Given that any car can be modified, styled and decorated in almost any way a driver wants, the big appeal of modification services is the degree of personalisation and artistry they provide a driver.
Whether they want a homage to their classics, a subtle personal tribute or something truly unique, experts in detailing and modification will be there for them.
This makes it particularly fascinating when some car mods become so famous and well-known that they supersede the original car in the eyes of many.
This is a rare feat because a lot of the most successful and famous mods are designed for the most widely available cars. The Porsche 930 Blackbird, Herbie the Beetle, and Subaru Impreza WRX are very popular in their own right but perhaps have not taken the spot of the original.
Here are some of the most notable exceptions.
AC Cobra
Some people may have heard of the AC Ace, an early two-door roadster made by AC Cars in 1953, but a lot more people have heard of its far more powerful follow-up.
The Ace was a tiny car powered by a straight-six engine supplied by Bristol Cars and a very light aluminium body, but when Bristol shut their doors, they needed a new engine.
After some tests with a Ford Zephyr engine and whilst considering discontinuing the car entirely, former race driver Carroll Shelby would take the car and modify it somewhat to add a Ford V8 engine, creating the Cobra in the process.
The car would make Mr Shelby’s career, and he would go on to develop the Ford GT40 and spend the rest of his life creating performance versions of other cars, including the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 and a version of the Dodge Viper.
None of his follow-up cars had quite the same impact, and the AC Cobra is still built today in limited quantities, long outliving the AC Ace and AC Cars as a whole.
AMG Hammer
Before AMG became a division of Mercedes-Benz, they were famous for taking the refined Silver Arrows as far as they could go, but one particular example has lived longer in the memory than the still-popular car it was created from.
The Mercedes-Benz E-Class was a relatively popular saloon car since its launch in 1986, but following the introduction of the BMW M3 homologation special of the 3 Series BMW and its remarkable critical and commercial success, Mercedes wanted to compete.
Without an in-house tuning team, they collaborated with AMG to create a hugely powerful tuning kit simply called the AMG Hammer.
Billed as the fastest saloon car in the world with a top speed of 190 mph coming from a 375bhp 6.0-litre V8 engine, the AMG was slightly faster to 60 mph than a Ferrari Testarossa.
Whilst it was not produced in the same numbers as the M3 given that buyers had to buy a standard 300E and then send it to AMG for it to be modified, it has become far more famous in the years since due to its audacious looks and record-setting power output.
Lotus Carlton
Perhaps more infamous than famous, the Lotus Carlton was based on the Vauxhall Carlton GSi 3000, the top-of-the-range version of the otherwise relatively anonymous saloon car, and became one of the most infamous Q-cars ever made.
Despite only selling 444 units, far lower than the standard car, it became famous for being one of the fastest sports saloons available on the UK market, the fastest four-door production saloon in the world for several years and led to several campaigns to have the car banned.
Ultimately, the Carlton sold very poorly, as might be expected of a £48,000 saloon car released during the global recession, but it has retained much of its infamy since then as a car so fast the police tried to ban it.
DMC DeLorean Time Machine
The DeLorean DMC-12 would have been completely forgotten in history were it not for its use in one of the most popular films of the 1980s. Even then, it was used as a joke.
The production of the car was infamously troubled, with nearly every aspect of the car outside of its shape and gull-wing doors ending up compromised, and many drivers of the surviving units largely find them unsatisfactory to drive, but one particular modded version has made it successful.
The DMC-12 was included in the 1985 film Back To The Future as a joke; the punchline was that of all the cars to turn into a time machine, Doc Brown chose one of the worst, most unreliable and most unusual cars ever made.
Ironically, it would end up becoming popular again as a direct result of the film, and many people only know of the existence of the DMC-12 through its modification into a time machine from a comedy science fiction film.
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