For me, the 2000s Tuner scene is and will always be the golden age of Japanese tuner cars.

The real reason we don’t do it is because it’s insanely expensive and that there’s not really universal parts. Back in the day every radio was the same size, single or double, now it’s car specific. Basically the same with every other part.

Hector killed the tuning scene. He ran three honda civics all with spoon engines. Harry also tells me he ordered three T66 turbos with N0² and a motec system exhaust. After that everyone apparently just went home.

Tuners killed it also the car manufacturers killed it with death of models for more suv and family friendly sedans

I'll argue that increasing living costs and increasing costs for car ownership is the main thing killing the car scene nowadays. Most enthusiasts can't really afford to buy a car to fuck around with and certainly don't have the time to wrench like they could even 5-7 years ago. Even if you have the money to buy parts and get them installed, you're not really willing to risk butchering your only car and end up hating it because you didn't realize that straight piping, de-catting, and slamming your Civic/S13/S2000/Miata/STi would actually ruin it and make it impossible to sell when your doctor tells you its ruining your ears and back and you'll die if you hit another pothole. Its half the reason why Hondas, Nissans and Toyotas of old have appreciated to almost MSRP if they don't have rust and poorly done mods on them. Back in the day they were still cheap enough that you could buy a half finished project and at least get it running while you slow built it up. Now you need 5k or more just to find a rolling shell for (insert JDM car here) and another 3-4k for motor and trans work. Mind you this is before you fix the flaws in the chassis and interior.

The price of cars hasn't helped either. Back in the late 90s/early 00s, you could still find affordable sporty 2-doors.

KZfaq and social media (or internet) killed the tuner scene by making people antisocial and scared to do anything different. It also inflated the price of cars that used to be affordable builds. Nevertheless, youtube and social media was a double edge sword because it made it easier to gain information for your build. 1 decade or 2 ago, if you didn't know something than you just didn't know.

A lot of people grew out of this phase, recession after recession after recession, less worthy automobiles to bother with, now EPA being a culprit.

You want the truth? Money (or lack of it for the young-in’s) killed the game. Young bucks have little to no disposable income, cars are outrageously priced, and the game is stacked against them. It’s sad, I feel for the youngsters who are now priced out.… I made life long friends, incredible memories… it was never about the cars, it was and still is about the people and relationships along the Way. The tuner scene in the 00’s was so dope. SO MANY good memories at events and with the crew at cruise nights and parking lot meetups on the warm hazy summer and cool fall (boost weather) weekends. Be well, all. Keep fighting the good fight and turning those wrench’s. ✌🏼

I wouldn't go all out saying the Tuner Scene is dead. It isn't the same as the 90's and early 2000's but it definitely isn't dead. I do agree that a lot of "car guys" are more interested in internet clout though.

I miss car magazines so much. Always a highlight of my youth at the grocery store

Don’t forget that getting your modded car to pass emissions in CA is now unpossible.

A subject I was actually just reflecting on. Modern cars don't even seem to accommodate the aftermarket, aside from maybe the Toyota 86. Cars of the 90's-2000s seemed to be designed with the aftermarket in mind. You could upgrade your stereo with out replacing half of your dash. Lots of parts were just swap out and plug-n-play. It was easy to showcase your own style and personality in your car. Now everything is stuffed to the gills with bells and whistles, making them waaaay more expensive and leaving nothing to the imagination or able to be customized. Plus its all mainly crossovers and trucks anymore. Great video!!!!!

What killed the tuner scene? Gutting out the middle class where millions are living paycheck to paycheck in a country where costs have gone up and wages have not + college loan debt and fewer jobs & kids living at home played a roll.

What killed the tuner scene: F&F making every tuner look like a criminal, and laws making exhausts, tinted windows, performance upgrades, or pretty much any upgrade illegal.

Its pretty simple, all the good older imports got snatched up and ragged out. Meanwhile , automakers were not making affordable fun cars anymore for young folks to be able to buy and modify.

The demo that the tuner scene was geared towards got older. Hard to justify spending 3k on a set of 3 piece BBS rims for your 1996 honda civic project car, when you have a mortgage, 1 or 2 kids, and your daily driver needs a full brake job.

