Cutesy car modding

Whist searching for car insurance-related news this week I came across a photograph of a new generation Mini to which somebody had affixed a pair of eyelashes.

I was about equal parts freaked-out and interested by this, so I did a little digging and discovered that lots of other people have done it, too. There is actually a Utah-based company, Turbo Style Products, that make them to order.

Turbo Style's offering is a rubberised strip of lashes, each one about five inches long, which glues onto the surface of your headlights. A set costs $25 but you have to pay extra for ‘crystal eyeliner', whatever that is.

What bothers me most about these things is the people who buy a set and then immediately post a picture online, waxing lyrical about how pretty, beautiful or stylish darling little ‘Cli-Cli' or ‘Voxi' now is. They seem to think that sticking a set of rubber pigeon spikes round their lights somehow turns their car into a cartoon character, or worse, into a person.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that a car can't have personality – but I object to the idea that it can be ‘stuck on' ten minutes out the door of the dealership. If a car is anything like a human being, its personality will develop slowly - and will largely be shaped by its faults.

Remember that first frosty morning a few months down the line when for some awful reason the car refuses to turn over? You shout and scream – there is always something urgent to do at the other end – you curse the car, you call it names? That, right there, is a personality defining moment: ‘The first time it let me down'.

How about the time you ran out of petrol? Or your first breakdown; your first jump start, your first look under the bonnet in a time of crisis? The weird noise it made, and then later you imitated, trying to make the mechanic understand what was wrong? All these are such moments: you feel angry; then cheated; then relieved; then happy – the bond between owner and machine is cemented every time.

Headlight lashes are acceptable - and look acceptable, to me - on an older car, because an old vehicle already has plenty of character. On a new one, however, they ring just as nauseatingly phoney as the flower suit on an Anne Geddes baby.