How to pimp your ride

By Daniel McDermon | amNY.com

April 14, 2006

Want to turn heads on the street without buying a brand-new vehicle? Consult one of the city's custom car commandos to trick out your old ride.

Be prepared to spend some serious cash if you want the full "Pimp My Ride" treatment. Adding some razzle-dazzle to your run-down beater can be as cheap as $100 for professional window tinting or a few hundred more to add an aftermarket alarm system. If you want to really stand out from the Saturday-night cruisers on the West Side Highway, though, the sky's the limit.

At Auto Sports, a custom shop on Webster Avenue in the Bronx, drivers drop in for all sorts of flashy options: 26-inch alloy wheels, folding flatscreen TVs, or audio systems that fill the entire backseat and cargo area of an SUV. For the whole package, you could shell out as much as $45,000.

One of the shop's latest projects, a 2007 Escalade, features a stereo system with two enormous sub-woofers filling the rear compartment, making it one of the loudest vehicles in the city, according to Auto Sports owner Malek Aljayyoussi. At full blast, he says, it could kick out 180 decibels, enough to break the vehicle's windows, and more than enough to permanently damage your hearing.

If you do spring for a deluxe sound system, you ought to be careful about pumping up the volume. City noise laws permit police officers to issue tickets and summonses to vehicles emitting excessive noise that is "plainly audible" above the rest of the city's din.