As some savvy editors have already put on the record, anyone can claim to be a car customizer and so many people do, it's easy. Industry makes it even easier to break necks on the block, or have a rep. Gull wings conversions are like the pushed up jacket sleeves and popped collars of Miami Vice days-totally ridiculous, readily available and seriously "in" for a moment-or gigantic seafood platter-sized brake rotors made of the crudest material, screaming size does matter. It's even de rigueur to glance at your own reflection in the mirrored office building you cruise past every day. As in life, the right looks are so much easier to achieve than solid performance.
Body culture is a also a big "F- you." It's an obvious politicizing of the import scene's way of being anti-establishment, of refusing to conform to the norms. This inadvertently makes rebellion cool. The image is now so accepted that the big O.E.s have gotten into play, allowing you to buy parts from Nismo direct with a factory warranty that will side step Nissan's otherwise stiff lease requirements prohibiting aftermarket parts or upgrades.
Even when performance is the focus, it's almost unheard of to leave a body stock. Even the most conservative, purist tuners or teams will, at the least, add a front aero kit that obviously changes the looks of front fascia. It's hard to say whose doing what and why, but let's note how much the scene has developed. It's affected those that live and die by power-to-weight ratio; in order to survive they end up mixing performance and looks.
Which brings me to my question. Why does an implied message of looks being wrong exist? All of us are guilty of going up in wheel size or trading up to bad-ass brakes with that platter-sized rotor. We are simply updating aesthetics. But for what cause? What reason and why is it wrong if it positively affects performance? It's as if we take a vow of abstinence in our tuning. No one can deny the subtle underlying pressure to remain clean or look like a sleeper. It's an ideal held by many first generation import tuning enthusiasts.