![]() ![]() As early as the 1930s, American tuners were dropping hopped-up Ford "flathead" V8s into anything with four wheels. If you want to talk about naturally aspirated performance, you've got to give the USA its due. Of course, forced induction only represents one branch of tuner history. As for the turbocharger, it was more of a team effort, coming into its own from World War I through the 1920s as a performance-enhancer for airplane engines around the globe. That task fell to German engineer Gottlieb Daimler (the surname might ring a bell) who in 1885 was the first to apply the Roots' forced-induction principles to the internal combustion engine. That's where the phrase "Roots-type supercharger" comes from, if you didn't know.īut the Roots brothers never supercharged a car motor, because they lived out their lives in the horse-and-buggy era. They needed a better way of melting iron with hot air, and an air pump with rotating impeller blades proved to be an excellent solution. If you want to go way back in the day, the Indiana-based Roots brothers were hot-rodding blast furnaces in the mid-19th century. Let's take a look back at the origins of tuner culture and how it came to be an integral part of the automotive landscape. ![]() ![]() Ultimately, tuner culture is where the cars we love meet the limits of our imaginations. You can say it's only about particular brands or body styles, but there's a tuner forum for practically every model ever built. There's always another side to the story. You can say it's only about certain engine or suspension modifications, but you know there are some awesome mods out there that you've haven't even heard of. You can say it started in Japan, or America, or even Germany. Tuner culture means a lot of things to a lot of people. ![]()
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