The Most Stupid Car Options In Existence

Not all optional extras are worth the money. They are a good laugh though!

When speccing out a new car, buyers are often spoilt for choice with a wide range of interesting and colourful options available. Even though 90% of the options available are incredibly useful, there always seems to be a small selection of options that just leave you thinking ‘who’s actually going to pay £2,000 for that?’.

These options are stupid in their price and stupid in their function, with some of them actually totally lacking the latter. Whether they’re just ridiculously overpriced or totally unnecessary, we’re pretty confident that if these options didn’t exist, the world would probably be better for it.

Mercedes-AMG GT63 S – Rear Luxury Lounge Package £3,000

The AMG GT63 S is a real stunner, don’t get us wrong. Stunning shape, stunning interior and you may also find yourself stunned by the price tag on their Rear Luxury Lounge Package. For £3,000, you get two individual rear seats in a 40/40 split formation (meaning you can no longer fold down the middle), fancy cup holders that can keep your drink warm or cool and an infotainment screen with climate control.

You also get AMG lettering on both seats, side rear airbags and wireless charging for rear passengers. What isn’t included in this ‘luxury’ rear seat package? Heated rear seats! For this, you will have to buy the ‘Premium’ or ‘Premium Plus’ models of the GT 63 S 4MATIC.

The Aston Martin Cygnet

The Cygnet is not just an option, but a whole car in itself. That’s right, originally it was only Aston Martin customers that could opt to buy a Cygnet along with their purchase of an Aston Martin. The Cygnet was intended to only be available as an add-on option. A £30,000 add-on option!

For £30,000, customers would be able to enjoy what is actually a reskinned Toyota iQ created mainly to reduce Aston Martin’s average emissions rating. Customers could enjoy a fully-fledged Aston Martin interior as well as Aston Martin’s specialist paint finish, making the Cygnet the poshest Toyota iQ ever made. Unfortunately, the performance wasn’t altered on this overzealous option, with the car still using a 97hp 1.33-litre engine.

In the end, the Cygnet was released as a standalone model, not just an ultra-exclusive, £30,000 option for customers to tick when ordering their new Aston Martin.

Audi A7’s Bang & Olufsen audio upgrade

Audio upgrades are commonplace, especially in luxury cars. However, it is very unusual for a speaker upgrade to cost a whopping £6,300!

Most luxury manufacturers will throw in their Harmon Kardon or Meridian sound systems in with a package that will cost less than half of that eye-watering price. If you think about it, you can buy some of the best Bose surround sound systems available for your living room for half the price of this A7 option. So why would you pay over £6,000 for a car sound system? Just buy some subwoofers on eBay and chuck them in the boot.

Mercedes-AMG GLB 35’s £1,795 paint option

We wrote about the AMG GLB 35 not too long ago and let’s just say, we don’t really rate it. It’s hard to understand why Mercedes decided to give this 7-seater people carrier the AMG treatment in the first place, let alone why it costs £1,795 extra to get it in some fancy exclusive grey paint.

The official name of the paint finish is ‘designo mountain grey magno’ and is exclusive to this particular car. It’s unavailable for the standard GLB models and for any other Mercedes, AMG or not. Mercedes specifically reserved this colour for their least impressive AMG car. Well done Mercedes.

Furthermore, the colour itself isn’t going to go down in history as one of the greatest OEM colours ever is it now? Designo mountain grey magno is just a fancy name for gunmetal grey, you know, the colour of every A-Class you see on the road!

Mini Head-Up Display

Head-up display (HUD) is a fun option and an interesting novelty, for about 5 minutes. After that, you’ll probably just regret spending £1,400 on options just to have something that costs £30 on eBay.

HUD has been around for donkey’s years now, with manufacturers basically giving up on it now as a legitimate feature. Heated seats, heated wing mirrors, blind-spot detection – these are all very popular options with them even being found as standard in some cars. The same will never be said about the HUD because it’s a gimmick. And an expensive one too when buying a Mini!

To unlock the HUD option, you need to also purchase Apple CarPlay, MINI Connected, sat-nav and Visual Boost Radio.

Do you have any optional extras that made you wonder why they exist? Let us know in the comments!