the car models can be whatever, I’m just curious if anyone is dressing up their cheap cars as expensive ones or if this is an industry yet?
is there a legal hurdle?
is there a limit to car decision in general?
is this sort of car case business already a thing?
Look up Kit Cars and other types of aftermarket mods. Usually it’s an issue of getting the DMV to register it when it claims to be a Toyota but doesn’t look like one. Roadworthiness inspections are expensive and you need to have exhaustive detail on everything.
Ultimately it costs tens of thousands of dollars to do, at which point it makes more sense to just buy a nicer car (for most people)
thanks, i will look into kit cars and mods.
I’ve been idly wondering about this for years.
For your example, I think it’d be a helluva lot more practical to swap a Rolls Royce drivetrain out for a Toyota drivetrain rather than replicate a Rolls body onto something like a Corolla. The latter always looks like goofy shit unless both cars are similar size and shape.
It sounds like maybe what you’re actually looking for is a used Lexus. They are toyota drivetrains with luxury bodies.
I’m more curious if this sort of aesthetic vehicle casing is something people do, regardless of the brand.
I think the term is body swap. And it is a thing people do. I think I saw someone put a Honda Odyssey body onto a Tesla plaid frame a couple weeks ago. I think they said the key was finding 2 cars with a similar wheelbase
Traditionally, the typical donor car for fake Rolls Royces is a VW Beetle:
People do this all the time with kit cars. The issue is that a modern corolla is a unibody design. That body style and panels are actually the frame of the vehicle. You can’t really reshape it into an arbitrary shape.
This is why something like the Fiero is so popular as a kit car base. You take the panels off and you actually have a mid engine vehicle with a skeleton steel frame and then you can bolt on whatever you want.
Many areas allow kit cars to be registered under the original vin. Most insurance companies won’t cover you for anything. You might be able to trick one into covering the original vehicle with the original vin even though it’s modified. But if you ever need anything from them they’ll refuse and cancel your policy.
In jurisdictions with emissions or regulation testing, you’ll probably never get it approved for the road.
amazing, thank you.
i really have been wondering about this for years, just thinking that there must be a car somewhere that is easier to modify as you’ve explained.
why wouldn’t it pass emissions, if the mods are all cosmetic?
why would instance companies not cover anything?
is it not a fiero if it doesn’t pook like a fiero?
Fiero is the literal go to car, there is tons of info out there.
Emmisions is usually combined with safety and road worthiness in the context of a road inspection. Emmisions also has requirements like no check engine lights, no electric faults, etc. In a modern car if you disconnect the radio you’ll get a check engine light. It might even refuse to start without additional hacks. So you’d have to go old school. And some of those old school engines are better when running with a CEL but a modern parallel system in place of the 40 year old onboard diagnostics.
Insurance companies won’t cover vehicles with extensive modifications. Making a kit car is basically a giant red flag. You haven’t crash tested it to see how safe you are or how safe the school child you accidental mow down is. You also don’t have inspections and insurance as the builder to make sure every bolt and weld is actually secure. If you get into a wreck with your kit car, you’re going to be on the hook yourself for all your damage, all the other people’s damage, and all the property damage. Even a streetlight can cost 5 digits easily, 6 digits by the time you pay a city crew to remove the old one, do environmental inspections, install new one, etc. It’s ridiculous. But you need the insurance to register the vehicle in most places, so that’s why you get it. The cheapest crappiest insurance to allow you to register the car. Then you make sure your umbrella policies cover you. That’s why this is a rich man’s game, to drive custom and one off vehicles. The other trick being you actually insure it yourself with a trust, back that with general insurance for everyone else, and personal insurance for you. But you don’t even look at this sort of thing unless you’re in the 0.1%.
You can think of it like why a salvaged title vehicle won’t be insurable by most companies. It’s a liability game. The whole western world runs on liabitly, and that’s where the money is.
thank you, that’s all very good information.
so all these modded car show people are already rich and they have some madly expensive policies in some minuscule niche high-end insurance market?
You can DIY build a car body yourself.
Like these friends in Vietnam who made their own Bugatti and used a Carolla engine. Link
Also, Truong Van Dao from Vietnam has created replicas from wood. Worth checking out the videos for the artistry.
- The real answer is Kit Cars as mentioned elsewhere.
