic stops to escalate into a violent situation... At least 300 officers have been killed by drivers or other occupants of vehicles involved in traffic stops or pursuits"
source: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.544...
Googling "killed by police traffic stop US" returns a depressing amount of positives also
Is a rare event but it seems that is still dangerous for both drivers and police
"It is not uncommon for routine traffic stops to escalate into a violent situation... At least 300 officers have been killed by drivers or other occupants of vehicles involved in traffic stops or pursuits"
source: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.544...
Googling "killed by police traffic stop US" returns a depressing amount of positives also
I appreciate the response, but I don't think you really took the time to investigate and cherry-picked a single quote to prove your point. The source you listed is actually disproving your premise.
> ... the risk of police victimization, police homicides and assaults were found to be very infrequent occurrences during traffic encounters. The results of this study cast doubt on the Court’s assumption of danger during the routine police–citizen traffic encounter.
> Despite anecdotal accounts that show particular instances of danger confronted by law enforcement officers, there are few research findings or statistics to support the assumption of police dangerousness during traffic encounters.
> Most, if not all of the assertions that routine traffic stops are dangerous rely on the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI)’s data on police homicide and assault victimization during traffic encounters. All of these assertions share one crippling methodological flaw. They fail to appropriately account for the frequency of the police activity in the risk calculation
So yes, there are going to be a number of fatalities during traffic stops, but there are also a very large number of total traffic stops. Police work is inherently dangerous, and if you're stopping a large number of people you're going to run into dangerous people with a much higher chance of a fatality.
To assert that the average person be fearful of a traffic stop because some people were killed is just completely false. Police work is dangerous, I imagine they go into any situation with the assumption the person is dangerous.
> ... the risk of police victimization, police homicides and assaults were found to be very infrequent occurrences during traffic encounters. The results of this study cast doubt on the Court’s assumption of danger during the routine police–citizen traffic encounter.
> Despite anecdotal accounts that show particular instances of danger confronted by law enforcement officers, there are few research findings or statistics to support the assumption of police dangerousness during traffic encounters.
> Most, if not all of the assertions that routine traffic stops are dangerous rely on the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI)’s data on police homicide and assault victimization during traffic encounters. All of these assertions share one crippling methodological flaw. They fail to appropriately account for the frequency of the police activity in the risk calculation
So yes, there are going to be a number of fatalities during traffic stops, but there are also a very large number of total traffic stops. Police work is inherently dangerous, and if you're stopping a large number of people you're going to run into dangerous people with a much higher chance of a fatality.
To assert that the average person be fearful of a traffic stop because some people were killed is just completely false. Police work is dangerous, I imagine they go into any situation with the assumption the person is dangerous.
> there are going to be a number of fatalities during traffic stops
From a US point of view 300 killed among several thousands millions of people can be seen as (statistically) reasonable and the article reflects that point of view accurately.
The problem is that from a non US point of view and comparing with other places with similar number of interactions this feels like a outrageous and strangely high number. The ever increasing number of cases of perfectly innocent people in their way to home killed by police by mistake or by "mistake" (specially if most of this people are black or hispanic) is also hard to swallow.
From a US point of view 300 killed among several thousands millions of people can be seen as (statistically) reasonable and the article reflects that point of view accurately.
The problem is that from a non US point of view and comparing with other places with similar number of interactions this feels like a outrageous and strangely high number. The ever increasing number of cases of perfectly innocent people in their way to home killed by police by mistake or by "mistake" (specially if most of this people are black or hispanic) is also hard to swallow.
> The problem is that from a non US point of view and comparing with other places with similar number of interactions this feels like a outrageous and strangely high number.
I think you're right, the US has a bad image when it comes to crime.
> The ever increasing number of cases of perfectly innocent people in their way to home killed by police by mistake or by "mistake"
From what statistics I've been able to find, it's more-or-less stayed the same or even gone down slightly (for unarmed individuals shot by police). It's hard to know for sure as it's a relatively small amount and difficult to deduce any trends. Media coverage of these events seems to be disproportionately higher - however.
This is my opinion so it could be completely wrong, but it's hard to believe police are going to shoot someone that is complying with orders, hasn't committed a violent crime, and is not showing any signs of aggression.
I think you're right, the US has a bad image when it comes to crime.
