If you've ever driven away from your local inspection station with an angry face, and big fat bureaucratically driven rejection sticker for some insignificant mod you did, this story may help you put things into perspective. You probably don't have it that bad. In some places in this world anything beyond simple aftermarket mods are more or less illegal. Taiwan being one of them.
The problem as I see it, is the general lack of true car culture here. I do have a solid group of friends here who share my love of building and modding their vehicles, but the general population in Taiwan seems to have very little interest in it. The staff running the official inspection stations are no exception to this.
The system they use is so automated that if your vehicle comes in with any significant modifications that are not designated by your VIN or noted on your vehicle registration in their database, they will reject your vehicle. Not because your mod poses a potential danger to you or the drivers around you or for any other logical and or reasonable reason. Simply because it doesn't match what they see.
There is no,
"Oh I see, you just swapped the hardtop for a soft top." or
"Oh I get it, you just added a 4" lift and some bigger tires for offroad clearance." or
"Oh you just swapped to a stronger spare tire carrier no big deal."
These guys seem to have no concept of the idea that not everybody just leases or buys a new car every few years solely to get from point A to point B and back.
If they don't see the modification noted on their computer screen, it doesn't belong on your vehicle. Unfortunately, not unlike the binary computer they are staring at, the lack of car culture in most of these guys leads them to one of two outcomes. Pass or fail.
So when we modify our vehicles over here we have two options. Find away around the "official" system, or only modify to a point that isn't too inconvenient to un-modify twice a year to get passed this silly bureaucratic bullshit.
I started off simple with my Jeep 15+ years ago, but over the years, as they do, the mods strayed farther and farther from what could be considered reversable. This is what lead to the drama in this video.
Hope you enjoy the story. If you did don't forget to like and subscribe. Happy tooling.
6 сен 2024
