On a recent 24 hour whirl wind trip to southern Illinois, I've started asking myself just where have all the tuners gone. There was nothing on the streets other than beat up Buicks and pickups. There weren't even the hordes of J-bodies so known for in middle america.
Based on all the trends we see, it seems like the fast and furious tuning days are over. Just like in japan, kids don't want cars. They want computers and phones. And for those that do want cars, the cost of tuning and operating is just unimaginable for a 16 year old earning minimum wage. The fallout of trinket tuners doesn't help either. Giants like APC and all those body kit companies are nowhere to be found.
The clicheic sport compact car doesn't exist anymore either. Once great platforms like the civic and sentra have given way to safer, fatter and softer coupes that have lost its former spirit. Unfortunately those cars and the spirit they instilled will never come back. The cars are smarter now too. Bolt on tuning is now rewarded with a check engine light instead of the instant gratification of a weekends worth of work on the hard driveway concrete.Instead, now we have more expensive and definitely more hardcore cars, which means more costs, less marginal returns, and a hell of a lot more knowledge.
So are we screwed? I hope not. I think those that have read SCC from the old days were always the smarter kids in the car tuning sand box. Those smarts have hopefully led them away from the fashionable lifestyle side of tuning and kept them interested in the nuts and bolts side of our obsession. They've probably also gotten older, salary jobs and maybe families. So everyday realities might have stopped us from driving around in a 100dB civic with a "please ticket me bumper sticker," but the passion and the drive for knowledge is still there. I think most are now closet gear heads that have settled for the comforts of a legal, already fast and passenger friendly car like a BMW. If their lucky, the beater of their youth is still under cover buried under snow boards and old baby cribs.
So is tuning dead? No. Just a lot smarter, more refined and wealthier. But that doesn't mean we'll just be tuning BMW's in the future. Whats the point of tuning a car that's already good? Hopefully when the kids are older, paychecks and garages are bigger and the clench of the wife is loosened, we'll all come back the beaters of our youth and start up that sport compact project. -JC