More and more, individuals interested in custom vehicles seem to be joining the ranks of disappointed fans who claim you no longer see the one off suspensions, body fabrications or mods such as frenched headlights or Cadillac tails. It seems the new "bolt on" generation has a ton of people upset and I don't understand why. While most of the vehicles you do see have very little or no true "custom" modifications, we happened to find a few full on customs at the SEMA show last week in Las Vegas, but we also found a ton of vehicles that had tasteful bolt on mods to satisfy the Motor Head in all of us.

What has caused this new genre of customization? We here at Truckblog have a good guess - TIME and MONEY. "Time is Money" as the saying goes, so being fans of customization, bolt on mods offer us the best of both worlds - an opportunity to stand out from the pack, at a reasonable price and in a manner that is safe for our vehicles and ourselves. A majority of the people who modify their vehicles are backyard mechanics, not mechanical engineers. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to try to fabricate something yourself, unless you know you can do so safely, which I feel is more important than being cutting edge. With that being said, this is why we rely on big corporations to complete the research and development that they do.

While true customization will never completely die, I think the new generation of custom builders deserves a little more respect than they are being shown. You can take a completely stock vehicle and modify it to be completely different so that it fits your taste and do so for a relatively reasonable amount of money.

I know that I am impressed with the vehicles that I have seen, so let's see what you can do. If you’re good enough, maybe we can cover your vehicle at the 2006 SEMA Show!!!