The Volvo XC60 is compact crossover at its finest.

This oeuvre-on-wheels may be sharing a niche currently dominated by impressive entries from big guns like BMW (BMW X3), Land Rover (Land Rover LR2), Acura (Acura RDX), and Infiniti (EX35), but, being a flagship product of the Swedish company’s thrust to enhance the design DNA of its cars and being billed as the “safest Volvo ever,” it can surely outshine its earlier counterparts.

According to Volvo, the car is packed with “more emotive form and more energy” compared to all the other cars it has manufactured through the years. Volvo Cars Design Director Steve Mattin further claimed that “if you say that you’d recognize a Volvo from a hundred meters away today, I dare say the XC60 radiates a clear Volvo presence from at least twice that distance.”

But there is something more interesting than the luster—the XC60 is available in metallic finishes: electric silver, black sapphire, barents blue, maple red, to name some—catching the eyes of people from this “double-distance” Mattin is talking about. The XC60 is offered with drivers having a say on what engine will run their XC60s: it can either be the turbocharged T6, which produces 285 horsepower, or two variants of the D5 turbodiesel—for Europe—yielding 185 and 163 horsepower respectively. All Wheel Drive (AWD) is fitted as standard.

The XC60 also features a revolutionary braking technology called “City Safety,” which enables the car to automatically brake whenever the car is about to drive into something—a wall, another car—and the driver is not able to respond. This is done via built-in cameras and sensors that can detect imminent impacts.

“We are the first manufacturer in the world to offer this type of feature as standard. City Safety clearly advertises that the new XC60 is the safest car Volvo has ever produced,” Volvo CEO Fredrik Arp said. “The car is packed with our accumulated safety know-how and technology, both when it comes to preventing accidents and protecting all the occupants in a collision.”

Aside from these special attributes, the XC60 does not leave out other staples of a dream comfort car. It has standard Bluetooth connectivity, HD Radio, Sirius Satellite Radio, USB and auxiliary inputs for audio players, power front seats, roof rails, and even a large moonroof.

For customization whiz Beau Boeckmann, the trick isn’t about setting one’s vision faraway in the future nor is it about whipping up creations based on popular, up-to-date inspirations. Actually, for him, it’s exactly the opposite: going back to the roots and creating a niche in grounds airier and less explored.

Scythe, a customized GT Convertible 2008 Ford Mustang from the Galpin Auto Sports (GAS), gives us a peek on things to come for car customization. “With Scythe, we set out to showcase all of our unique fabrication abilities,” GAS President Beau Boeckmann said.

And this twist—which entails eponymously changing the spelling of a term that once revolutionized the autosphere and tinkering with motorist eye-candies like the 2008 GT Convertible Ford Mustang—paid off, particularly substantiated when Galpin Auto Sports, Boeckmann’s California-based shop, gained prominence courtesy of two seasons worth of exposure in MTV’s Pimp My Ride.

One of Boeckmann’s more famous creations is a tricked-out GT Convertible Mustang dubbed as Scythe. With its edgy structure and sleek finish, this 1960s-inspired purple wonder-on-wheels, which he considers a Kustom Kar, not a custom car, shockingly resembles the Batmobile. It serves as a solid testimony to Boeckmann’s brilliant penchant for finding inspiration in the likes of George Barris, designer of Bruce Wayne’s most famous vehicle, rather than those road-ragers featured in movies billed under the banner of The Fast and the Furious.

The “Galpinized” GT Convertible Mustang may not look as if it’s a Mustang since, as a blogger puts it, Boeckmann’s team “went completely nuts on it.” It boasts of a hand-made composite body, voice control (a talking onboard computer), and, props to drive-by-wire technology, dual retractable steering wheels. Scythe is powered by a twin-supercharged 1,005 horsepower engine.

The super-enhanced 2008 Ford Mustang GT Convertible is just one of Boeckmann’s many Kustom Kars. With a genius like him continuously shaping the face of Kustom Kulture, auto aficionados and the rest of the industry are given a treat to an avant-garde presentation of cars that isn’t just a result of an urge to be pompous and loud but is also deeply rooted on a principle that should always be considered when customizing a car: functionality.

