Performance Communications | June 10, 2025
Car modification: once upon a time, it was a petrolhead’s rite of passage. If you’ve ever fitted aftermarket alloys to a Vauxhall Astra, or swapped the speaker system in a Citroën Saxo, you’ll know what we’re getting at.
Today’s modified car scene is far from dead and buried, but we’re a long way from the zeitgeist era that arrived around the turn of the millennium. Perhaps, though, the golden age of customisation is due a comeback.
The idea of personalising your pride and joy is almost as old as the car itself. Since the dawn of mass production, owners have been finding ways to make theirs stand out from the crowd, creating moments of automotive pop culture along the way.
A hundred years ago, it was bootleggers, moonshine and hot rods. The modified Mini scene of the Sixties and Seventies also deserves a mention, but nothing compares to what came around a few decades later.
For a brief period in the early noughties, modified cars were as essential as low-rise jeans and Lindsay Lohan. Max Power magazine, the self-styled modders bible, was approaching peak circulation of 250,000 copies, each issue bringing a new selection of radically restyled projects – typically created on someone’s driveway.
Then in 2001, The Fast & The Furious hit cinemas, casting customisation onto the big screen and straight into impressionable minds from Malibu to Macclesfield. Modification had morphed from niche interest to cult phenomenon.
Even the major OEMs got in on the act. Citroën, whose hatchbacks had earned a major following with enthusiasts, began attending modified shows, and even commissioned its own press office projects to demonstrate what could be achieved with a Saxo VTR and a little imagination. To paraphrase an old motorsport motto, it was a case of ‘mod on Sunday, sell on Monday’.
But just 10 years after Paul Walker and Vin Diesel had broadcast modification to the masses, The Fast & The Furious franchise was turning its attention from hot Hondas to helicopters and heavy artillery, and the final issue of Max Power was on the shelves thanks to a dramatic drop in readership.
What led to the decline? Changes to the way we buy new cars was major cause. In 2009, fewer than half of all private buyers used manufacturer financing. By 2020, it was 93%. The rise of attractive lease and Personal Contract Purchase options made new cars more attainable than ever. Motorists could simply upgrade to the next best thing, rather than consulting the Demon Tweeks catalogue to make it themselves.
Cars also became increasingly capable, with bigger alloy wheels and punchier stereos becoming standard fare. Their newfound sophistication eliminated the appeal of DIY maintenance and modification.
Or maybe the loud and proud style that defined the era simply fell out of fashion?
Ask anyone who knows about fashion, though, and they’ll tell you trends come in cycles. In 2025, low-rise jeans are back with a vengeance, and we’re keeping our cars for longer. Unfortunately, we only have data, here, to back up the latter assertion.
In 2023, the average car on British roads was over nine years old, marking a 20% increase on 2019. If the trend of keeping what you’ve got continues, perhaps we’ll see more people investing in the aftermarket.
If so, the next modified car boom could be just around the corner. Sure, it might favour retrofitted Apple CarPlay over scissor-opening doors, but it’s a step in the right direction if you’re the kind of person who still looks back fondly on the golden era. What’s more, July will see members of the original Max Power team launching a new magazine – ‘MAXERS’ – to showcase the finest from the UK’s current modified car scene. The perfect storm? We’d like to think so.
One thing’s for sure: it’s never been easier to find and fit accessories to your car. Online marketplaces like eBay are home to a vast array of mods for pretty much any car you care to name, from track-spec coilover suspension to a contemporary reversing camera kit. And a growing army of YouTubers, led by influencers and content creators like Mat Armstrong, are inspiring a fresh generation of modding enthusiasts by, quite literally, showing how it’s done.
Meanwhile, a healthy appetite for car customisation has also been underlined by the Jeff Bezos-backed Slate EV truck, revealed earlier this year. Created in partnership with Amazon Autos, it’s positioned as a rolling DIY project. A blank canvas – or slate, if you will – for modification. Build it as intended, and you’re unlikely to see another the same.
The modular, all-electric truck not only allows you to easily swap the body panels, colour, wheels and interior throughout ownership – you can even transform it from family SUV to utilitarian pick-up truck in a matter of minutes.
The best part about customising a Slate EV? You don’t need a degree in motorsport engineering to get the job done, it’s all designed to be easily achievable with some basic tools and a driveway. If that isn’t pointing to a mod revival, we don’t know what is.
Jack Constantine
