Revving Up a Tepid Industry : Autos: Hot-rodding businesses are looking to improve their perfor- mance amid sluggish sales and tougher environmental laws.
As a lead-footed Claremont High School junior in the early 1960s, Tim Garr chucked the engine of his first car--a maroon 1947 Ford--and stuck in a more powerful Chevy V-8 and went racing.
Sometimes he would even use a drag strip.
“In those days, it was awesome. It ran consistent thirteen-fives in the quarter-mile,” Garr said, recalling the hot rod’s acceleration figures--ones that are respectable even three decades later.
He still drives Fords, but now a 1986 F-250 four-wheel-drive pickup fits Garr’s more mature lifestyle. But because he’s remained a fan of rapid transit, the 49-year-old construction materials salesman had a $298 Banks Engineering performance package installed. The high-capacity exhaust pipes, mufflers and air cleaner not only boosted power: Garr also got a slight improvement in gas mileage.
Ever since the Chicago Times-Herald brought together six cars to run through the streets of Chicago in America’s first official auto race on Thanksgiving Day, 1895, drivers have been asking themselves, “How can I wring a little more oomph out of it?”
But now the nation’s $7.3-billion-a-year performance industry--which traces much of its roots to the dry-lake racing, drag strips and boulevard cruising of Southern California in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s--is asking itself that question as it confronts sluggish sales and tougher environmental laws.
The performance industry’s slice of the estimated $75-billion-a-year general auto parts market consists of optional parts--those that improve a vehicle’s power, handling or appearance, explained Jerry Forster of the Specialty Equipment Market Assn., or SEMA, a trade group. Those parts are nice to have, but aren’t essential for the car to be able to get to work or the store, he said.
Although potential markets have expanded with the proliferation of imported cars, the nationwide economic downturn put a damper on retail sales, which in 1991 slipped 4% from $7.6 billion in 1990, Forster said.
Preliminary sales reports from retailers, however, suggest that the performance industry--whose most rapidly growing customer segment is men 40 to 49 years of age--improved in 1992, helped by the burgeoning interest in restoring Corvettes and “muscle cars” of the 1950s, ‘60s and early ‘70s. The restoration craze now brings in an estimated $90 million a year, according to SEMA.
Meanwhile, the do-it-yourselfers who are the backbone of the business increasingly face complex cars today. One look at a modern engine compartment’s seemingly impenetrable mass of wiring, hoses and electronics, and many would-be tinkerers slam the hood on any idea of forking over cash to modify their vehicle.
Environmental legislation is another drag on the go-fast business.
Take exhaust pipes and mufflers. Once they were the first hardware added to a hot rod. A “cool” street machine had to have a loud, powerful-sounding set of pipes--even if they didn’t always produce more power. But such modifications can be unsound in today’s regulated world. The California Air Resources Board aggressively sniffs out any emissions tampering, as many makers of performance parts and cars have discovered when forced to pay thousands of dollars in fines.
The answer, says SEMA, is “green machines”--vehicles and parts that meet pollution laws. “It’s survival,” Forster said. “For the companies that don’t adapt and begin looking at this area of environmentally sound vehicles, the only way they can sell their parts is for racing or off-road use.”
But the street is where most of the equipment winds up, Forster said. As long as consumers sign a form indicating that they understand the parts are to be used only off-road, the racing-oriented hardware is cheerfully sold.
That troubles people such as George Elliot, publisher of Popular Hot Rodding magazine. “We don’t want to see anyone tampering with emission equipment. You can have high performance and still have responsible performance,” the former SEMA chairman said.
The hot-rodding camp didn’t always embrace clean-air efforts. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, car magazines had few kind words for the Environmental Protection Agency. Articles explained how to nullify anti-smog devices. A cottage industry was spawned in “test pipes”--a euphemism for tubing that allowed motorists to illegally remove their catalytic converters.
But in the last two years, many manufacturers have started engineering products that meet California Air Resources Board criteria. Although the agency’s emissions-testing requirements are painstaking and expensive, its approval effectively means that the component can be sold and installed anywhere in the nation.
Gale Banks, a builder of racing auto and marine engines, was one of the first to recognize the need for power parts that meet emissions standards.
In the ‘70s, he started making high-efficiency intake and exhaust parts for recreational-vehicle owners who wanted more power. Those cash-carrying and appreciative RVers today are Banks Engineering’s bread-and-butter customers.
Hot-rodders and RVers are after the same things, he said.
“There are two reasons you want power,” Banks said. “One is ego, so that you can showboat and be somebody. . . . The other is reality. If you’re climbing the Grapevine and you’re out there running a motor home, you want to be driving with traffic, not having that traffic driving around you. It’s a much safer situation to use power to avoid accidents.”
Keeping up with technology may be the performance industry’s biggest challenge. Advancements in engineering--tiny computers today control everything from ignition systems to suspensions--have paid off in vehicles that offer an unprecedented blend of power, economy and low emissions.
Chevrolet, hoping to inject 1982-87 Camaros with Corvette-like power, teamed with McFarland Inc., a Torrance engineering consulting firm, to develop a California Air Resource Board-certified, over-the-counter engine package that produces 300-horsepower and close to 100-m.p.h. quarter-mile speeds at the drag strip.
The General Motors division, which has seen its market share dwindle, is hoping that owners of the older Camaros will sell their cars to enthusiasts who want to install the hot-rod package. The former owners would be free, the thinking goes, to buy the redesigned Camaros that are expected to be in showrooms later this month.
Company owner Jim McFarland warns that the advent of on-board diagnostics, or OBD, on new cars, scheduled for introduction in 1994, means that if the performance industry wants to survive, it must engineer and market bundled, complementary components, such as camshafts, intake manifolds and cylinder heads.
“The packaging approach, with supporting electronics, is the future opportunity in the performance aftermarket,” McFarland said. “It’s the only opportunity for cars with OBD.”