Around 2008 I had a 5 speed '95 Civic coupe with a full Wings West kit, underglow, big tach, Greddy exhaust, a B16 swap and Konig wheels and a 2000 Eclipse GT 5 speed with wheels, exhaust and a few other aftermarket bits, and both with full bass-ey stereo systems, and I loved both of them. I was as much into it as a poor 21 year old college student could be. I miss those cars.

What killed the tuner/car scene: - takeovers - social media clout chasing - knock off shit - state reff's "for California" - dumb drivers/show offs - boring cars

I couldn't afford a car in the _2000s..._ but I had a *PlayStation* *2* and a bunch of games like: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 Auto Modellista Street Racing Syndicate Need for Speed Underground 2 Gran Turismo 4 Need for Speed Most Wanted TOCA Race Driver 3 Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights

I remember summer of 1999, Milpitas In-N-Out and the races in the commercial/indutrial areas of Fremont California in my 1998 Integra Type R. Good times.

Hector is going to be running 3 Honda Civics with SPOON engines. And on top of that, he just went into Harry's, and he ordered 3 T66 TURBOS, with NOS. And a MOTEC exhaust

I was in my prime during the tuner-years and got to enjoy it, but i think, we ourselves really contributed largely to the demise of the scene. While the platforms were fairly cheap and plentiful, the parts were anything but cheap - a proper tuner would end up costing 10's of times more than the car itself and this money was spent by people who had it in the first place. These people also broke through to the media spotlight. Those who couldn't really afford it, had to DIY and source cheaper parts, especially more as China started supplying, which meant the legit quality manufacturers took the hurt. With that, they started scaling back to save business, this in turn made tuning even more expensive and that reduced media coverage, which slowly started withering the popularity. Almost poetically, we destroyed the thing we built and loved the most. But, i'm now older, a family man and while i do enjoy the quality of a factory car, i feel it's boring, so i've decided to buy a late 90's beater and build a tuner out of it, just as a memento to keep around.

I am Japanese. And I don't like the tendency to collectively call Import Tuner custom styles from the late 1990s to the early 2000s "Ricer" on the Internet these days. I believe that these are unique developments of the Japanese tuner style. Sure, some of the wacky Body kits, Face-swap, and Vinyls cars are ugly, but I feel they're far more personal and original than the modern Stance scene.

In short: Money. More specificially, the fact that most people dont have alot of it. I'd love to get an import and tune tf out of it, but im having a hard enough time paying bills on a $10 an hour job. So unless I want to sleep in the car, the car is going to have to wait. It sucks, but the bro tax is real.

The prices of 20 year old cars skyrocketing and the massive kid fanbase.

‘More environmentally friendly.’ Blink twice if you’re in trouble man!

i was born in 1994. i’m just glad i was born at a time where i could watch my brother build his FD. Then graduate from college myself, get a job and own and boost a BRZ. ive gotten to live that life i played in NFS, go to car meets, make friends, race friends, and build cars with friends. at the same time we get to live vicariously through youtube and the vloggers who upload content of legendary cars we might realistically never get to own. i’m glad i got to experience this and when the world is all electric and i’m an old man i’ll look back at it fondly

What killed the tuner scene? Laws and prices for beat up cars.

I was a broke high school student in the early 2000s so my friends and I would just live vicariously through the lucky bastards we'd see in Super Street and Import Tuner with 1000hp Supras, full Veilside RX7s, and ultra modified Eclipses. And yes, FnF had a massive impact on us getting into the tuner scene. Also watched a ton of Techademics videos back then too. Oh and the Need for Speed Underground games as well.. Those years of dreaming were way better than the years we actually had the money to afford cars like the ones we lusted over, which sadly came well after the tuner scene died. It was fun while it lasted though.

Part of what has really cut the legs off of the car enthusiast scene is just that the kinds of people who would traditionally have supported the lower-budget end of the spectrum can't afford to do anything any more, whereas everybody who traditionally could afford to build a nicer tuner car in installments has instead decided to save up for a higher-end car instead (or spring for a lease, or whatever). Overwhelmingly, young people just don't have the money, or at least have far more urgent things to do with it.

