I recently spent a morning at a tuning shop here in Orange County watching a suspension install on a friends car. This particular shop specializes on one particular brand and that s all they do. In talking to the tech, I found out he had been with this company for 23 years, almost a quarter of a century. His knowledge of the product line was unbelievable. He knew the cars backwards and forwards and knew everything about the manufacturers parts. This made me think about all the shops around that try to do everything.

A project car for another magazine was recently used to prototype a new turbo kit. This company is really experienced in the turbo business, but they had never touched this brand of car before. As you may have guessed it turned into a huge headache. They fried his ECU which he had to pay for, they ended up not finishing the tune, and the car is way down on power compared to comparable kits.

It makes me think that tuners who try and do everything, stretch themselves way to thin. It makes me think back to the old saying that you can either know a lot about a little or a little about a lot.  Companies can either focus on one particular part and make it for lots of vehicles, like spring companies, or they can focus on one car brand and make lots of parts for them.

On a recent trip to Magnaflow I saw what it takes to do exhausts for multiple car brands. They are a huge company with a couple hundred employees and an enomous amount of space. Yet all they do are exhausts. They haven't tried branching out into other things. If a company of that size can't do everything for everyone I don't know how some of these 5 person operations can do it.