Almost as long as cars have existed, people have wanted to customize them and show them off. There has always been a thriving market for fashionable car accessories – especially ones that owners can install themselves. History is littered, though, with the remains of car accessories that were fashionable for about a week before the entire world realized that they either actually looked awful or were dangerous to the vehicle – or both. For instance, maybe you’ve heard your parents talk about tricking their cars out with dingle balls back in the ‘70s – a terrible idea made even worse by the fact that everyone smoked in their cars in those days.

Some car fashion accessories are truly timeless. Fuzzy dice, for instance, originated during World War II and continue to be rediscovered by car lovers every decade or two. In many cases, though, the fashion add-ons that you can buy and attach to your car are little more than cheap plastic monstrosities that you’ll end up regretting almost immediately after buying them. Others are downright dangerous because they can impede visibility or damage your car.

So, are you interested in adding some custom gear that gives your car a unique look? If you are, you should choose your gear carefully. These are some of the ridiculous car fashion fails that you should avoid at all costs.

Clip-On Windshield Wiper Spoilers

If you’ve visited an auto parts store recently, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that low-profile blades have become seriously popular in the world of window wipers. Low-profile blades don’t have the large metal brackets of traditional wipers. Instead, a low-profile blade has a single thin pre-tensioned metal bar with a rubber or silicone blade at the bottom. Low-profile blades don’t have replaceable inserts as traditional bracketed wipers do, but most people don’t actually buy the inserts anyway.

Low-profile wiper blades are popular because they’re much smaller than traditional blades. They look nicer, and they also don’t hamper visibility as traditional blades sometimes can. One drawback of low-profile blades, though, is that they can potentially behave like wings and fly away from the windshield if they’re used during high-speed driving. If that happens, the wipers can’t do their job. The way to prevent that problem is by using spoilers, which deflect the air away from the wipers and ensure consistent contact between the wipers and the glass. If your wipers fly away from the windshield when you use them, don’t try to fix the problem by buying clip-on spoilers. They look ugly, and they also have a nasty habit of flying off during driving. All good low-profile wipers have built-in spoilers. What you really need to do is buy better wiper blades.

Chrome Valve Stem Caps

If there’s one thing that just about every car owner loves, it’s nice-looking wheels. Buying high-end wheels, though, is an investment that not everyone can afford. One enhancement for your wheels that you definitely can afford is chrome valve stem caps. They’re inexpensive, and they screw on in minutes. They’ll instantly upgrade the appearance of your car’s wheels.

So, why are chrome valve stem caps a car fashion fail? It’s not because they don’t look good – it’s because they’re magnets for theft. Just as it only takes a minute to install them, it also takes a minute to remove them – and that’s exactly what’ll happen as soon as you park your car in a lot that doesn’t have adequate surveillance.

Locking valve stem caps do exist, and they can potentially deter theft since they’re more difficult to remove than standard caps. The fact that they’re difficult to remove, though, will ultimately become a major annoyance for you every time you try to add air to your tires. Save yourself the headache and stick with your car’s original plastic caps.

Self-Installed Window Tint

Just about everyone agrees that tinted car windows look great, and tinting your car’s windows doesn’t just make for an effective fashion statement. Window tint can potentially keep your car’s interior a bit cooler on hot days, and it can also preserve the condition of your car’s upholstery and dashboard by preventing some of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation from entering your vehicle. This is a case, though, where you are definitely going to be happiest if you leave the work to professionals.

Installing your own window tint might seem like a tempting option on the surface because you can potentially save hundreds of dollars. The tinting film, after all, isn’t particularly expensive. When you have your windows professionally tinted, the labor comprises the majority of the price. The problem with installing your own window tint, though, is that it’s a complicated process. It’s easy for things to go horribly wrong if you make a mistake. If you don’t clean your windows properly beforehand, bubbles will end up trapped under the film. If you don’t cut the film properly, there will be gaps where the window has no tint. If you don’t adhere the film properly, it’ll begin to peel. If you’ve never installed tinting film before, the likelihood of one or all of these things happening is extremely high. You’ll be much happier if you let someone else do the work for you.

Spinning Rims

In the late ‘90s and early 2000s, spinning rims were some of the hottest fashion accessories that a car could possibly have. Flashy wheels in general hit their peak during that era, and spinners – wheels with interior sections that continued to spin after the car stopped moving – were easily the flashiest wheels of them all. As popular as spinning rims were at their peak, though, the trend completely died out within about a decade. In 2013, car enthusiast website AutoBlog visited a local wheel shop with hundreds of wheels on display, and the store’s inventory included no spinners at all.

Truck Nuts

If you’ve ever been stopped at a red light behind a Ford F-150 with bumper stickers supporting a certain orange-skinned former president, you’re already aware of what we’re talking about when we discuss “truck nuts.” If you haven’t seen them before, though, allow us to enlighten you. At some point, someone got the bright idea of manufacturing sets of giant rubber testicles designed to attach to the towing hitches of pickup trucks – and in an affront to all decency, thousands of people actually bought them. Truck nuts peaked in popularity during the 2000s and quickly tailed off from there as people began to realize how tasteless and crass they were.

If you’re a truck owner and are looking for something to attach to the towing hitch that might be appealing to members of the opposite sex, the accessory that you’re looking for is a trailer with a boat on it. Skip the rubber testicles.