[Headracer]

Originally Posted by Nortad

The whole tuned v stock issue is stupid because its all too organic and subjective. Expensive cars are usualy powerful but street legal in all detail and better built and reliable, and when you count that in, tuning a lesser car to achive the same result in all areas and not only the performance part, then the tables turn and it becomes more expensive to tune than to buy a stock Ferrari or Lambo, because these are usualy built with those issues in mind, and a hothatch would have to be serious adapted and even then it would be compromised.

I think that's true beyond a certain point. With any stock production car, the manufacturer builds in a certain fudge factor in terms of parts that are understressed or overbuilt. When a manufacturer does this with say, an engine, there is solid room for improvement at a relatively economical price because you only have to replace a few select parts (or even just reflash the ECU in some cases). That's the area where modifying makes sense; between what the parts really are designed to be capable of and the lower load the manufacturer puts on them from the factory. Beyond that, it gets into a question of diminishing marginal power/handling returns on investment as you end up replacing more parts than you keep. Unless making your ride really "personal" is worth that cash it isn't worth venturing into this level of modding because any claimed justification in terms of speed is complete BS. Huh, I guess it just took me an entire paragraph to say I kind of agree...Oh well.