Tommy Kaira designs an Insight I wouldn't step on

[kevingalls]

[caption id="attachment_517" align="alignnone" width="660" caption="Tommy Kaira 2010 Insight"][/caption] Aftermarket car tuning is roughly a $250 million industry. After all, who wants to drive around in a stock silver prius when you can have one with carbon fiber bits and 18" rims? Toyota and Honda have amazing engineers working for them, but their hands are still tied somewhat by the corporate bureaucracy. The result for economy cars is usually watered down and bland in order to cut costs. It comes to no surprise then that aftermarket tuners would eventually get their hands on hybrids. Tommy Kaira, legendary Japanese tuner just released his tuned Prius and Insight. Performance is beefier, the weight is lighter, and the aerodynamics are improved. Improvements are good. I'd give you specific numbers, but I can't read Japanese.

Some people might scowl at the thought of tuning a car with a 0-60 time of 10 seconds, but this represents an increasingly widespread acceptance of a fundamental shift in the auto industry. Nearly every manufacturer is going to be producing hybrids and little green boxes with extraordinary research and development budgets, but they still need aftermarket tuners to set the standards of performance for them. Hopefully tunes like this will put the fun-factor back into motoring and we won't all need to be driving 98 horsepower city cars, eating tofu, and picketing animal research facilities.