Those magazines brought back so many memories 😭😭 Import Tuner and Super Street were legit my favorites as a kid. Being in my mid twenties now, I'd say the Tuner scene is still active but it doesn't seem as lively as it was in the 90s and 2000s. It was if it was in your face back in the 2000s due to its popularity. Those were truly the golden years.

This is why Hector disappeared. Ps, he never made the NIRA circuit

The tuner scene never died, it evolved just like any other industry. And tbh, people spending their money on performance parts instead of ICE or expensive paint jobs, makes a lot of sense. Track days are more popular now then they used to be as well. In the past, the only genuinely fast standard cars were the exotics that most people couldn't afford. Now you can buy a new car with over 400hp from factory that doesn't cost much.

Things have gotten so expensive this is a rich kids hobby these days

The main issues were 1- States became hostile towards the Tuner Crowd making it more difficult to modify cars, DoT make regulations for nonsensical reasons allowing harassment from Police for no reason. 2- Car Companies themselves - - A - Increasingly made the cars overly difficult to work on - B - Let dealerships do what they wanted like voiding warranties and having terrible hostile business practices towards Tuners. - C - Increasingly made a Trend of turning beloved cars into Supercars that were overpriced and out of the tuner price range making it a millionaires hobby rather than for normal people that would take a decent car and make it fast, they basically cashed in on the high end hobby. - D - Created cars with top end engineering never actually talking with people in the scene allowing basic models that could be modified in unique ways. - E - Building cars majorly half assed(Hyundai Tiburon GT 2003 with obvious clutch and transmission issues) cheaply cashing in creating Sports Compact cars with seriously unideal or half assed engineering from the start or defects, lets not even get into the false advertising of creating a sporty car calling it a GT and then voiding warrantees and such for driving the car as it is advertised. I get what you are saying but...the Chinese companies easily won because companies like HKS were overpriced to unreasonable levels, its ok for a company to make money but to gouge the shit out of consumers is always a bad practice, you need to stay reasonable especially since most of their parts came from Chinese manufacturers anyways, how else do you think they got the schematics and design and had the tooling? Companies here used 3rd world cheap labor while still charging top dollar for the parts....in other words they fucked themselves..I have absolutely no sympathy, cost $150 to manufacturer including engineering and testing costs for each one through volume of sales and they charge $800+ what in the 9 hells did people think was going to happen? Post Jobs era marketing and gouging ran companies.

Fast and furious killed the tuner world. It used to be about finding the deal that you could tune on the cheap. Then F&F came out and every dweeb out there wanted a Japanese car to tune. Demand caused prices to go up. Supply went down causing prices to go even higher. Now it costs so much to tune a turd, what's the point. Not to mention many of these cars are murdered by kids but hearing them or wrecking them. I've always had a deep interest in JDM because I love the fact that they perform out of engineering that also provides high efficiency.

I was an Automotive photographer back in 2005-2010 here in Australia and got to witness the same thing happening here, albeit on a smaller scale. None of the tuner mags we had back then exist now. I think MotiveDVD is one of the only media companies to survive. We never really had much of a parts shop scene and most parts had to be sourced through tuner shops direct from distributors, so that hasn't changed. The main "parts shops" we have were always for OEM replacement parts, not tuner parts. If anything, those shops now carry a few more "China spec" bullshit mod parts now. The few parts shops we had would almost only ever carry generic parts and maybe a few popular model parts. So really, apart from the disappearance of car mags, and our one "decent" car show, Autosalon, not a whole lot has changed here. Mainly because it has always been shit. Lol. We still have to import our parts from either Japan or the US, it's just faster now and we can get stuff in days instead of months (I waited 3 months for coilovers from Japan back in the day). Personally, the thing I like most about the evolution of the tuner world is some of the technology we have that allows us to make our own parts, like 3D printers, decent inverter welders, and even cheap CNC machines. But you are absolutely right about the fact we are on the cusp of some very big change, with EVs maybe finally getting cheap enough for everyone and all that. The tuner world will never go away, but it will change. Instead of slapping on turbos and bigger injectors, we will be upgrading our battery packs, motor controllers and writing more efficient code. Lol.

