Let's consider tinted windows:

Putting aside the notion that the tint is in place to provide privacy, or ease of marijuana use, let's consider the cool factor.

Presumably any hepcat who goes in for the tinted window option is hoping to look cool in a mysterious, hard-to-know way. And anything that's hard to place eyes on is, of course, compelling to most people. But as a result of the tint that's been applied to hepcat's windows, no one can actually SEE who's doing the impressing. Therefore no one is DIRECTLY impressed by hepcat.

Really, the car is taking all the (positive) heat. So only those who ride INSIDE hepcat's car, i.e. hepcat's family (or those that see hepcat gassing up), are able to attach the cool factor to hepcat. And those people probably already know that hepcat has many of the same foibles that any schmendrick in a Pacer may or may not have, and probably more.

As long as hepcat never becomes aware of this coolness-neutering calculus, I guess everything is aces. Because hepcat maintains a swagger throughout his day, a swagger informed by his misguided sense that he has an aura unknowableness, even though only his family knows it, and they know HIM.

So... tinted windows. A study in sad (but maybe effective) futility.