Driving on the freeway yesterday, I noticed that a lot of new japanese cars have mud guards on them; these plastic flaps really ruin the look of the car, i'm not sure what the heck they protect in the first place, if you drive on dirty roads, your car is gonna get dirty with or without mud guards. Have you noticed that BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, and Audi never have mud guards on them, why do Japanese manufacturers offer them ? I also noticed that every freaking Acura TL have these ugly things on them. Did I mention that they're really ugly. I'm not sure why I'm writing this post, but I just wanted to share my feelings about mud guards, not that anyone cares.

 

you mean like the girlie mud flaps you see on semi-trailers? j/k yeah mud flaps are pretty tacky, ugly, stupid looking.... of course I have mud flaps.....

 

Them're fightin' words!

My Maxima came without the splash / mud guards, but since my car color is Icelandic Pearl, I wanted the unpainted (black) guards to break up the color down there a little bit.

At first, I didn't like them either, but the more I saw a few Maximas with them, the more they grew on me. So I bought the set and put them on myself.

They actually work to some degree. Once, either my girlfriend or myself drove over this spot that had this sticky paint substance over it. The inside part of the front splash guards were covered with the white junk and some of it got onto the front doors. I'm sure that without the guards there, more stuff would have gotten onto the lower front parts of the doors.

 

Yeah I got them too, but mine are body matching.

 

Yes and I disagree

 

Well, where I'm from they actually put gravel on the roads in the winter. Have you ever had your rockers sand blasted?

 

Color coded ones are the worst

I took mine off a couple weeks ago.

 

I've had the black ones on my '96 Maxima and my '00 Altima and have always hated them, but ... welll ... they were there already and I figured I'd save my rocker panel paint from chips so what the hey.

But now I have the painted (body-color) guards on my '02 Maxima and I think they look good! They're the next best thing to a full kit with enormous side skirts or something. It fills out the body form more down there rather than it just curving under and looking all wimpy.