Cool Whips
As the custom car craze revs up, Hofstra students are doing everything they can to keep their wheels moving.
by Conor Hogan
Staff Writer
Long Island is a hot bed for custom cars.
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There are car posters on the walls. Piles of car magazines are sprawled over a cold, tiled floor. A picture of his shiny, black Volkswagen Golf sits on his desk. It's the kind of obsession a mother or psychiatrist would be a little worried about, but Hofstra sophomore Gary Gross shares his undying passion with a growing throng of Long Islanders. Cars are their religion and places like Uniondale's Unique Autosports are their cathedrals.
While driving the perfect car has been a goal since Henry Ford started rolling Model T's off the assembly line, customized cars, or whips, have become increasingly popular in recent years. The custom car business is currently a $26 billion dollar industry, up 8 percent over the past decade, according to the Specialty Equipment Makers Association. Even corporate America has latched onto the movement; Built-to-Order, Inc. has announced it will become the world's first automotive company to deliver custom vehicles directly to consumers. The fastest, flashiest, rarest cars have become status symbols of the rich, and egged on by movies like The Fast and the Furious, the rest of us are scrambling to follow suit.
Take a casual walk through almost any Hofstra University parking lot. It is not Mercedes, BMWs and Lexuses that are wowing onlookers anymore, but the basic rides like Honda's, Toyota's and Gross's VW. With lowered suspensions, incandescent headlights, and exhausts that dwarf the Lincoln Tunnel, even the most modest of cars can be converted to a Frankenstein of automobiles, upgraded outside, inside and under the hood.
Gary Gross has dropped a few grand so far on custom upgrades to his Volkswagen GTI Turbo, and expects to pay another $10,000 in the future. The car is turbo charged, pushing 20 pounds of turbo boost, and equipped with a cold-air intake. Gross added a lightweight racing flywheel and clutch and, as for the back seats, well, the back seats were just too heavy. Gross had to get rid of those.
To the untrained eye, the black Volkswagen as if like it has just rolled off the dealer's lot, but when the gas peddle hits the floor, Gross knows where his money went. He doesn't race it much, but when he does, the machine purrs and obeys his every command. When it chirps down an empty straightaway nearing its maximum 158 mph, the car seems like it should have giant ads for Tide on its doors.
What attracts Gross to this hobby is a mix between adrenaline and pride. It's the double-takes from people walking by his car, or the guy at the red light asking about his wheels. The feeling of tearing down a dark road at nearly triple digits doesn't hurt either. "I've tried to create something that is more power and less flash. Ever since The Fast and the Furious, kids just want eye-candy," Gross declared, "but they forget that a car is a machine. The ultimate machine isn't based on appearance; it's based on performance."
What next, and just as important, where next? Choosing the best place to get a car customized is almost as important as the part itself. Gross could pick something from his father's transmission shop or take it to the next level and go high class with a specialty shop.
One of the highest profile shops in the country is Unique Autosports, located in Uniondale, just east of Hofstra's second unispan. Five years ago, owner Will Castro took an inconspicuous car part store on the Hempstead Turnpike and turned it into a specialty empire. The modest shop, flanked outside by a BMW and two Lamborghinis, focuses on accessories. "It's mainly stereo systems, wheels and tires," said employee Louis Tuminero.
Unique's clientele is as impressive as the rims that stand like trophies throughout the store's main room. The hip-hop and NFL communities are both well represented on the store's left wall, in a display featuring a handful of Jets jerseys as well as dozens of autographed pictures of rappers and their luxury vehicles. There are pictures of Castro and Nas, Castro and Eminem, and Castro with Keyshawn Johnson.
Rapper Busta Rhymes has become somewhat of an ambassador for Unique Autosports, and for good reason. Whether it's his luxury cars that occasionally sit in front of Unique, his platinum records adorning the walls or his name once spray-painted in three-foot letters on the side of the building, the rapper shows his loyalty to the store. He even showed off the store in an episode of MTV's "Cribs."
While millionaires like Busta Rhymes are common customers, Unique Autosports still caters to those who make less than six figures. "We also do regular guys," Tuminero said, including the occasional Hofstra student looking for the top-of-the-line stereo or tires. Business really picks up over the summer, though, when most University students are on break. No matter: most can't afford the shop's $20,000 wheels or TVs for their headrests.
Junior Charles Yoo would love to modify his Honda Civic LX, but right now he can't pay for anything that isn't gas or wiper fluid. "Labor and parts are really expensive, around $70 an hour, and until I sell my old car, I can't do much with my new one," said Yoo. His old one is ancient by today's standards, a white, 1986 Mustang LX 5.0. Its laundry list of power parts includes a 302 cubic inch engine, Centerforce Stage III Racing clutch and an Edelbrock Performer 5.0 intake. While Yoo isn't into street racing, he did take his beast of an automobile to a track, where it did a quarter mile in just over 14 seconds.
Despite its speed, Yoo had trouble affording the costs of keeping the old car up and running. The clutch was acting up, the dashboard was decaying and the last straw was a dying fuel pump. If this Mustang were a dog, doctors would have put it down years ago, but like a true car nut, Yoo rode it out as long as he could. Now he is looking to sell his muscle car, maroon interior and all, so that he can hook up an all too plain Civic. "As long as I can do it, I'm gonna keep messing with cars," he said. "I love cars."
As thousands like Gross and Yoo live and work for their rides, the idea that custom car obsession is simply a trend is being silenced by the sounds of screeching car tires on 20 inch rims pointed toward an empty straightaway.
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