Cargo Cult Car Stop Cult

I don't know exactly when the red caliper thing started. Italian brake manufacturer Brembo was an OEM supplier to a lot of companies dating way back before brightly colored calipers were a thing.

Late Eighties and early Nineties supercars may have had Brembo brakes, but the calipers were fairly normal colors: black, gray, metallic, whatever. Some were finished in a gold color. It was hard to tell, though, because wheels were 17" and smaller and also tended to have a more "aero" appearance; a flat disc with fewer, smaller holes.

While I don't know who Patient Zero in the Red Plague was, I do know that by the close of the Millennium, as larger wheels with spindlier spokes left more of the braking system in view, racy cars started getting brightly-colored calipers, most often in red.

This, of course, led to goobers spray-painting calipers with high-temperature engine paint, a "performance enhancement" along the lines of a fat exhaust tip and a J.C. Whitney decklid wing.

Possibly my favorite example of this was the dude I saw in the Meijer parking lot who had rattlecanned the rear drums on his early '90s Toyota Corolla red.

I hadn't given it a lot of thought, assuming the fad would kind of reach peak silly with spray paint, but I was wrong.

The other day I spotted what I initially thought was a pretty trick Volkswagen Golf GTI in the parking lot at the Preston Safeway.

As I was processing the RAW files in P-shop, I first noticed that it wasn't a GTI. The calipers looked unusual, too. I zoomed in to read the lettering on them...

"MGP? I've never heard of a brake manufacturer with that name..."

Which was because MGP doesn't make brakes; they make anodized aluminum bolt-on caliper covers. They sell them on Amazon and they ain't cheap.

I guess they must add more horsepower than a spray can of engine paint. They'd sure better, for that price, at least.