Putting customized parts and modifications in your isn’t all just for show. In many instances, these mods are just as practical as they are pretty: they can make the car go faster or handle better, for example, or protect your auto from being damaged. And if you’ve already put a lot of time and expense into your car, then a few precautionary measures have to be taken.

Smoked tail lights, for example. Smoking or tinting your tail lights covers the glass with a film, applied by sticker or sprayed on, that prevents scratches on your taillights. Just be careful about putting tints on your taillights- you may have state laws regarding how dark and opaque taillights can be, so your Smoked tail lights may not be street legal.

Clear bras paint protection systems may not be quite as attention-grabbing as Smoked tail lights, but they get the job done. In this case, the job is protecting your car’s paint from scratches caused by debris on the road: small pebbles and debris flying around, which can cause a lot of scratches and tiny dents in your car. The clear bra is a transparent film that goes over areas that can be damaged by road debris, like bumpers or side mirrors.

Without the clear bra, these small collisions with street debris can really add up to a lot of scrapes on your ride, which might require some costly repainting to affected areas. Clear bras are a good investment so that it never comes to this: just spend a little extra in the beginning, and then be assured that your paint job is safe.

But sometimes, even with all this protection, you’ll still end up with some annoying small dents and dings in your car anyway. But don’t worry so much about it- these dents don’t automatically mean a lot of money spent on dent repair and repainting.

PDR Paintless dent removal is a technique that is both faster and cheaper than traditional dent removal techniques. In PDR, a trained technician uses some specialized tools to gradually smooth out the dent, so that eventually it looks good as new. If the dent didn’t break the paint, it’s even better- you won’t need repainting, and worrying about the cost or whether the new paint will match the old one.

Less showy than Smoked tail lights and much more practical are the Clear bras paint protection systems. These also lay down an additional, almost invisible layer of film over you car. They’re applied to the front bumper, and areas like side mirrors and headlights, which are often subjected to small collisions with flying road debris, like loose gravel.

- Eddie Borgwardt