The Low Down on Body Kits

My Stream hit the tarmac as it exited the car park at Thomson Medical Centre last week. The slope as you exit to Thomson Road is way too steep. The underside edge of the front left-side bumper got scratched. Quite a lot of it got scratched actually, although they are all quite little bits. The fortunate thing is the scratches are all not very visible, at least not if you don’t purposely look for it. I got some touch-up paint from Kah Motor and just got the scratches covered up. Let’s wait for tomorrow to see how it looks.

I don’t have any body kit on my Stream. The Stream doesn’t need body kits. It already looks good and sleek with just its own body. My previous Altis had full body kit. It looked good. The Altis needed the body kit, otherwise the body looked like it was missing something. I hit lots of curbs and slopes with the Altis.

I can’t imagine how more easily I’d be hitting things if my Stream wore a body kit. As it is, it is about as low as my previous Altis with its body kit on. The whole Stream is low. In fact, I’ve noted how even the driver’s door just barely clears the curb at one of the places I often park at.

The trouble with all these body kits is that they lower the clearance of the body from the road too much. Although Singapore roads are generally quite well designed, it is inevitable that you’d run into places where road humps and slopes become too much for the body kit to accommodate. Then also, there’s always the problems with high curbs when you park. Yes, it is very annoying that curbs in Singapore are so horribly high. If you’ve been overseas, especially if you’ve driven overseas, you’d have noticed the curb height in many countries aren’t as high as in Singapore. Our LTA says the high curbs are for the safety of pedestrians. (Yeah. Who pays road taxes?)

Of course, if you don’t mind all the little scratches, then none of this matters at all.

I think Thomson Medical Centre has got to do something with their car park exit. The slope is just ridiculous.

Incidentally, the touch-up paint from Kah Motor is free. I’ve read about some people happily reporting how their kind car salesman got the paint for them for free. Well, I learnt it wasn’t anything like a special favour or freebie from the sales people. Just go up to the service reception, ask for the paint, and they give it to you. They don’t even record down you’ve gotten it, so you can probably go back again for more if you ever run out of the touch-up paint.