Frunk Off! 5 Worst Automotive Upcharges for Features That Should Be Standard

You’re not imagining it: nearly everything about buying a new vehicle has become more expensive. As prices climb higher and higher, chances are you’ll come across one or two indignities on a car’s order sheet that make you raise an eyebrow as you ask, “I have to pay extra for that?”

Just because the cost of a new car has gone up doesn’t mean you’re getting more for your money. In fact, the opposite is occasionally true, where features and equipment that used to be taken for granted as standard now require you to hand over even more cash or go without.

Here are five of the most frustrating automotive upcharges for features that should be standard equipment.

The Frunk

Many electric vehicle designs feature dead space under the hood where an internal combustion engine would traditionally sit. Designers often put this to good use by installing a “frunk” or front trunk, a cargo compartment that adds an extra degree of practicality to EVs that you just can’t get in a gas-powered automobile (outside of a few mid-engine or rear-engine sports cars).

It might surprise you to learn that at least one automaker has decided to monetize the frunk by removing it from the list of standard features on one of its most popular electric models. Starting in 2026, anyone who wants to stuff their luggage under the hood of the Ford Mustang Mach-E will have to pay extra; it’s now listed as a $645 option on the SUV’s online configuration tool.

Ford’s argument is that so few of its owners were actually using the frunk that it shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill for a feature only a handful of customers actually want. While this logic might make sense to executives counting every bean at corporate headquarters, it certainly comes across as stingy to make Mach-E owners now pay extra for something that has been free from the start of the Mustang EV’s existence (and that no other automaker charges for, either).

Spare Tires

Getting a flat sucks, but if you’ve got a spare tire in the trunk (or tucked under the chassis in trucks and SUVs), you’ve got a fair chance of getting home without having to call a tow truck.

That spare tire safety net has increasingly evaporated over the past decade, however, as automakers eliminate the spare from the standard feature list for a variety of reasons. In some cases, it’s to save weight, as every pound counts when it comes to boosting fuel efficiency. For other models, the space where the spare tire used to be is now taken up by a hybrid or EV battery. The increased use of run-flat tires also pushed the spare to the sidelines, allowing car companies to claim they hadn’t compromised safety by eliminating this once standard feature.

Still, there are cases where eliminating the spare tire is a pure cost-cutting move. While you might luck out and discover an inflator kit with some goo to temporarily patch a puncture in its place, that’s only going to work for certain types of tire damage, not sidewall tears or big blowouts.

How common is the lack of spare? Consumer Reports states that less than 10 per cent of new cars it tests offer a full size replacement tire, while just under half come with a space saver. That leaves more than half of the market forcing you to cough up extra cash to purchase an add-on spare tire kit at the dealership if you want more than the bare minimum of protection from being stranded.

HomeLink Garage Door Openers

HomeLink has been a near-universal standard for remote garage door controls for nearly two decades, and as a result, it’s been included free of charge on many new cars, trucks, and SUVs since the mid-2000s.

Unfortunately, this trend has started to shift. Whereas once HomeLink controls were easily found on either the sun visor or rearview mirror on vehicles starting at the mid-trim level, nowadays, that feature is being bundled as a cost option for a growing number of automakers. Some car companies only include it if you pay extra for features like a self-dimming mirror (which includes the necessary HomeLink hardware), or force customers to purchase it as an aftermarket product to be installed by the dealer.

Some brands have even shifted from HomeLink entirely and require owners to sign up for a software subscription that adds remote garage door functionality to their infotainment screen.

Paint Colours

We’re talking about actual colours here, not the whites, greys, and blacks that have become the most common shades of automotive paint on the market. Whereas choosing something different than what you’d typically find at the rental counter was once simply a box to check on the order sheet, these days, you’ll likely have to pay more for the privilege of standing out from the crowd.

Want to rock Mazda’s Soul Red Crystal Metallic? That’ll be $500. What about Riptide Blue Metallic on a Chevrolet Silverado? $395, please. Soultronic Orange on a Kona? $250 extra.

Silver and black are almost always free, but anything with a passing resemblance to the rainbow is going to hit you in the pocketbook. Sometimes, an automaker will justify the cost by claiming that the metallic paint process is more expensive, but when those are the only actual colours available, what choice do buyers really have? More often than not it’s simply a cash grab that banks on the fact that customers interested in a more colourful car are enthusiastic enough to dip into their wallets for the privilege.

Floor Mats

Yes, it’s true: not every new base model car comes with floor mats these days. Perhaps the most egregious offender is Tesla, which has kept floor protection out of its U.S.-built Model 3 sedan for the past several years (although some Canadian market models built in China snuck past the accountants with mats intact).

It’s not just Tesla, of course. Base model trims of entry-level compact cars and SUVs are also often sold with floor mats as an at-cost accessory rather than standard equipment. This omission is commonplace in the European market, and it’s slowly filtering through to North American dealerships, where mats have almost always been added as part of a sale even if they weren’t spec’d on the factory order sheet.