Blake P

I've used just about every idea that's been suggested. The only things that consistently work for me are offering to buy her a gift of similar value (she likes this alot, but it means all mods cost double!) or asking for the mods as a gift (birthday, christmas). I've tried hiding mods in the past and that is too much stress keeping secrets, and definitely not worth getting caught lying. Good luck!

UmIsThisThingOn

This is basically what I was gonna say. Appeal to the bargain shopper in her.
I had a female friend who told me after she spent $300 in one fell swoop
"I had to spend money to save money"

Toecutter

"Woman, go make me a sandwich while I chip the car so I can impress my girlfriend!"

Har.

Blake P

Nice! I imagine that would go over about as well as a fart in church.

Zetetic

I've dealt with this for almost 20 years with the wife! Unfortunately, she is of the mind that a car is just a transportation appliance and she clearly doesn't understand and barely tolerates my life-long enthusiasm for fast European cars. Even though money is not a problem with our dual professional incomes, she's incredibly frugal - She inherited the trait from her parents who had decidedly meager beginnings but made good in the long run. About 10 years ago she had a more demanding position with 12+ hour days as the norm. I followed all the financial statements, did the taxes, etc. and she didn't look at anything. I could get away with any mod on my car that wasn't visually obvious - ECU chip, shocks & springs were easy. I had to talk my way into a wheel & tire upgrade a few years ago but fortunately my previous car had OEM alloys as a precedent. I actually justified the wheels/tires upgrade by purchasing a new Passat without the OEM alloys. Then my aftermarket cost for wheels/tires turned out to be less than the OEM package which was OK with her. However - My wife is now semi-retired and has taken over the whole financial picture at our house so I've had to become more devious. We have one account that has a very complex statement that my wife hates to monitor. She has been handing it off to me for verification and I told her it's easier to monitor on line. She doesn't like to look at this stuff on line so I do it and say the account is all OK every month. The account has a debit card option so I can do just about whatever I want. She may see the balance on the statement but it fluctuates a lot due to automatic deposits and payments. A couple hundred bucks for a mod here and there is a drop in the bucket in the account so it's never noticed.

Toecutter

Yeah, didn't work for me either.

BMWBig6

I tried this with a past girlfriend when I installed a Bassani exhaust system on my Lightning, just to see if she would notice. As soon as I fired it up, she said "I think you better take your truck in for service, it doesn't sound like it's running right." I immediately fessed up.

Blake P

A girlfriend is different though... she can't walk away with half your chit.

LakeShow41

By not getting married in the first place... Ha.

BMWBig6

Agreed, I wouldn't dare try that with a wife. Thankfully I don't have to hide anything from mine.