One thing not mentioned was that the Japanese manufacturers stopped making cool tuner cars, at least ones that were affordable to the type of customers that wanted to modify their vehicles.

Life is too expensive. That's what killed the tuner scene

Too many people want their cars as an appliance rather than an expression of who they are.

Electric cars can get fucked. A big portion of being a car enthusiast is getting chills when you hear the tone of a good sounding engine. Racing falls in the same area. You get a rush and a certain excitement from hearing the scream of all the cars, boats, motorcycles etc. pushing it to the limit. Gas engines are here to stay for a long while so long as real racing fans have anything to say about it.

1: People complaints about noise 2: Cost.

From what I seen that killed it. 1: Cheap knock off parts that fell apart easily and looked terrible. 2: People lost interest in going to meets and car shows. This is a recent thing in the last decade. 3: cars are built pretty good with power now and alot of people don't plan to keep these cars forever, so they don't try to make it something of their own. If you noticed that most cars look alike and all have the same paint jobs from the factory. 4: availability and knowledge to work on cars. I know far too many people who can't check their own oil and will more them likely will never plan or try to modify their car. Getting proper parts take weeks to months to show up and that alone will turn people away from evem starting. 5: social media and clout chasers. This might be one of the worst of them all. These aren't real enthusiasts or even care about their car or what they do to it. Obviously not everyone. They use this as a means of a business and use your interests to benefit them. I have seen far too many that use cars as a means to hook watchers and they have no idea anything about cars or even trying to learn. They're entertainment workers. The other issue is people that want to get involved with this community. They will see these type of people and turn away because they expect that everyone in the community are just like these same idiots. 6: probably the biggest issues here and their are two. A: people can't afford it. It's hard enough to pay the bills and get by financially. B: car culture is dying. From the people I remember having hour long conversations about cars and getting together to build things. I haven't seen that in years and more people are more interested in a car that gets them from A to B with no issues. I feel that video games have replaced it.

Nothing will replace getting a new issue of my favorite car magazine in the mail!!

What you missed was a lot of cars were getting crushed by many states for no other reason then it had a mod not approved by some state agency.

I'm surprised no one mentioned the lack of exciting new cars. Most if not all of the great JDM/SportComp cars died at the end of the 90s.

I think part of the reason why it died was that there aren't as many people passionate about tuning. A lot of people just want to drive a fast car. You'd be amazed at how little people understand about cars my who are my age. They just want to buy something fast. They like driving but they really lack actually liking cars in general.

So true. Every word. In 2000s I spent nearly all of my money at speed shops and changed every part I could afford to change. Wrenching, welding, modding etc. Now I avoid even using double stick tape on my dash. I miss old me.

No, the tuner scene died because today everyone is living paycheck to paycheck. You cannot buy high quality $1,000 part when you only have $50 to spend so you buy the cheap Chinese one, which is the only one that you can afford.

The tuner scene is still around, at least here in Houston. We still have tuner meets and go on joyrides in Mexico. "LoOk aT mE, I hAs a (insert basic modern 'sports' car from factory)" Built K24 turbo swapped CRX - "That's cute" Tuner for life! Though I have jumped on the supercharged V8 bandwagon in the past couple years, tuners will always be special.

I feel like you just enlightened an unsolved mystery in my life. I'm 40 now but I remember looking for my first car in the late 90's and in NZ we were the dumping ground for new and used Japanese imports, you could afford any car you liked second hand. Now everyone is in debt up to their eyeballs paying these ludicrous mortgages there is no more left-over income to buy anything. Sad, but glad for the memories.

Inflated prices. 20k asking price for an RSX-S with 90k miles doesn't help. The car might be nice, stock, and in good condition, but it's not worth 20k. Check the used car market. You won't believe your eyes.

my pops always told me the younger crowd killed the tuner scene because they'll take advantage of the sponsors and not ever payback, weren't responsible. sponsors would then pull out little by little till there was really nothing left to show off / promote these tuner cars.

I ran an ecommerce business in the very early 2000’s selling name brand tuner parts. I closed the business because I couldn’t compete with $25 Chinese taillights and $150 body kits. But mostly it’s the terrible customer base that created the demand. They were the worst customers of any industry.

