Tuners

I’ve been saying this for a long time and now I’m going to say it louder.  Or rather, I’m going to type it out on here and let the vast wilderness of uncaring readers troll thought it.

Tuners are mostly idiots.

Please note the qualifier because its important, but we will come to why it is important later on because first: Its Moron Bashing Time!

Lets start off with spoilers, particularly rear spoilers on most tuned cars.  The vast majority of tuned cars you see in this country, and indeed around the world, are front wheel drive.  This is of course because the majority of cars built around the world today are front wheel drive, and indeed front wheel drive is a perfectly valid choice for a sporty car.  However, the vast majority of these tuned FWD cars have rear spoilers.

This is very dumb.

Why?  Well basically because either the owner has no understanding of what a spoiler dose or its purely decorative.  Anybody who thinks a cobbled together wing stuck to there boot looks good, needs emergency brain surgery.  As for those why they don’t know what a spoiler dose, here is an explanation of what they do:

A spoiler is in essence an upside down aerofoil as found on aircraft wings.  The shape of an aerofoil creates a pressure differential across the surface of the wing as air flows across it.  This creates lift for an aircraft and down force for a car.  Down force is simply pressure pushing the car down onto the road.  Placing one at the front of the car pushes the front down onto the road, placing one at the back presses the back down onto the road, as the speed increases.

So this means a tuned FWD car with a rear spoiler has its rear pressed down into the ground as it speeds up… ..lifting its front wheels upwards.  This has two effects:  First, the car looses grip, making it more likely to spin its wheels or go hurtling off into a wall when the wheels don’t have enough grip to turn the car.  Second, the front wheel breaks (which on a FWD car are usually the more powerful ones) are now attached to wheels with less grip, making it harder for them to stop the car and a lot easier for them to lock up the wheels.

In essence fitting a rear spoiler to a FWD car makes it handle, stop and accelerate worse at speed than it would without it.  Plus with the added wind resistance created by the spoiler and the turbulence it causes – the cars top speed will be lower as well.

So then, what about a front spoiler?

Well here we hit another obvious issue to do with Tuners: the people who design the bits.  Most cars today are created by companies that have between 100 and say 40 years experience building cars.  They have access to the best in wind tunnel and computer design equipment outside of perhaps the aerospace industry.  Tuners are either young men in sheds or older men who used to be in sheds and now make money selling things to young men in sheds.  As a result the front bumpers of modern cars are designed and styled by experts (though I will admit with some companies – BMW and Subaru I’m looking at you – this is hard to credit.)  While the plastic or fibreglass body kit found on your average tuner was designed by a man in a shed.

Not to knock men in sheds, after all some of the worlds best cars came out of sheds, but I’d rather trust the evil but well qualified multinational than a guy who judges his parts aerodynamics by eye.  As a result of this I doubt there are more than 5-6% of body kit bumpers that actually work as spoilers at all.  The rest being extra weight and more wind resistance to suck away at the cars top speed.

*Sigh*

As for punching holes in your exhaust pipe to make it louder – it just sounds like your exhaust is broken guys and you will probably fail your next MOT as a result of it.

Now to the explanation of the word “Most”, to put it in a nutshell some of the best car designers in history were tuners.  Graham Chapman would be an obvious example, he started working with Austin 7’s and from those humble beginnings created the Lotus company, a company that today tunes the suspension of a large number of the worlds best cars.  Sir William Lions, the guy who founded Jaguar, started off as a side car maker and created luxury versions of Austin 7’s before moving on to greater things.  Enzo Ferrari started off at Alfa Romeo, and while I doubt he could really be called a tuner he did borrow from his experiences there in creating his own cars.  Porsche was not strictly speaking a tuner since he did design the VW beetle himself, but his early cars did share parts with there humble brother.  The Renault Alpines started off as racing tuned Renault Dolphines.  The Saleen company, who I personally dislike the products of, started off as tuners before moving into there own limited production models while still tuning existing cars.  For that matter the tuning division of almost any modern car company could fit in here, from AMG to MG (Though there now defunct as tuners and instead have there badges slapped on Chinese made rebodies of a Rover 75, though it has to be said they are rather nice rebodies and the 75 was a good platform to start with even if its dated by European standards.)

So, not all tuners are morons, just the majority.

 

And especially any of them who stick half a 747 wing onto the back of a 1990’s Mitsubishi FTO, seriously, what where you thinking?