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Car parts superstore

Blow Off Autoworks

The Radworth Ringway, by the Thornyholt Roundabout

Inside a bright car parts superstore: yellow signs hang from the black ceiling reading EXHAUSTS, SPOILERS, LIGHTING and SUSPENSION over aisles of boxed parts, with a yellow car on a plinth at the front window.

Blow Off Autoworks is the car parts superstore on the Ringway, right next door to Cutshaw & Shutt, which is handy, because a car off Gary’s forecourt usually needs something. A long grey shed with a black and gold fascia, a car park out front, and a totem on the verge that gives the passing traffic the whole menu: EXHAUSTS, SPOILERS, ALLOYS, NEON, PAINT.

Inside it is bright, and the aisles are signposted from the ceiling: EXHAUSTS, SPOILERS, LIGHTING, SUSPENSION, STICKERS & TINT, WHEELS and PAINT. There are five hundred and sixty boxes on the shelves, each with a price sticker and a promise on the end, FITS MOST CARS*, with the asterisk explained underneath: *NOT YOURS. The display walls show the goods out of the box: back boxes and tailpipes, lip spoilers and rally wings, towers of alloys.

An aisle of yellow-edged shelving stacked with boxed car parts: blue boxes on one side, black-and-yellow STIK IT window sticker packs with price stickers on the other, and a STICKERS & TINT sign hanging at the far end.
The sticker aisle. Prices on every box.

The brands are all the shop’s own sort. A Throbbo sports back box is £89.99, and the Throbbo Race straight-through system £219.99. A Wingnut boot lip spoiler is £49.99, the Wingnut GT rally wing £129.99. There are Glowfish neon underbody kits at £69.99, Slammd lowering springs at £149.99, Rimshot chrome alloys one size up at £349.99 the set, Darkside limo tint at £34.99 and a Stik It window sticker pack for £9.99. And the part the shop is named after: the Pssshh blow-off valve kit, £39.99.

In the front window a Tiddler sits on a plinth, done up in yellow on a set of alloys, to give you ideas. It works.

A small yellow hatchback on a pale wooden plinth inside the shop, shelves of boxed parts and a slat wall behind it.
The show car in the front window.

Kyle is the mechanic. Park outside, have a word, and he opens up the options: exhausts, spoilers, wheels, lowering, underglow in blue, green, purple, pink or white, tint, stickers, the blow-off valve, and a respray in any of twenty-six colours off the Splodge chart by the tills. While you choose, a copy of your own car sits inside the shop wearing each option as you pick it. Pay at the till and it is fitted there and then, for good, with his time charged at thirty pounds an hour. Or carry the box home and fit it on your own drive, if you trust yourself with a spring compressor. The cheap parts are the ones that go wrong.

The tills: a long yellow and grey counter under a red TILLS sign, with racks of alloy wheels and tyres behind under a WHEELS sign, and a SPLODGE colour chart on the wall under a PAINT sign.
The tills, the wheels, and the Splodge chart for picking your colour.

One word of warning from the shop floor: a dark tint and a glowing underside get you noticed, and not only by the lads outside the chippy. The police take an interest, and there are number plate cameras on the main roads.

If you came looking for a car customisation game set in the UK, this is the Max Power end of it. The shop is named after the blow-off valve, the first part on my list, and yes, it goes pssshh.

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