It was the time of my life, me and my friends didn’t even have “fast” cars. Just the car shows and cruising were something I’ll never forget.

I was all the big companies pushing it to the mainstream, shops doing poor work, laws and regulations, insurance, and the money pit the cars were to get no return when you sold, if you even managed to find a buyer. Kids realized they could have bought a much better car for what they put into their civics. Im just starting to watch this video so i may be repeating what craig said

I would say computerization had a big part to play in it, most cars now are so wired up that the minute you touch them with a wrench the ECU starts throwing a tantrum. The rising cost to purchase the older 90s Tuner/Performance cars is playing a large part too, 2 years ago I could have brought a JZX100 for $5k now they're upwards of $30k in my country, that money is better spent on a comfortable and reliable car for the majority of people, not to mention these cars are starting to become collectibles so most get kept locked in a garage to gain value. Age demographic has a big part in it, the tuners of that time now have families to take care of and a 2 door sports car just doesn't cut it and the money spent on nice paint, big turbos and flashy body kits is better spent on their family's. Rising fuel costs making it super hard to run these cars now let alone making fuel efficiency worse with modifications. The difficulty of finding these cars in decent condition. The lack of mods being made available domestically as well, most modifications have to be specially imported from Japan now. Rising cost of parts has also meant manufacturers are focusing more on reliability than performance because 90% of buyers want reliable cars they don't have to fix every 3 months. The Crack down and regulation of vehicle modifications by governments and their agency's. Car culture as a whole is slowly dying out, the cars we know and love are becoming harder to find, manufacturers aren't making those kind of cars now in favor of comfort and reliability/economy, NZ used to have a massive car culture but as time has gone on those involved no longer have the time or money for it, there used to be events every month somewhere in the country now you're lucky if there's one every 6 months.

Mortgages and insane housing costs have shackled spending

I use to know a guy who lived in CA and built a 700hp mark 3 supra, and one day he got pulled over by an officer and they impounded the supra because it wasn’t “street legal”. And the worst part is that the court made him take his supra to the junk yard and have it crushed, Yep, just like that. So no wonder the tuner scene is no longer the same, nonsensical rules and regulations killed a lot of fun for a lot of people

It died when emission got to a point where a kn filter will almost land you jail time lol

I was already 18 when the first movie came out. I was already into the scene before that. It was that movie that killed it. It was a cool movie but it brought in dudes that didn’t know anything about cars and became something other than the cars. D-Bags wanting to be cool is what killed it. Started the decline

IMO, the main thing that's killing the tuner scene is the fact that modern sports cars have a lot more performance than the old cars did. Nowadays you can get a car from the factory that handles good, has a lot of straight line acceleration, has good wheels, tyres, and breaks. So there is a much lesser need for any extensive changes by the owner. Most sports cars bone stock can run a low 12s quarter mile. Back in the 90s, to have a 12 second car you'd have to spend a lot of money on mods.

As a mechanic of 20 years (and a resident of Northern Canada) we won't see gas/diesel vehicles disappear for another 40-50 years at least. live in -45C/-49f and electric vehicle aren't feasible. Come live here for a month during winter and see how much you love electric cars.

He did a great job laying out the facts but i believe there is also a generational difference whereas the 16-24 age group has little to no interest in cars. Most would rather drop 1200 on an iphone as opposed to a greddy turbo or a set of coilovers for their car. Kids dont cruise or hang out with their modified cars like we and our parents did

It's still alive for me. It's just changed. The "tuners" have matured, I still drive an ls400 on coilovers.....just not a civic with every bolt on I could find. Now I drive to work and places with the wife on weekends instead of school and car meets.

I'm 52, and in my prime during all of this. In my opinion, from the outside, what happened was a combination of smart phones, internet, laziness, getting older and having families, greed, and cost. The late 90's and early 2000's was a great time.

Another contributing factor is that most Japanese manufacturers haven't produced legitimate platforms worth buying. That left many people with less options which caused older Jdm platforms to sky rocket. It doesn't mean the Jdm community went away, it just got smaller. Parts can still be had, you just have to get them overseas. With the ever growing restrictions on combustible engines, it's threatening all road sport vehicles across the board.

