To a certain contingent of car collectors, no modification must ever darken the doorsill of an older vehicle. Everything must remain just as it was when the car left the factory, either by means of preservation or restoration, with absolute trust in the designers and engineers and assembly-line workers who had a hand in that car's creation. Any modification, even the slightest one, makes that vehicle no longer pure or a perfect representation of the vision and the hard work that went into it.

On the other hand, no car is perfect. Cars - like every other consumer product - emerge from years-long series of design compromises and if that process works as it should, nobody really gets everything they want out of the final product. In addition, those of us who can't afford to just mount a car to the wall like artwork have to live with those compromises and quirks every time we get behind the wheel. Thus, who can really blame anybody for tweaking our cars to suit our needs rather than tweaking our needs to suit our cars?

Sometimes, the reward-to-effort ratio behind those modifications makes you wonder just why anybody - even the most dedicated purist - would pass on those tweaks. Take, for instance, the headlamp switches of the first-generation Chrysler LX-chassis cars like my daily driver 2005 Dodge Magnum. Unlike the Chrysler 300, the early LX Chargers and Magnums didn't get automatic headlamps, one of those modern niceties I'd gotten used to on my Jeep ZJ Grand Cherokee. I'd considered replacing my Magnum's headlamp switch with one from a 300 to get that feature, but in the end I didn't need to spend the $35 for a new switch. Instead, all I had to do was some minor surgery on my existing switch.

Keep reading...