Of course it’s bling.
I am totally impervious to name-calling so you might as well stop (That is a pun).
Here is some parts of an article that you probably won’t read but maybe some others might find interesting. I was selective In the paragraphs I chose. I particularly liked the “male enhancement” comment. I’m sure you will too.
”Nothing makes people say “ZOMG!” quite like big front calipers, especially when they’re painted bright red. But big calipers do more than just look hot—they provide more clamp force on the rotor. More clamp force means more brake torque, which shifts the system balance toward front-bias. Big front calipers also require more fluid volume, which means longer pedal travel and less fluid reserve for when pad fade strikes.
So, unless your system is rear-biased, big front calipers are going to hurt, not help, your system balance. And if your master cylinder was marginally sized before the swap, you could wind up putting all your pedal force into the floorboard rather than into generating higher line pressures.”
”Assuming all other system parameters are held constant, increasing rotor diameter increases front brake thermal mass and front brake torque output. Think carefully—does your car really need that?
If you don’t see heat-checking or other thermal distress in your existing rotors, then you don’t need more thermal mass.”
”The key is to keep the system balanced. If larger front rotors are installed with no other changes, the system will become more front-biased. This is because the caliper will need to be moved radially outboard to accommodate the increased rotor diameter. Doing so increases the effective radius, which means more torque is generated by the same clamp force. In order to keep the system balanced, an adjustable proportioning valve might be needed to increase the pressure of the rear calipers.”
”Cross-drilled rotors are another brake component that generally falls into the natural male enhancement category. The popularity of cross-drilled rotors is a carryover from the bygone days when outgassing vapors from the pad material reduced the friction level between pad and rotor.
The holes gave this vapor layer an escape path, allowing the friction material to remain in contact with the rotor. Modern friction materials don’t outgas like that anymore, and drilled rotors don’t provide the performance improvement they once did.
In addition, a drilled rotor has less thermal mass than an undrilled rotor of equal dimensions. Each hole is a prime location for cracks to form due to thermal and mechanical overload.
There are degrees of severity when it comes to stress concentrations, depending on both the type of concentration and the type of loading that the part sees. When a load is applied axially to the hole (as when the caliper squeezes the rotor), it’s not as bad as when the load is applied radially to the hole (trying to turn the round hole into an oval hole). On a related note, a chamfered hole has a lower stress concentration factor than a straight hole.
Again, ask the key question: Are these holes—and their potential problems—what the car needs?
If some protection against outgassing is required, or you want something sexier than plain rotors, go with slots instead of holes. With this route, compromise in rotor strength is negligible compared to holes.”
Grassroots Motor Sports