Here in California the clean air restrictions have been the major destroyer of individuality and created the quest for zero emissions. Anyone who modified their intake, exhaust or tune will have trouble every two years getting past the smog check. Some companies make specific California Air Resource Board approved items. So they must tool up for one state. Even then you may have to find the stamped marking on the spot to prove to a suspicious officer that those headers are legal. Many went to illegal smog shops and many cool cars got impounded and crushed. Then there's the loss of racetracks to houses and commercial development. Without a legal venue the street was all there was and like the dirt bikers we became outlaws to survive. Just like the dirt bikes loud exhaust made us unwelcome most anywhere. Older engines just sounded cool. Besides the exhaust there was stuff going on. The whoosh of air going into carbs and the throaty gargle of controlled explosions coming past the open throttle plates is absent in fuel injection and noise is all but eliminated. All new engines have a tight sewing machine quality to them and thus need tailpipe noise to be different from the other sewing machines. Soon every Civic had a fart can in back if nothing else. With "tuner" cars setting off car alarms up an down the streets and the reputation as dangerous street racers soon car meets were banned. Cops swoop in on the few legal meets and peek under hoods impounding some kids life work. Now it's illegal to cruise. Yes if you fit a certain profile you can't go on certain streets too often. Something like three passes in an hour and you could be a cruiser. So you can't drive, can't park, can't pass smog for the street and there's nowhere to race. Just now they made it illegal to change the ignition mapping. Let's talk about what really killed tuner cars and speed shops.

There's still plenty of interest in car modification, but what kid can afford it? The industry priced itself out of it's own industry. Sure those other things happened but let's not put all the blame on someone else.

The prices skyrocketed lol. In highschool for me (2010 era), my friends were buying clean well running 240sx's for like 3k as their first cars. Good luck doing that now

I miss the old tuner scene , the good old days!!!

I grew up in the 2000's, so I remember a lot of the sites you mentioned. Those were different times. Different vibes and the internet was totally different back then compared to how it is now. I remember looking at pictures of cars on tons of random little sites, a lot of which have probably been lost to time now. That was the best era to grow up in imo.

Every trend or "scene" dies when people behind it moved on with their lives. The generation after will always have a different interpretation of things. It happens to everything. Heck even the car companies moved on realizing that it is no longer sustainable for them to continue creating performance vehicles and parts. I think the tuner car scene is still alive albeit different from what it used to be.

So it basically boils down to: we've all grown older and the new generation doesn't want to work on their cars anymore, which is understandable

Finance killed the car scene. Kids now just jump into cars they can barely afford and do the exact same shit mods

I'd say a lot of JDM snobbery in the mid-2000s really started to change the dynamic of the scene a bit. Those kids that used to snatch up any VTEC or DSM they could find started to grow up and work better-paying jobs. Now they could afford to "ship parts overnight from Japan." JDM became super highbrow and the body kits, Neon Lights & USDM Specs of yesteryear were looked down on. Fast forward a few years then it became All About Time attacks and building the ultimate track car. The JDM guys we're now even older and on the precipice of starting families, so they were working pretty great paying jobs. Their weekend hobby was tracking that brand new Evo VIII they could now afford because they work salaray IT jobs. Couple of buddies of theirs that they went to HighSchool with now on shops and they can get the parts and labor for the low low. Fast forward to today and now it's all about how much money you spent on the car off the lot.

Complexity, EPA, 2008 recession, lack of stick shift options, locked pcms

fucking TikTok killed the car scene these past couple years. Seems that social media destroys everything..

Tuner/Import scene isn't dead, it's just more underground than ever now, at least in our part of the world. Every meet is professionally organized because the police treat us worse than druglords. It definitely took a hit though when EPA and such started imposing harsher and harsher regulations, and also when F&F movies and NFS games went to shit.

Car culture is alive and well.

Lots of valid points. I've also thought a big reason is because stock cars these days, even cheap models, are a lot better than they were a couple/few decades ago. I'm not saying a new, stock Honda Civic is a race car, but even today's cheap/stock cars are good enough where a kid isn't going to get the urge to replace everything. This has affected all types of cars/trucks, not just the tuner scene. I don't even remember the last time I heard of someone I personally know who did any kind of audio work on their car; stock stereos are pretty good these days compared to what we were dealing with in the 80s/90s.

