The Complex Guide to In-House Tuners

Tuned cars are sweet, but they usually have minimal or no warranties, mediocre reliability, and tiny, underfunded customer service departments. That's not sweet. Luckily, a number of companies own tuners, and churn out their own tuned cars, which are some of the coolest whips on the road right now, and come with at lease passable reliability, good warranties, and the same customer service as the big marques that own them.

Basically, it's the best of all worlds, and if you have some spare cash under the mattress, you should pay extra attention to The Complex Guide to In-House Tuners.

Parent Company: Mini
Founded: 2002
Notable Cars: Mini Cooper S JCW, Mini Countryman All4 JCW
Defining Quirk: Managing to make one engine and a few suspension bits a whole line up

With the rebirth of Mini, tuners had a new, very fun car to work with, and the newly incorporated John Cooper Works started extracting even more fun from the pint-sized faux-English, German hatchbacks. BMW, knowing what M had done for its main brand, recognized JCW's genius and purchased it in 2008.

Parent Company: Ford
Founded: 1993
Notable Cars: Mustang SVT Cobra, Shelby GT500, GT, F-150 SVT Raptor, F-150 SVT Lightning
Defining Quirk: Supercharged V8s

Ford's Special Vehicle Team started off by making one of the most highly regarded Mustangs of all time, and has managed not to go downhill from there. Since the SVT Cobra was first unveiled, the Ford tuner has added a number of other beloved sports cars to the American giant's roster, including the amazing GT supercar (not the GT40, mind you).

Parent Company: Mercedes-Benz
Founded: 1967
Notable Cars: AMG Hammer, C63 AMG, 300SEL, SLS AMG
Defining Quirk: V8s that define the word "lunacy."

Mercedes-AMG started off as just AMG, but was purchased by Daimler in 1999 and became Mercedes-AMG. Back in 1967, AMG was wholly concerned with the production of racing engines, but over the years the company, which was founded by two former Mercedes engineers, started offering performance accessories for Mercedes cars. The accessory business turned quickly into tuned cars, and these cars caught the eye of Daimler top brass enough to warrant Benz's acquisition of the tuner.

Today, many look at AMG Benzes as Europe's muscle cars. They might not have the razor sharp handling of the competition from BMW, but it's more than made up for by the charisma of the engines, and the fun, tail-out dynamics of the cars.

Parent Company: Toyota
Founded: 1979
Notable Cars: Supra TRD, Tacoma TRD, V8 Camry Stock Car
Defining Quirk: Superchargers for engines of all sizes

TRD (Toyota Racing Development) is Toyota's official badass wing of operations. While TRD makes most of its money selling accessories, from floor mats to superchargers, we think the division's coolest products are the off-roaders. TRD trucks and SUVs kick some serious ass, and are still as reliable as the rock solid Toyotas that they're based on.

Parent Company: Subaru
Founded: 1988
Notable Cars: WRX STI, Legacy Tuned by STI, Impreza WRC
Defining Quirk: The pink logo, and pink race cars are "Cherry Blossom Red," which is considered masculine in Japan

We all know about the Subaru WRX STI, and some of us know about the Legacy STI, but most Americans have no idea that Subaru Technica International is a full fledged in-house tuner that is responsible for a ton of amazing limited runs. Sadly, most of these were Japanese market only.

We still hope that STI will get back into the WRC some time soon.

Parent Company: Mazda
Founded: 1967
Notable Cars: 787B, MazdaSpeed6, MazdaSpeed3
Defining Quirk: A love of rotary engines and a total disregard for torque-steer

MazdaSpeed was once named Mazda Sports Corner and was a grass-roots racing organization, which was even competitive at Le Mans. Given the team's successes on track and in the field of tuning, Mazda bought it, renamed it, and relocated it to Hiroshima in '83. In 1991 a rotary engined car campaigned by MazdaSpeed became the only Japanese entry to ever win the prestigious endurance race.

