Side Skirts

Lore & Background

In the Forza world, tuning culture is as much about identity as it is about speed. Side skirts occupy a sweet spot in that identity: they are the modification that says 'I care about how this car looks at a standing still' without committing to a full widebody or a carbon-fibre hood. Players across the Horizon maps will cruise the coastal roads with a modest pair of side skirts bolted on, the panels catching the low afternoon sun and throwing a long shadow across the tarmac.

The variety of styles mirrors real-world aftermarket culture. A subtle, body-colour skirt keeps the car looking factory-plus, while a blacked-out, vented, aggressive set screams track-day. In the Motorsport titles, body work like skirts sits alongside functional aero pieces, and the visual language shifts slightly toward purpose-built race cars where every panel earns its place.

Fans often treat the choice of side skirt as a personality statement. Pair them with a lowered suspension and a set of deep-dish wheels and the car reads as a street build. Pair them with a full aero kit and a rear wing and the same car reads as a circuit weapon. The part is the same; the story you tell with it changes.

In Their Own Story

The tuning shop in the coastal town hummed with the low buzz of a half-assembled engine on the lift. Mara wiped her hands on a rag and glanced at the matte-grey coupe parked on the floor. "You said you wanted it to look like it had a job to do," she said, not looking up from the parts bin. She pulled out a pair of side skirts—slight, vented, painted to match the bodywork—and held them up against the car's rocker panel. The gap between the wheel arch and the panel narrowed by a few millimetres, but the effect was immediate: the car looked planted, like it was leaning into a corner that wasn't there. "There," she said, dropping them onto the bench. "Now it looks like it's going somewhere."

Reader's Guide

Side Skirts are a body modification available in the Body section of the tuning menu across Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport titles. They are not tied to a specific model year or class; instead, each vehicle in the game's roster typically receives one or more side-skin variants designed to match its proportions. Stock performance is unaffected in the Horizon series—side skirts carry zero horsepower, zero weight change, and no handling delta. In Motorsport titles, body work may nudge aero numbers by a fraction, but the change is negligible compared to engine or suspension upgrades.

The tuning lever here is purely stylistic. You select from the available styles for your specific car: a clean, flush panel for a subtle look; a vented, sculpted piece for a sportier read; or an aggressive, multi-element skirt with exposed carbon-look trim for a maximalist build. You can swap them in and out freely at any tuning shop, and they pair with any suspension height, wheel, or paint choice. There is no trade-off in performance, so the only cost is the in-game currency spent on the part.

Build philosophy: Side skirts are the visual keystone of a stance build—choose the style that makes the car look like it was designed to sit that low, and everything else (wheels, paint, livery) falls into place around it.

Did You Know?

• In Forza Horizon titles, side skirts are strictly cosmetic; they add no drag, no downforce, and no weight, making them a zero-risk visual upgrade.
• The available side-skin styles differ per vehicle model—a compact hatchback will get a different skirt geometry than a full-size GT, reflecting each car's real-world proportions.
• Players can combine side skirts with a lowered suspension to create a 'stance' look, a popular aesthetic in the Forza tuning community that prioritises visual aggression over raw lap time.
• In the Forza Motorsport series, body modifications including skirts are grouped with functional aero parts, blurring the line between show and go in a way the open-world Horizon games do not.