Car Club/Community
From Mod Mania
Julian Winata s3222817
Car Club/Community
What is a car club? Car club is a community filled with people who enthusiastically love their car so much; they usually mod it with different things and style to make it unique from other people. As a community, they also act like a company, have bosses (leaders), secretary, etc.
What is the point of having or joining this community?
The question leads to what are they doing exactly inside the community. First of all, the people inside the club itself has already liking tuning their own car and being inside the community make them feel welcome as it’s the congregation of car enthusiast like them too. Each member will understand and help each other to understand in what to do with their car.
What is tuning a car?
Tuning a car is a hobby to modify it in order to improve its performance, handling, and presentation and improve the owner’s driving style. In shorter words, car tuning means getting the maximum performance out of your car. It is not a problem whether the person drives an exotic or just a stock car, with some car tuning, they can not only increase the performance easily, but make it much more fun to drive and attractive to others. Although attractive is relative and depends on how creative you are as quite a lot of trash looking modified cars we see on the road. As most cars leave the factory set up for average driver expectations and conditions, tuning has become a way to personalize the characteristics of the driver’s preference. Car tuning’s performances are mostly never complete as they are built for pleasure of owning and driving such a vehicle.
Tuning a car
Tuning up generally includes replacement of several parts on your car. These parts may seem superficial, but failing to replace them regularly can cause decreased in performance in the car. A tune up should involve replacing the air filter, replace or clean the spark plugs, and replacing the distributor cap and rotor, etc. Areas of modification are varying from audio, interior tuning, engine tuning, suspension tuning, body tuning, and detuning.
Legal requirements
Every state or locality has specific rules regarding what is legal and what is not when it comes to vehicles on its roads. Legal requirements usually revolve around these tree specific types of car tuning modifications, modifications to emissions, modifications to the sound of the vehicle, and the exterior of your vehicle. For example, all vehicles in Victoria, Australia, must conform to construction standards to ensure vehicles provide drivers and passengers with maximum level of safety. There are also restrictions for P Plate drivers which can prevent young drivers from driving modified vehicles. Some countries are illegal to increase the headlamps to an unsafe level or show off neon lights that can be distracting to other drivers on the road. If the car is not legal, people still can enjoy modifying the car, except the only place available for them is either on private land or on the track and the driver should transport the car via trailer or flat bed as it is not street legal.
What people modify in their car
Modified cars are economical and produce power higher than its average capacity, in other words, a proper handling of the car is a must to prevent something unwanted happen. To improve the handling, modifiers have to tune the enhances of aerodynamic features by utilizing splitters, air vents, light wheels, real and front bumpers, and side skirts. Some people add spoilers and kits to the body to generally improve both its aerodynamics and physical appearance. Some tried to modify the interiors of the car by upgrading the factory installations such as audio. Upgrading the seats is also common in modifying a car to make it more comfortable and stylish. Some vehicles become expensive because they add vinyl lights and stickers on to the body, these kinds of cars are termed as pimped cars.
So what are they doing inside the club if they can do modifying themselves?
The community of car club is not only about modifying their cars and showing it off on the road. As a community, they usually hang out together and their relationship is very strong inside. Most of them have an online forum to chat and showing off what their car has become but not able to meet the others physically. Car club are not only about cars, but also having fun around people who have the same way of thinking. Some car clubs are having specific features for new members to join. For example, only the specific brand such as Mercedes and the members of course the ones drive a Mercedes brand. There are also specific cars such as Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, so the members are all driving the same car.
I recently observe one community with the same car, which is the new Mitsubishi Lancer and Lancer Evolution X. They are located in all Australian territory including Melbourne and they quite often hangout with each other. They are a big community with more than a thousand members. They have a forum and in this forum, they can talk to each other live with a chatting system. They know each other and some of their personal life like work or what are they doing right now, etc. This relationship they built inside the club is quite close to each other and they are good with new members, giving them advice and all. Strangers also are welcome in this forum, you just have to register and you can ask anything about cars basically as many of them are actually have knowledge of modifying cars. This club also has some sponsors and they can get some discounts while buying car parts in some shops.
In my opinion, joining a club like this gives you some advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are you will have this ‘other’ family who you can rely on sometimes and you can enjoy having this relationship with many people inside the club. They also usually are planning some trips which you can join anytime to make refreshment from whatever you are doing in life. The disadvantages are you will spend more money on parts and keep modifying your cars as an enthusiast. This activity of modifying is very addictive, especially when your surroundings are people who also like the same thing and I am saying this based on my experience too.
Reference:
http://glamgirlcars.com/car-tuning/legal-requirements-for-car-tuning/