So we already had a preview of sorts of how cars will look like if modeled after bats. Now how about patterning a four-wheeler after a, um, fish? Crazy thought, huh? But then the people in Mercedes managed to make the idea swim rather than sink.

For the record, the Mercedes-Benz Bionic Car is inspired by a boxfish. Thanks to the animal’s boxy frame, this Benz enjoys increased strength and stability (but, like the boxfish, is also lightweight). Also, and more importantly, it has enhanced aerodynamics and can achieve speeds of up to 118 miles an hour! Meanwhile, in terms of fuel economy, it boasts of a 70-miles-a-gallon rate.

To top everything else, the Mercedes-Benz Bionic Car is a car friendly to the environment as it decreases its emissions by up to 80%.

So you’re thinking about changing that muffler of yours eh? Well, that’s a good start. Not only will your vehicle get a more masculine sound, upgrading to custom made performance exhaust mufflers (whew!) would also boost your horsepower up to 20hp. In any case, it’s hitting two birds with one stone. But before you think about searching the almighty web for a custom exhaust muffler that has a healthy balance between price and performance, let’s delve into the puff puff pass (no, not that) world of the muffler.

Alright, as a kid I thought that mufflers were only a huge chunk of metal where the car coughs out all its gas exhaust. Upon maturation, and a couple of armpit hair or two, I didn’t know that it acted like a gun’s silencer. That it actually silenced the sound of the exhaust. Hell, that’s why it’s called a muffler anyway. But then again, that’s what happens if you had ADHD as a child. But I digress.

Anyway, mufflers are used to-yes, you guessed it-to muffle the sound coming from your engine’s exhaust. If a car didn’t have any mufflers, then the world would be much more of a noisy place. In any case, exhaust passes through one side of the muffler and then bounces off the other, then passes through the exhaust head, thus displacing sound in the process.

That’s why some individuals customize their cars with performance exhaust mufflers. These mufflers provide better exhaust travel as well as give that roaring sound. So if you’re planning to upgrade that muffler of yours, be sure to check the quality of those parts and get them from trusted brands only.

Okay, this’ll get a bit technical. But I’ll try to make it a lot easy for you. You see, your engine is one hell of a mobile powerplant. In order for your car to move, the engine lets out small and controlled explosions within its cylinders thus making its pistons pump. These explosions caused by your engine are made by injecting fuel and air inside these cylinders and then ignited by your spark plug. These explosions “pump” those pistons inside the cylinders which then causes energy and so on and so forth.

I know there are a lot of gaps here and there but the main point here is the explosions that your engine makes. For that explosion to happen, a delicate balance of fuel and air must be present within your engine’s cylinders. And so, that means air plays a very vital role when it comes to engine performance.

Yes, it’s true that the quality of gasoline affects your car, but most daily drivers don’t know that their car needs to “breathe” clean air too. If dirt or dust gets inside your engine’s cylinders, there’s a good chance that the explosions that your engine makes would be of inferior detonation. To add to that, your car only uses 30% of that detonation’s power, the other 70% only becomes exhaust. So would you like that 30% of energy be lessened further?

That is why most people enhance their engine’s performance by customizing their car’s air intake systems. This way, you can upgrade the quality of air that comes inside your vehicle. That’s what happens if you add a custom cold air intake filter to your car. You see, air that has a low temperature is denser than warm air. And denser air means better burn. And with that at hand, your engine burns fuel more efficiently.

Changing your cold air intake could boost your car’s horsepower up to 15hp. It’s a significant improvement since your engine would take a lot less effort in pushing your car forward. However, be sure to get street legal air intakes so you wouldn’t get pulled over by your local law enforcement people.

Another way of upgrading your air intake system is by getting better air intake filters. You see, this is more of a maintenance issue, since a new air intake filter will do a better job blocking small granules of dirt from passing into your engine. So always keep that air filter in great shape.

So that’s the low-down on where you could start upgrading your car’s performance. We’ll tackle more on upgrading exhaust mufflers, suspension systems, electronics, and the braking system on the next couple of issues. As for now, go check that air filter of yours!