Where Do Fake Vents Come From, Anyway?

Our crack investigative reporter solves the mystery behind stick-on faux air vents.

Creating methods for cramming cool air into an engine’s combustion chambers and extracting power-sapping heat has always been an obsession of those craving both efficiency and vehicular velocity. Consider the early gow jobbers on those dry Southern California lake beds.

This story originally appeared in Volume 21 of Road & Track.

“In the prewar era, these kids were just using whatever they could find and making crude speed parts—sand-cast molds and stuff like that,” says Bill Ganahl, founder of South City Rod and Custom in Northern California and second-­generation hot-rod royalty (he is the son of legendary rod builder, author, editor, and racer Pat Ganahl). “You’d see little scoops that are almost like periscopes. And people would run them either ­frontward, if they really wanted to force air down the carburetor, or backward, maybe to protect from dirt or salt going down the carb.”

Carmakers often appropriated trends seen on the streets, flats, and tracks. They interpolated louvers, vents, and intakes into their production cars to make them appear more powerful. Sometimes these additions were merely ornamental, an embellishment that existed in inverse proportion to potency (on the Mustang Cobra II, the C3 Corvette, the 10th-gen Honda Civic).

Near the turn of the 21st century, power returned to the people. Though aftermarket catalogs like JC Whitney had been peddling lustrous bolt-on metallic fender and hood adornments for decades, shiny, self-adhesive, readily applicable—and fully ersatz—plasticized iterations of various go-fast bits began appearing in auto-parts stores. They dangled alluringly from pegboard hooks in crinkly cellophane wrappers, enticing those who craved cheap speed or the ­pretense of it.

Different forms dominated in different regions. “I used to live on the East Coast, and in my area, the tuner scene, the Japanese modified-car scene, came in much later than in other parts of the country,” says Ben Hsu, tuner-culture Herodotus and co-founder of the indispensable website Japanese Nostalgic Car. “The first time I started noticing these things was on American cars, and people would stick them on, kind of like the Buick portholes, along the front fender.”

These chromey carbuncles took various forms—strakes, vents, grilles, scoops, beltline trim, even vinyl bullet holes—and were frequently applied in multiples, mainly on hoods and front fenders but also, unexpectedly, along a trunk lip, on a C-pillar, on rear quarter panels, or in a heckblende between the taillamps. They really gained traction after 2001 with the release and propagation of a foundational cinematic franchise. “It obviously culminated with the Fast & Furious movie series,” Hsu says.

Hsu is quick to point out that the type of car customizers (supposedly) represented in these films were not the target audience for these products. “Those things were never in vogue with people who were actual tuners,” he says. “It was more like people who were thinking, ‘Oh, this tuner scene looks pretty cool, and I want to get in on it.’”

In a sense, all cars are drag, a costume worn to express individuality, conjure a fantasy identity, undermine tedious norms, and provide you and your audience (the rest of the world) with delight. “It gives you some bling and some status,” says Dave Marek, a veteran designer for Honda, a brand that often had its products adorned with this form of enhancement. “It can really individualize your car. And my take on it is always: If you want to do that, go ahead and do it. Do more!”

In an effort to pinpoint an origin story for these objets, I spent days delving into the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s website but unearthed ­little more than two ornamental clip-on hood scoops from the early Nineties. Frustrated, I reached out to national purveyors of automotive ephemera, hoping to plumb their archives. But this resulted in a mysterious series of contrite stonewalls that bordered on the conspiratorial.

Dave McKinney, VP of public affairs for AutoZone, said via email, “We are going to pass on this media opportunity.” Juan Torres, the media relations manager for the SEMA car customization show, wrote, “We don’t have anyone on staff that can speak to this.” CarParts.com (whose parent company purchased JC Whitney in 2010) declined to comment for this story. And Aine Lavin, a spokesperson for Pep Boys, the retailer perhaps most associated with this type of vehicular garnishing, noted, “We unfortunately do not have any experience working with or selling these parts.” I immediately responded with links to a half-dozen such products ­currently for sale on the Pep Boys website and suggested she reconsider. I have not heard back.

These press-ons seemed nearly metastatic in the early Aughts as they proliferated across the bodies (and occasionally interiors) of cars, trucks, SUVs, and even New York City taxis. Some applications looked more natural than others. “If you have a scalloped surface, and then you put one of those on the end where it looks like the air has already been funneled in, that’s when it works the best,” Marek says. “But not everybody probably thinks it through that much. They just think it looks great and like more performance.”

And this is the whole point and glory of easy car customization. It’s not about functionality: Many experts believe that even the greediest factory hood scoops on classic front-engined ­muscle cars—the rapacious Ram Airs, Shakers, and Grabbers of the Sixties and Seventies—offered little more than “visual performance” once the additional drag and weight were considered. It’s about making a car look good to you. “There are no rules, per se,” Ganahl says. “Almost everything that spawned from going fast—chopping a top, putting big tires on the back and little tires on the front, scoops—these were all logistical applications. But the main thing is they looked cool.”

Now that cars from the Nineties and Aughts are becoming collectibles, and trends from the era—from baggy cargo pants to underglow—are returning, is it likely that we’ll see adhesive chrome make a comeback as a form of preservation or commemoration? “I haven’t seen any cars with these kind of stick-on parts on them that actually are new builds as an homage to that era,” Hsu says, laughing. “I don’t think the trend has come full circle yet.”

Brett Berk (he/him) is a former preschool teacher and early childhood center director who spent a decade as a youth and family researcher and now covers the topics of kids and the auto industry for publications including CNN, the New York Times, Popular Mechanics and more. He has published a parenting book, The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting, and since 2008 has driven and reviewed thousands of cars for Car and Driver and Road & Track, where he is contributing editor. He has also written for Architectural Digest, Billboard, ELLE Decor, Esquire, GQ, Travel + Leisure and Vanity Fair.

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