Being a car enthusiast in today's day and age is tough. The shoestring budget most people are living on makes it unrealistic to drive anything remotely high-performance on a regular basis.
Luckily, we are also living in an age when there's no shortage of ways to make anything go fast – even with limited funds. Many methods are model-specific and you’ll need to research your platform to get the most out of them, so the serious enthusiasts have some work ahead of them.
That doesn't mean there aren't some universal cheap performance mods all vehicles will benefit from, though. We've rounded up what we feel are the 7 best budget-friendly upgrades you need to consider if you're looking to squeeze more performance out of your daily driver.
Weight Reduction
What's cheaper than free? Nothing. And that's exactly what weight reduction is going to cost you to start. It's a great place to focus your efforts as less weight means a car can more easily accelerate and stop; it can even improve handling. That means you won't need to work quite as hard in other areas to get your vehicle to perform the way you want it to.
You can start your weight-reduction journey by simply removing any cargo that simply doesn't need to go for a ride. If you want to shed some serious pounds, then you can go so far as stripping out any components that aren't used. You can also save up over time for lightweight versions of parts that you do need, like wheels and body panels, to further your efforts as time progresses.
Better Tires
No other mod on this list (or many others) will do more for a vehicle's performance than a good set of tires. A tire's job is to provide traction, which will directly impact launching, handling, and stopping performance. So, if you're serious about making your car perform better, then you can't skip this upgrade.
Look, we know – tires aren’t cheap. The thing is: you have to replace them eventually, so why not spend a little more and upgrade to a performance set that’s sure to vastly improve your daily driver?
Just be aware that a true performance tire is generally designed for summer driving. Going for the most aggressive street legal set will require you to invest in a set of winter tires to switch to when the cold weather rolls in.
High-Flow Air Intake
The popularity of aftermarket intakes isn't on account of some massive scam the public easily falls prey to. Factory air intakes are cheap parts that work just well enough for the car to function. Unless you're driving some specialty vehicle, the stock intake on board is far from optimized for performance.
Upgrading to an aftermarket cold air intake does a few things to boost performance. First, it moves the air filter outside of the engine compartment. This allows colder, more oxygen-dense air to flow into the engine for combustion. Additionally, an upgraded cold air intake creates freer and less interrupted air flow, allowing the entire system to run more efficiently. Best of all, as a performance mod, these parts are cheap and easy to install, making them a perfect fit for this list.
Computer Programmer
Changing an engine's tune is the oldest trick in the book to improve performance. Altering timing and introducing more fuel at the right moment will take a meek and mild engine and give it some serious attitude. Back in the day, it took skill and experience to really make it work.
Things are a little different today. All you need to alter an engine's tune is a computer programmer. It costs a few hundred dollars, plugs into the OBDII port, and you just pick the setting you want to drive around with. It sounds suspiciously simple, but it really does work – and can totally transform your car's behavior.
Higher-Flowing Exhaust
Upgrading your exhaust system is by far the most fun part of this journey. Starting with what we care about for the purposes of this article, aftermarket components allow exhaust gases to flow more freely from the engine. That's good for performance. They can also dramatically change the exhaust note, which, even if they didn't boost horsepower, will make you feel like they did in the driver's seat.
Exhaust upgrades can get expensive. That's especially true when you upgrade everything from headers back. However, even an affordable axle-back system will boost performance a bit, which will stack nicely with everything else we're highlighting today.
Aftermarket Pads and Rotors
Improved stopping power is just as important to boosting performance as bumping up horsepower is. Being able to quickly come to a stop helps you drive with more confidence, in turn giving you the ability to get that much more out of all the performance mods on this list. It's also going to improve safety, which is great for those moments when stacked gains have you driving on edge when you really shouldn't be.
You don't have to run out and buy a big brake kit to get your daily driver to stop a little better, though. Upgrading to aftermarket pads and rotors that lean into high-performance driving is a cheap and effective way to get more out of your factory hardware.
Lower Center of Gravity
A lower center of gravity is universal to improving vehicle performance. It'll improve weight transfer, reduce body roll, and help the car feel more planted and handle better. As long as you don't go too far and slam the car so that it can't drive through the streets without scraping, lowering a car is a perfectly viable mod for daily drivers.
Modifying a vehicle's ride height can get very expensive. Between fully adjustable coilover setups and airbags that let you change ride height on the fly, you can spend thousands of dollars in this territory. However, you don't have to go all out to get the car to sit a little lower. In many cases, specially-built lowering kits featuring shocks, springs, or blocks that will cost no more than a few hundred dollars may be available for your vehicle. They may not have a ton of settings to tinker with, but they will still work wonders.