Let me be clear here: I’m talking about the “hellaflush movement” in car culture, not about Fatlace. Fatlace is design studio that’s also one of the most respectable car/footwear/urban/”street” resources on the internet, and they absolutely have my respect for that. They actually cover all kinds of fun stuff, but this post isn’t about Fatlace. It’s about the mindset that has evolved under their loving care, and has since run amok and become its own term. If you aren’t already familiar with Fatlace, check them out.
Depending on where you’re from, you may know this movement as Stanceworks, but I’m going to keep calling it Hellaflush because that term pretty much sums up everything I dislike about it.
First, let’s start with the etymology of the word.
Hella
The word “hella” is an adjective. It supposedly originated in the San Francisco Bay Area, and judging by the overuse I see every day, I’m inclined to agree with that. It can mean anything from “very” to “lots of” (this car has hella power, this car is hella powerful) and is sometimes even an adverb (he’s hella runnin’ from the cops!). In my native tongue (Boston-language) we’d overuse “wicked” in place of “hella”, and we often do.
Flush
Flush generally refers to the fitment of wheels and tires with the chassis and fender flares. The closer the wheels are to being flush with the bodywork, the more “hellaflush” that car is. This generally requires an obscene amount of camber combined with a stretched tire, which changes the angle of the sidewall of the tire.
Bonus
There are a few ways to score extra points in the hellaflush world.
- Get your car as close to flush with the ground as possible
- Increase the backspacing of your wheels. More.
- Stretch the narrowest tires possible on the widest wheels (don’t forget your backspacing!) possible.
- Shave door handles, trunk latches, keyholes, gas tank covers, and everything else that keeps the body of the car from being “flush”.
- Try to tuck your entire wheel and tire into the wheelwells. Ideally, it should all be shoved up where nobody can see it.
Why it’s hella dumb
Cars are made to be driven. They’re transportation. Hellaflush is solely cosmetic, at great expense to driveability. Hellaflush cars look interesting and aggressive when they’re parked, but it’s a facade. They aren’t aggressive. They aren’t allowed on self-respecting racetracks, have troubles on the highway, and if your driveway is graded, they’ll park on the street.
Essentially, I see the hellaflush movement as a direct replacement for the show car movement. Both are idiotic in the same, undriveable, RICE ways.
How to do it right
The early 1960′s model of Ford Falcon came out of the factory hellaflush’d. It looked mean and the suspension geometry wasn’t intentionally wrong. With a little more work, the bumpsteer can be removed and camber curve cleaned up without modifying static camber. I hope to have a new image to update this with (new, wider wheels are on the falcon), but for now this snapshot from when I was doing body work on it should suffice. This was a great chance for me to brush up on some body work, since my cars always seem to miss out on cosmetic love (I’ll help a friend out from time to time though).
Why you suck:
1.- You feel the need to hate and criticize something you don’t understand.
2.- You’re a hypocrite, because if you were concerned purely on the functional, you’d just drive a stock, current model corolla. Your “need for speed” is just as frivolous, unnecessary, superficial, and impractical, as these peoples “need to look good”.
3.-It’s just a hobby, it’s supposed to be fun, calling it “dumb”, when quite obviously these people are well versed in fitment, camber, offsets, tire sizes, suspension geometries, etc., is missing the point, these people know that it’s not practical, for petes sake one of the major groups is called “wrong fitment crew”, and another ones slogan is “form>function”, but that’s how they enjoy their cars, and they know damned well what they’re doing.
4.-You probably say it’s just a fad, and you’re probably right, but so what!? isn’t everything!? My current car isn’t “flush” it’s set up for trackdays, but before that I was really into drifting, and before that I was really into drag racing, and before that I was REALLY into classic cars, tastes evolve, even though I’m not currently “flush”, I can still admire the hard work put into some of those cars, and if i could have a second ride, I’d probably build a nice “Hellaflush” style car in a heartbeat and drive it every friggin’ day!
5.-You’re so closed minded that you’ll probably just disregard this comment.
Yeah… Karmann just won, by like… hella
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Nice comment Karmann! You certainly have the right idea here. No need to hate on these guys. I drive my Corrado daily and don’t have the hella flush stance but I can appreciate how it looks. I also appreciate how my car handles in the corners too.
Flush is fine. The OEs used to be silly about having the outer sidewall WAY inboard of the fender lip. IMO, that looks bad. The car enthusiasts would modify by putting the outer sidewall “flush” with the fender lip. Not by using a skinny tire on a wide rim, but by widening the rim and using a tire in the recommended width for that wheel width.
The problem becomes one of steering and suspension geometry. If you don’t modify it to have the kingpin inclination axis hit the ground at the center width of the tire contact patch, you create a moment arm that will try to steer the wheel. So the geometry must be correct or you get an ill-handling car.
It’s stuff like that will make the hellaflushed car handle like crap if its not done right – which means a good bit of suspension/steering mods done at the same time.
But you can’t expect the typical car person to understand that. What the typical car person goes after first is usually looks. And just like slamming a car without keeping a decent amount of bump travel is unsafe, so can be hellaflushing if you just slap wheels,spacers,tires on it to make it look hella flush without considering all the PERFORMANCE and safety problems that are created if it’s not done correctly.
Please continue the discussion here