OK, so some people like to modify their cars. Useless spoilers/wings in the back because you can pretend you are driving a Formula 1 car. Flashy paint jobs to make a personal statement. Noisy exhausts to make it sound like you have a noisy exhaust. All pretty valid attention-getting devices.
But why do people put an extreme negative camber on the wheels? It eats up the tires so much faster, and god-knows-what-else it does to the steering and stability of the car compared to what the engineers intended. It doesn’t even look cool; IMHO it looks downright stupid.
This must be a regional style thing. I’ve never seen noticeable negative camber (compared to what I just found online) around here (northeast US). If I saw that, I would assume that they had a broken axle or something.
Just from seeing the various car gathering photos that show up in my instagram feed, I don’t think the NE is immune to to this trend. You tend not to see the more extreme examples on the road though as they don’t navigate the real world well. Gotta hit the shows, go where the kids go.
I’m not a fan of the trend, but I am not the target audience either. It’s no worse than what my peers were doing in the 90s with the small diameter wheels that stuck out from the side of the car several inches or more.
It might not matter, though. I own a classic roadster, a lot of them are garage queens, logging only hundreds of miles per year. Many of the lower mileage cars are getting new rubber based on age, not wear as even before they dry rot the rubber stiffens up & loses handling ability. If the car in question is a show car or a boulevard cruiser does it really matter how fast the tires wear if you’re not going to keep them until they wear?
OTOH, the ones that look like beat-up daily drivers on a NYC interstate? I agree that it’s pretty stupid.