e all have to start somewhere with cars and there wouldn’t be many of us that have peformed modifications to vehicles that we later come to regret for reasons of taste, engineering quality or just youthful stupidity.

Here are just a few from the SM team. Confess your own sins in the comments below.

• Shawn McCann, photographer: I had UV neons on my Calais turbo
• Kian Heagney, journalist: I painted Shelby racing stripes on an Excel. In fairness, it was a genuine race car
• Scott Taylor, Carnage: I needed sheet metal to fix the rust on a Valiant so I cut a hole in the middle of the bonnet to get the metal I needed. And just drove around with a hole in the bonnet for months.
• Shawn McCann, photgrapher: My first car was an XD Falcon te and I put XR6 badges on it to gain 23hp. It bumped the total horsepower to 29hp.
• Matt Hull, videographer: On my old Celica I did have those chrome washer nozzles that were LEDs, that was a bad one.
• Tas McMillan, journalist: My first car was mum’s 1986 Triton. I cut holes in the C pillars to fit 6x9s. And I’m pretty sure I butchered or removed the locating pins through the leaf springs when I fitted lowering blocks.