What percentage of your cars VALUE would you spend on Modding it?

[Tumble]

I'll probably spend the 3.5k i used buying mine to fix it after I break it It already needs new wheels (£126) possibly A new tyre (£114), rewiring (muddy puddle) and the doors are about to fall off. It's already had the £300 suspension lift kit and custom rollcage fitted.

[Skii]

very little

Possibly lower it and some RS4s would be nice. Nothing more.

[Stu]

£3.3K to buy it

Only cosmetic mods it need is lowering... bout 40mm.

Maybe exhaust and induction pie... bout it.

Whats that, about £500

[THCi]

Ill probably do nowt to mine, when I get it. Maybe just some cosmetic. But nowt like spoilers, etc. Would be a waste of time IMHO really.

If Im gonna be spending £500 on a car, then spend another £1500 on it, I might as well have saved up £2000 in the first place!

[fondie]

I'd mod a car if it were special and i thought modding it would give me a better car than if i just bought a more expensive one. Say, i might spend money on an evo or the like, because for the money i might spend on it i'm not sure whether there would be an equivalent better car available, and i'd only mod a car to make it faster

I've got a 1.2 16v Corsa at the moment and i woudn't spend a penny on modding it!

[Moby-Dick]

I spent 2K on buying the 200sx - it had most of the mods already done to it - all I'm imprving is on the handling & drivability side - ie. quickshift, rear strut brace , uprated subframe bushes , LSD ( with a few little toys like a turbo timer ). Then its just time to fit the stereo and change the seats for leather and I'm good to go. If I feel that further down the line I can get more power without spending a shedload ( uprated AFM & Injectors + re-mapped chip is usually good for the magic 300bhp figure )

Thats one reason why I bought the 200 - it has a good range of "bolt-on" goodies that dont require you to spend the earth.

[Vimeous]

Well my motor is worth about £4000 now and I can't afford to mod it. If I was going to I'd leave the looks, I'm a wolf-in-sheeps-clothing kinda guy, and alter the things that really matter to me and the way it drives.
I'd give improved discs and pads a serious look but only if they don't require an age to warm up. That would make them next to useless for short distance road use. £500-600max
Slightly stiffer springs would be there with adjustable shocks so I can keep 90% of the cars ride while being able to tie it down nicely for trackday use.
Minor air-filter and exhaust mods might also be nice.

However the biggest cash outlay would be tyres. If only Pirelli did P-Zero Rosso's for my car! Expensive and grippy usually means soft. Trackdays and soft mean multiple sets of.

Ultimately there is no point in having a flashy car and not using it. I abhor drivers with 300bhp under their right foot and 30mph on the dash. Because I really want to become a track-day regular I'd be best changing my car for something designed for the job or at least better equipped. My Civic just doesn't have the torque needed and getting it would be an under the bonnet job with a wad of cash and reduced engine life expectancy.

It's horses for courses, choose your mount carefully and you can spend more time enjoying driving it rather than caked in oily-black gunk!

[RocketmanX]

I think your question is more for the "Tinkerer" than for the "Enthusiast" or Modder.
The question of balance between price/insurance/performance is a question "tinkerers" would ask themselves.

A serious enthusiast or hot rodder would never take that into consideration and would proll'y not care about only what he could afford to buy initaly and the upgradability of said car. He would then spend WAY too much on it in the way of mods. Much as hte Escort list shows above
A true enthusiast won't care how good his car is to begin with either, wether great or just good, because after several weeks of driving that "itch" to modify will come over him and the cash starts to flow like a river into the bottomless abyss

So, my point is, thatr question is probably only gonna get a true answer from the timkers and all the enthusiasts would be either lying or bragging about how much they're gonna spend

I myself just spent 1000 dollars on an addon ecm for a new truck and will spend about 5000 more on other mods this year such as a lift kit from Fab Tech and a dual stainless exhaust and possibly some turbo tweaking. I spent 4000 on tires, spray in bedliner, and step bars and other little goodies right after I took delivery of it new.
I would say I'm willing to spend about 1/4 (10000) of the trucks inital cost to do mods but anything more and I may as well forget about ever selling it (which I don't plan on) and the cost of those items is nill when reselling. IF I hit the lottery though I would build a totally custom truck from it thta would exceed the initial cost by at least double But I ain't rich, yet