One of the most widely agreed crimes of car modification is to write checks with styling that your performance can’t match. Big wings on Honda Civics, lift kits on HD duallies, it’s all the same: embarrassing. And with 495 horsepower, you’d think C8 Chevrolet Corvette owners would be above such frivolity. But it seems they’re just as tacky as generations of car show placard-toting Corvette owners before them, because they seem to be going wild for fake velocity stacks.
This tragic trend came to my attention via a Facebook Marketplace listing for a C8 engine cover, which some Florida Man has tried to make look like a set of stacks. Velocity stacks are the trumpet-shaped arrays of tubes often seen atop high-performance naturally aspirated engines, and they’re typically paired with a set of independent throttle bodies. Tuned to the engines they’re used on, they not only improve throttle response but take advantage of air pulses to achieve an almost forced induction-like power increase. They sound phenomenal too, so it’s understandable why someone would want ITBs and stacks on their car. Or at least, to look like they have them.
But it’s not a mod I see as being worth faking, especially when the result looks so shoddy. In the listing above, someone took what looks like an engine cover made from a flattened Nerf gun and slapped on a set of four dual exhaust tips. They don’t have the flared openings of real stacks; they look more like open headers than anything. Folks, we have finally found the participation trophy of NA performance—which was presumably sold to someone who complains about participation trophies in Facebook rants.
That’s right—that monstrosity sold, and for probably not much less than the $950 list price. There seems to be real demand for these too, because I found no less than three other fake ITB engine covers for sale online. Two are manufactured by a company called March Performance, whose “retro style stacked injection engine cover[s]” are sold through sites like C6Performance.net and C8Motorsports.com (which appear to be owned by the same business).
Both styles are CNC-machined from aluminum and trimmed in stainless steel mesh or carbon fiber. One looks kinda like a fake carburetor air cleaner, while the other looks like it’s plumbed to an intake manifold that shrunk in the wash. It’s like an AI-generated picture of an engine brought to life. I’ll tell you what, I could make a buffoon of myself at a car show for free, I don’t need to pay the $995 to $1,495 they’re asking.
As if it couldn’t get worse, I found one last example on eBay. These stainless steel isn’t-ependent throttle bodies are straight-up taped to the engine cover, just like those AutoZone stick-on vents that were all the rage in 2004. The seller says the mod “draws crowds,” but probably not the kind you want.
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