10 Car Accessories That Aren't Worth Your Money
It’s your car and you can trick it out any way you like. But when it comes to optional auto accessories, just because you can add one doesn’t mean you should. Some cool car products add value, boost performance, come in handy or just look awesome.
Many others, however, don’t. These are the car accessories that waste money, add nothing of value and draw the ire of respectable car enthusiasts everywhere. So you should think twice before adding these items that just aren’t worth it.
1. Oversized Spoilers
Spoilers serve an aerodynamic function by “spoiling” air currents that contribute to drag and turbulence — but only when they’re necessary. When they’re purely cosmetic, they don’t add anything to the car but weight. And when they’re gigantic for no reason, they’re little more than ugly cop magnets that can actually reduce aerodynamics and performance.
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2. Fake Performance Badges
Among the saddest class of drivers are those who feel they can pose their way into a high-performance model just by slapping a decal on a run-of-the-mill make. You might see an AMG badge on what’s clearly an entry-level Mercedes, or a decal designed to trick people into thinking that a vanilla BMW is an M3 hatchback that never actually existed. It’s hard to imagine who, exactly, badge posers think they’re fooling, but don’t be a fool by becoming one of them.
3. CDs in the Rearview Mirror
Some automotive add-ons can be free and worthless at the same time. An enduring misconception says that hanging a CD or DVD in your rearview mirror will somehow deflect and interrupt police radar, making your car invisible to cops with radar guns. It will not. It’s a long-debunked urban legend — and since law enforcement has been privy to it for years, it will likely only make you stand out even more.
4. Anything in the Rearview Mirror
Even if you’re not intentionally trying to foil police with an obvious and ineffective disc, it’s a violation in some jurisdictions to hang anything in your rearview mirror because dangling objects can impede your vision. That includes innocuous things such as air fresheners, super-cool fuzzy dice, rosary beads and even handicapped placards, which you’re supposed to remove whenever you’re not parked.
5. Cupholder Swivel Trays
You can spend $15 on a flimsy contraption that turns your console cup holder into a swivel tray designed to help you eat fast food while driving, but you shouldn’t. First of all, doing 65 miles per hour (mph) with an elevated, swiveling mini-dining spread 8 inches from your face is probably a bad idea. Also, many of the top brands get poor reviews on sites like Amazon for being cheaply made, ill-fitting and wobbly. If you use it enough, the chances of you eventually wearing your burger and fries after a sharp turn or a sudden stop are essentially 100%.
6. Steering Wheel Work Tray
The front seat of a car is simply never going to be an ideal place to bang out some work. Wasting $20 or more on a steering wheel-mounted tray won’t change that. With the many and varied places you can stop to hunch over a laptop, it’s hard to imagine this one-purpose hunk of plastic doing anything but contributing to car clutter for all but a fraction of its life.
7. Performance Chips
As early as 2015, prosecutors were warning that the popular $69 GForce Performance Chip was a fraudulent gimmick based on false advertising. Nearly half a decade later, so-called performance chips still promise to boost fuel economy, reduce emissions and even add more horsepower to cars. They probably won’t do any those things — but they have been known to turn on check-engine lights and void warranties.
8. Fuel Line Magnets
Fuel line magnets are among the many devices that claim to increase fuel economy, extend a car’s miles per gallon (mpg) and save drivers money by using science to somehow enhance molecules found in gasoline — in this case by creating a magnetic field. Fuel line magnets have been around since the 1980s and, despite wild claims by manufacturers, a number of studies have shown that the devices do nothing to improve fuel efficiency.
9. Fuel Ionizers
Fuel ionizers are another line of alleged fuel-saving products that have proven to be a hoax. By attaching one to the fuel line between the injector and the fuel pump, they’re marketed as creating an “ionic field” that does science-y stuff to gas on a molecular level to make it burn more thoroughly. The truth is, modern fuel injection systems spray a very fine mist of fuel into the combustion chamber, virtually none of which is wasted — with or without ionization.
10. Intake Vortex Devices
Like so many other fuel-efficiency products that make empty promises, intake vortex devices rely on drivers’ misunderstanding of how modern engines work. The promise that cars can benefit from add-ons like intake vortex devices — which attempt to alter the amount of airflow into the combustion chamber — ignores the fact that today’s cars already rely on complex computers to continuously adjust airflow to match fuel intake, and vice versa.
This article was provided by MoneyLion.com for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal or tax advice.
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