Years ago I bought a Fast Car Magazine with CDRom on the front as a free gift. That CDRom contained images of cars and wheels and allowed you to combine the two via your computer. That, I suppose, was my first experience of the computer-based modifying that has become known as the 'Selecta'.

Back in 2002 I frequented a forum called Volkszone and it was jolly good fun. One day a chap called Rich Whitlock posted a link to something rather special...the Bus Selecta. To my knowledge, that was the first real online modifying program, and possibly still the best - certainly Rich's creations have stood the test of time and in my opinion still produce the best results as well as having the simplest interface. Once again we've trawled the internet so you don't have to - resulting in a list of online car modding programs to keep you occupied for hours...or even days. We've had a play on a few too...

We have to start with good old Bus Selecta - found, logically, at busselecta.com. Here you'll find a few programs allowing you to create your vision of the ultimate VW Bus (splitscreen and bay window varieties), Beetle (courtesy of volkswarenhaus.de ), Type III (via the legendary Type Three Detectives) and even Porsche!

Next we visit the obscure trabicustomizer.com where we find a very Selecta-like design, but with a Trabant rather than an aircooled 'Dub. It's just as infectious though and the results have you hankering after some real East German 'tin' to play with:

,p.

Still in the Selecta style, but switching it's focus to slightly newer Volkswagens is this Polo version found at polo-land.fr where you can play with Mk1 and 2 Polos and create your own teeny watercooled masterpiece:

Slightly simpler, but similar looking is this one at Mini Resource where you can create Mini saloons, vans and even a Countryman...one complaint: I can't find any way of adjusting the height

Sadly, that's all we have of the Selecta-style ones - leaving us with the photo-based exa mples which, if I'm honest, don't quite rank as highly as the non-photo based versions above. Still worth a fiddle though...

This one at Fuji Wheel Corporation in Japan reminds me of that old Fast Car CD, it serves the same purpose too - trying some new rims on various cars. It's limited, but if you can find a car that you like (being a JDM fan helps), there's no harm in playing for a while.

Last up is the 'modder' series, starting with the successful Dubmodder from slipstream, which stands out amongst the others for being a subscription service...a brave move when all the others I've found are free, either through generousity or sponsorship, but I guess we are just too used to getting stuff on the web for nothing. If you're about to put together a Mk1-5 Golf/Jetta, Scirocco or Corrado then spending a few dollars to see what the finished product might look like is probably a wise investment. For those miserly types, there's a trial version here. The same team have put together versions for Jeeps, Honda Civics and Audi A3s all of which get boring very quickly if you don't own the vehicle in question.

If you know of any more, drop us a line (via the comments box below) and we'll check it out.