I remember getting so excited to see a new DSport, Import Tuner and Super Street magazine on the shelf, I used to have a huge collection but they kind of disappeared after a bunch of moves, now I've only got maybe 20 total between all 3. I really miss those days, back when Fast and the Furious was new, a little anime called Initial D was getting really popular in the U.S., and a bunch of games like Tokyo Xtreme Racer and NFS Underground were big. There were tons of import car clubs in Arizona at the time, with shows, street racing and hangouts at car washes and stuff like that, what a time to be in my early to mid 20's. I never could afford one of the top tier import cars, but I always wanted one and loved seeing them rip down the streets of Tucson. Man I miss those days, it was an awesome scene.

What killed the tuner scene? MINIMUM WAGE HASN'T BEEN INCREASED SINCE 1970

Being gay, killed the tuner scene.

Cops and price hikes on JDM cars killed the tuner scene.

What killed the tuner scene? The 2008 crash killed off all the small manufacturing and distribution agents for parts. We still had the cars, but you couldn't get the parts anymore.

social media, car forums and smart phones killed the scene... killed magazines, DVDs, car shows and meets and good old fashioned fun... videos on the internet exposed the fun and gave the law access to what was going on.. Japan also killing off their turbo cars didn't help..

What killed the Tuner Scene.... we had kids and didn't have enough money to build our cars anymore.

In South Africa in the early 2000`s the scene was huge, there were at lest 2 big events in Johannesburg every month and smaller events every weekend, there were legal drag racing events all over the place as well as a few illegal ones on Sunday nights, a magazine called Speed & Sound came out and sold out everywhere it was sold, they even had their own Race Team, there were clubs for just about every manufacturer of cars, The Opel Owners Club, VW Club etc etc , sadly the cost of everything there now has all but killed the scene, except for a very wealthy group of people that can afford the crazy prices of cars and the even crazier prices charged to mod them...

My sisters boyfriend at the time (late 90’s, early 2000’s) was super into the car scene. He had all the super street magazines, owned an integra, and always talked about cars and meets. Me and my friends in elementary would always stop and look in awe when we saw a imported tuned car. Not to mention the midnight club series on the ps2 was a huge plus too.

Supply and demand - kids these days don't even drive stick shifts let alone drive for fun. Those that do drive for fun can't afford the high end parts you're talking about. Wages are proportionally down. For them, the economy says they can't play in the tuning game, and they can only deal with the consequences. The older generation is more interested in convenience and cost than keeping a lively car with less 'features' in the game. That means demand is down. It has little to do with the supply side. Wage stagnation and higher base costs for new and used performance cars means there's an ever shrinking demand for all these lovely things. I for one have an old 135i I can't even justify replacing a dented trunk lid on, let alone throwing in a set of coil overs and a bigger intercooler. And I make good money - but I don't own a house yet, so I can't convince the wife to let me spend money on toys. Houses are more expensive, wages are lower, and industries like the automotive aftermarket bear the brunt.

Also one quick mention. The car market is no longer cars it’s SUV’s and Trucks. The trucks get more mods than any car I’ve seen lately and an SUV isn’t getting any mods because it’s just a big rolling turd and you can’t polish a turd

I miss the day off finding a $300 beater and beefing it up with salvage parts. Those golden days are long gone.

The kid who was 22 then is now 42 with 3 kids and a mortgage.

Tuner scene isn’t dead It’s just different and growing again. And at race track events legal

That movie everyone thinks started it is what killed it. Along with a lack of cheap cars with easy to remove power restrictions.

Hector disliked this vid. Legend has it he still goes to Harry's.

The whole generation behind us burdened by wages that have been stagnant the whole time, while everything else has tripled in price. In the late 90's a couple grand could get you into a decent starter car, you wanted to build, now 5 grand gets you a piece of shit, you don't want to mess with.

The scene died because Japan stopped supporting driver focused platforms. It can easily be revived with the same enthusiasm is car companies go back to competing with one another on who can make the best affordable sports street car (GR86 for example)