Upgrades You’d Only Want for Recent Cars:
 

Some people consider upgrades to be most necessary to those vehicles that are outdated and poorly maintained, but that’s not always the case.  In fact, there are some upgrades that are impossible to perform on vehicles pre-1980s, and others that are certainly possible but don’t make much sense to perform on anything but a fairly recent vehicle.  Below, we’ll cover some of these unique, recent times-oriented upgrades, so you can decide if any of them are right for you and your post-1980 vehicle.  After all, the new guys need something to work on as well.

Performance Chips

The most blatantly new car-oriented add-on is a performance computer chip.  These little buggers require a vehicle to be equipped with an Engine Control Unit as well as an air intake sensor.  Without an ECU or an intake sensor, the chip itself cannot be installed.  Since most cars didn’t become equipped with these components until the early 1980s, and you can’t install those components after the fact in a vehicle, it means that for those people unfortunate enough to have an older car, a performance chip just isn’t going to work.  And that’s 60 extra horsepower and 4-7 miles per gallon in fuel savings that can never be earned.

HID Headlights

Even though HIDs aren’t impossible to install on older vehicles, they certainly do become more difficult to install with age.  More recent vehicles are more readily equipped to adapt HIDs into their lighting arrays; for older vehicles, extra effort is required.  Often, a harness adaptor will have to be used, and electrical output variations will have to be steadied.  On those older vehicles with small lighting units, larger cuts into the vehicle’s body may also be needed to fit the new car HIDs in properly.

Interior LCD Screens

All right, so we just went over two upgrades:  one was impossible on cars of a certain age, and one was just clearly more difficult to finish.  This last upgrade option is completely possible and potentially easy to install on an older vehicle, but it just doesn’t make as much sense as installing it on a newer vehicle.  An interior LCD screen can provide crisp image resolution and instant DVD playback when hooked up with the right A/V components, and is great for keeping passengers in the back seat entertained.  An LCD screen, while possible to install in a classic car, just wouldn’t fit with the look.  After cars reach a certain age, most drivers of them keep them around to preserve their original elements anyway, not to basically turn an old car into a ‘new’ one.