> The ever increasing number of cases of perfectly innocent people in their way to home killed by police by mistake or by "mistake"
From what statistics I've been able to find, it's more-or-less stayed the same or even gone down slightly (for unarmed individuals shot by police). It's hard to know for sure as it's a relatively small amount and difficult to deduce any trends. Media coverage of these events seems to be disproportionately higher - however.
This is my opinion so it could be completely wrong, but it's hard to believe police are going to shoot someone that is complying with orders, hasn't committed a violent crime, and is not showing any signs of aggression.
> more-or-less stayed the same
We talk about an accumulative number of victims. The only acceptable number of innocent people killed by police is zero. If the number of casualties has not stopped growing despite learning from (lots and lots and lots of) past errors, the number of victims is obviously increasing and the problem has not been addressed accurately still.
We talk about an accumulative number of victims. The only acceptable number of innocent people killed by police is zero. If the number of casualties has not stopped growing despite learning from (lots and lots and lots of) past errors, the number of victims is obviously increasing and the problem has not been addressed accurately still.
Spend all your money on lawyers and not win a single dime.
Has anyone ever won a lawsuit for being pulled over without cause?
Has anyone ever won a lawsuit for being pulled over without cause?
Sorta... A woman was pulled over because she gave a cop the middle finger. A court found that by doing that the cop violated her First Amendment and Fourth Amendment constitutional rights.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/court...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/court...
She is still going to get ticketed for the illegally tinted lights though.
I bet that the novelty will wear off in a few weeks. Now her car is just plain ugly.
If you want to customize your car at least do it well.
If you want to customize your car at least do it well.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
... but knowledge can lead to much more satisfactory results.
This is not how you paint a car, with cheap products and any lack of direction in the art part.
Professional grade car paint is really expensive stuff, for several good reasons: It does not change color or fade overnight and often has metallic dust or some kind of pearly "glitter" embebbed.
A professional car painter will add also a hard layer of lacquer to protect the painting, uniformize the design, and add reflections and gloss (sorely lacking there). The car will not reflect light in the same way as a propperly painted work and will gets scratched and worn in no time.
The design here is multicolor but totally flat and random (there is science in arranging adjacent colors also). Artistically is a mess. There are not sharp borders defining areas and gradients are badly executed. Not a common theme or a good idea to express, just plain chaos (in a not good way).
Of course she can made anything with her car but lets not pretend that is a great job, not even mediocre. There are two good examples of how you made a unique car:
https://dyler.com/cars/3724/bmw-i8-rene-turrek-joker-theme-c...
https://www.rollingstone.it/musica/news-musica/la-porsche-di...
This is not how you paint a car, with cheap products and any lack of direction in the art part.
Professional grade car paint is really expensive stuff, for several good reasons: It does not change color or fade overnight and often has metallic dust or some kind of pearly "glitter" embebbed.
A professional car painter will add also a hard layer of lacquer to protect the painting, uniformize the design, and add reflections and gloss (sorely lacking there). The car will not reflect light in the same way as a propperly painted work and will gets scratched and worn in no time.
The design here is multicolor but totally flat and random (there is science in arranging adjacent colors also). Artistically is a mess. There are not sharp borders defining areas and gradients are badly executed. Not a common theme or a good idea to express, just plain chaos (in a not good way).
Of course she can made anything with her car but lets not pretend that is a great job, not even mediocre. There are two good examples of how you made a unique car:
https://dyler.com/cars/3724/bmw-i8-rene-turrek-joker-theme-c...
https://www.rollingstone.it/musica/news-musica/la-porsche-di...
I don't think you and the author share the same definition of what satisfactory results mean. She seems pretty satisfied with it.
You're right, she may hate it in a month or six, but she's happy with it now and I'm pretty sure she knows how to go get a professional paint job if she wants to.
You're right, she may hate it in a month or six, but she's happy with it now and I'm pretty sure she knows how to go get a professional paint job if she wants to.
The downside of customization is that you lose your anonymity. I had a memorable vanity plate for two years that I gave up to regain the anonymity I prefer in my car.
It probably doesn't look as good IRL without all the filters used in the photos the article uses.
Here in the UK, many tradespeople drive white vans emblazoned with the contact details for their business (there are also many unmarked white vans on the roads).
White Van Man's reputation for considerate driving is, to be charitable, not above average.