Aftermarket Enhancements For Your Car

There are A LOT of aftermarket accessories you can buy for every car. Don’t get the sheep seat covers or the thick steering wheel cover. Instead, get something that is actually useful and will help your car or truck get more miles and extend its life. Here are five examples to get you off to a good start.

Thule Rack

Whether it’s bike racks, cargo racks or canoe racks, Thule’s been making Swedish avant-garde automobile accessories for decades, providing the car culture with ways to take more stuff with them. When you’re traveling with a pack and you want to maintain comfortability and space, there’s nothing more relevant than a way to get your gear to your destination without taking up valuable real estate. If you’ve ever spent hours and hours in a car with smelly people and wanted more space to yourself, you’ll appreciate the added benefit extra space affords.

WeatherTech Car Mats

Chances are—even if you run a tight ship—your carpets will get utterly disgusting after a few months. WeatherTech liners are an Iron Man suit for your rig, keeping contaminants at bay thanks to perfectly molded rubber mats based on your car’s interior dimensions keeping the elements out. Whether it’s dawn patrol or ski patrol, the ability to protect your interior not only helps with longevity, but also keeping you and your car happy from year to year.

Performance Brake Pads

Braking often gets overlooked when looking for a “performance” boost, but stopping is arguably more important than going. For less than you think, high-performance brake pads offer a great enhancement to your stopping ability without, A. breaking the bank, B. upgrading your braking system too much. It’s a simple swap that most any shop can do and the results will be almost immediate. Safety can be cool too.

Sirius/XM Radio

Unless you love NPR (nothing wrong with that), terrestrial radio is an antiquated media source that is limited by physical range and crappy, localized commercials. Granted AM/FM is free, but satellite radio offers comprehensive programming available everywhere without commercials (sans some channels) among its hundreds of channels. If you’re in your car most of the week, satellite radio is an indispensable upgrade. There’s a reason most every new car comes equipped with it.

Tinted Windows

Other than protecting your interior from the harmful effects of the sun, tinted windows offer cooler temps in the summer, privacy from strangers (which can keep your car safer from thieves) and the obvious enhancement of making your car look cooler. However, make sure you check your local laws accordingly because sometimes they could be illegal in certain states.