While MazdaSpeed hasn't been that interested in racing since the FIA outlawed rotary engines after the '91 win, it has been making some great cheap performance cars. Torque-steer be damned, the MazdaSpeed3 is good fun.

Parent Company: Fiat
Founded: 1949
Notable Cars: Abarth 1500 Biposto, Abarth 595, Autobianchi A112 Abarth, Fiat 500 Abarth
Defining Quirk: Tiny performance cars

When Carlo Abarth (pronounced uh-bart) moved to Italy, he wanted to make race cars, and so he started modifying cheap Italian commuters for the track. Because of raucous and exciting cars like the Autobianchi A112 Abarth and the Abarth 595, Abarth quickly became the dominant tuner in the boot shaped country. Fiat, being Italy's massive automotive superpower and the subject of many of Abarth's greatest cars, bought the tuner in 1971.

Abarth's take on the Fiat 500 is one of the most fun cars we've driven recently, and we're even more excited for the roadster that the company is rumored to be working on.

Parent Company: BMW
Founded: 1972
Notable Cars: 3.0 CSL, M535i, M1, E30 M3, 1-Series M Coupe
Defining Quirk: Performance through cutting edge technology.

BMW's in house tuner, usually known as "BMW M" or just "M", got off to a very good start with the now legendary 3.0 CSL. Since then, the tuner has mostly focused on making berzerk versions of BMW's passenger cars. Although M used to only work with sedans, coupes, and wagons, it has since branched out and is now making hotted up versions of every car BMW makes.

Parent Company: Volvo
Founded: 1996
Notable Cars: S60 Polestar, C30 Polestar,
Defining Quirk: The company likes to make E85 race cars

Polestar is a company that specializes in preparing Volvos for races, ad is just on the cusp of turning into an in-house tuner. We've seen amazing concepts, but we're still waiting to just be able to walk into any Volvo dealer and buy an S60 that can stand up to a BMW M3.

Parent Company: Nissan
Founded: 1984
Notable Cars: Skyline GT-R, Z33 Fairlady, 380RS
Defining Quirk: A serious attention to optimized software

When two of Nissan's motorsport divisions merged, NISMO was born, and the import field has been better for it since that day. We love that NISMO still does a ton of Motorsport, and even is involved in taking the best PS3 GranTurismo 4 racers and turning them into real racers.

We're really excited to see NISMO grow into more of a full line tuner. Bring on the Juke NISMO.

Parent Company: Infiniti
Founded: 2011
Notable Cars: G37 IPL
Defining Quirk: None...yet

Infiniti's brand new Infiniti Performance Line has promised to be a Japanese equivalent of BMW's M, but only time will tell if that happens. As it stands now, IPL has only been responsible for a mildly more exciting G37.

Parent Company: Chrysler
Founded: 2003
Notable Cars: SRT Viper, Chrysler 300 SRT8, Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR, SRT Viper
Defining Quirk: The world's largest production engine

Formed from the members of "Team Viper" and "Team Prowler" (responsible for the Dodge Viper and Plymouth Prowler) SRT used to be the Chrysler Groups's tuner that slapped those initials (Street & Racing Technology) on the backs of cars it had hotted up across the Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep line ups, but, with the introduction of the newly re-branded SRT Viper, has now turned into a semi-separate company.

We're really pumped to see the cars SRT is going to make, given its expanded position within the company. Expect a 300hp, AWD Dodge Dart and a resurrection of the Barracuda nameplate soon.

Parent Company: Audi
Founded: 1983
Notable Cars: Audi RS2 quattro, Audi R8, Ur-S4
Defining Quirk: An obsession with all-wheel drive.

quattro (always with a lowercase q) was named in honor of the Audi ur-quattro that used all wheel drive to great effect and dominated the World Rally Championship. Today, quattro makes Audi's sporty s-line cars, the much more hardcore RS cars, and the mid-engined R8.