Street Racing Cars and Imports
Street racing is not a new thing. The first real street racing boom was in the 1960s with the muscle car era. Muscle cars were inexpensive enough that young people could afford them and it was fairly common for the owners to customize them and tune them to perform better. The real key to popular street racing cars is that they are affordable. Young people that want to street race usually cannot afford a McLaren F1. They have to buy something cheap and then make it faster. As the oil crisis of the 1970s brought the muscle car era to a close, we saw muscle cars replaced with small compact cars. Volkswagen and Dodge changed the world with the introduction of small, fuel-efficient cars that were also fun to drive. Once the kids started modifying them to go even faster, the next street racing era was born.
The Volkswagen GTI and Dodge Omni were not muscle cars, but they were quick enough. As other car manufacturers caught on more small sporty cars were being sold not just for their fuel efficiency, but also for their performance and their ability to be easily tuned. By far the most common street racing car is the Honda Civic. The Honda Civic is not the best racecar in the world. In fact, it is not even the fastest sport compact in the world. However, the Civic offers good reliability, good fuel efficiency, good safety, good practicality, and a huge variety of aftermarket parts. Most street racers only have one car that they use for racing and for daily driving, so it has to be drivable, practical, and safe, not a purpose built race car with one seat that gets four miles per gallon.
Art imitates life, but life in turn, imitates art. As the street racing scene was rapidly growing in the 1990s, Hollywood took notice and The Fast and the Furious was released. This caused even more people to turn their daily drivers into street racers, or at least make them look that way. One of the things that makes the street racing scene so accessible is that you can start with almost any car. A Toyota Corolla might be a mundane car, but it can be turned into a very fun street racer. There are many aftermarket parts available for almost every sport compact car, so you do not need to be an engineer to turn your daily driver into a racer.
Street racing cars usually start with an intake and a sportier exhaust. These items only add a few more horsepower, but they also make the car sound the part. New wheels and tires are another very common first, and sometimes last, step. If someone wants to take it further, they can get new cams that will offer more aggressive timing, a sportier suspension that will allow for better cornering, a turbo or supercharger that will force for air into the engine, or any number of other modifications that can range from small to costing tens of thousands of dollars. No matter which car you start out with, it is only a matter of how much you can spend and how fast you want to go.