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The American V8 was a high performance product at an entry level price. During the last couple years the Dodge twins got ridiculously expensive (the Challenger 392 is now almost as expensive as the Hellcat was in 2016).

The problem with the turbo engines is they are way more expensive to do anything with and they come in expensive cars. BMW, Audi really being the only things that are 'fast'. Subaru, Kia, VW are all pretty much low-level performance. And then you have really expensive stuff like the Nissan GT-R.

Turbo engines have been around for a long time, they're nothing new. And they have always been part of the car scene. But again, the lower price options aren't really competitive, they were at least close in the 2000's.

And again, the Ford ECU has been out for two years and nobody has cracked it.

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UniverseHacker 11 hours ago | parent [-]

I disagree on both of these. Turbo engines are usually much cheaper to tune- most of the time you can substantially increase the power with just more boost. More serious power requires a bigger turbo and bigger injectors which is still cheap and easy - an afternoon install with the engine still in the car.

Tunable turbocharged European sports cars cost next to nothing once they’re a decade or two old.

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bluedino 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You need more than just a tune for reliability and real power. Sure you can get a cheap boost but everyone is going to realize they need to add hard parts like downpipes and intercoolers. Then you get into drivetrain issues.

And you're talking about a very, very small group compared to the old days when the hobby was more popular. Honda Civica and Ford Mustangs were such a hugely popular vehicle to modify.

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UniverseHacker 11 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s all a matter of the vehicle and what your goals are- sure at some point you need to modify everything else, but a turbo car gets a lot further to start with for a lot less money. I grew up tuning old Volvos and Mercedes and they were so well made and undertuned from the factory you could just about double the horsepower for next to nothing and they were still reliable. Early on they even used massively oversized turbos that had a ton of lag but could really have the boost cranked up. European cars, especially older ones tended to be heavily overengineered - with the drivetrain, cooling system, suspension, brakes, etc. massively oversized compared to Japanese and American cars.

	▲	ethbr1 11 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> undertuned from the factory This seems to be a big component of then vs now. Previously companies lacked precision modeling and simulation and so often simply overbuilt parts. Now, costs have been cut and fuel efficiency standards are much higher, so systems are more tightly engineered from the factory.
	▲	bluedino 11 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Sure - but my point is the hobby is nowhere near as popular/mainstream as it was before

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willis936 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Tunable turbocharged European sports cars cost next to nothing once they’re a decade or two old.

I'd like some specific examples (I'm in the market for cheap sports cars). Keep in mind RWD is part of the definition of a sports car.

	▲	UniverseHacker 11 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I'd argue that AWD is fine too, especially if rear biased. Any AWD AUDI or VW with the 1.7t or 2.7tt is pretty cheap- even the 3.0 turbo diesel is very tunable and sold w/ AWD. Mercedes and BMW both make RWD 4 cylinder turbos, modification abilities vary. Personally, I think the best value in a RWD sports car is a first gen Porsche Boxster, and that is what I currently daily drive- you can get a nice used one under $10k, with the IMS bearing already upgraded. However, it's normally aspirated and not really tunable without swapping out the engine- however IMO it hardly needs more power- it will keep up on a track with many vehicles twice as powerful. Old RWD turbo volvos are also underrated, you can tune a lot of power out of them for fairly cheap. An unexpected thing for a lot of people is that diesels are often some of the most tunable engines- people get a lot of power out of German diesels. Because they don't have predetonation issues they can be a lot more reliable and cheaper to tune.
	▲	FL410 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		BMW 335