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Hasegawa Kitagawa Sigma

Legendary tuner, legendary acronym - H KS
1973. In a tiny shed at the foot of Mt Fuji in Japan, Hiroyuki Hasegawa and Goichi Kitagawa started a small scale engineering company with the aim of building high performance street and race cars, as well as developing high tech parts that regular car manufacturers could not pursue The startup capital was provided by Kitagawa's company Sigma Automotive and the anonym HKS was bom.
HKS holds the title of being one of the earliest Japanese tuners, their long and illustrious history glittering with industry firsts and amazing innovations. HKS was the first tuning company in the world to develop and commercially release an aftermarket turbo kit, and the first to sell electronic turbo timers boost controller.
Turbocharging was the in thing during the mid-70's and after the arrival of cars like the Porsche 911 Turbo, almost everyone wanted to get on the turbocharged bandwagon. Those who couldn't own these boosted high performance wonders because of their exorbitant factory prices, turned to aftermarket tuners for a solution. The tuner culture that Japan is so famous for was bom, and HKS led the charge in making sure these
tuned run of the mill cars went as fast as the factory built supercars.
In the mid 80's, HKS shifted its eyes westward, opening up divisions and subsidiaries in the US and UK bringing aftermarket import tuning to their shores. It wouldn't grow huge till the early 2000's in the US, but HKS had a huge hand in the push to make aftermarket tuning a billion dollar industry.
Worldwide, the HKS brand grew till it had a hand in pretty much everything, from suspension products, spark plugs, aero kits, to even lubricants. They built race cars, competed in time attack, drift championships, drag racing, even endurance racing, and built award winning demo cars that showed the world what HKS was capable of.
Its not all rosy, however, as HKS USA, one of the most profitable franchises, shut down its North American operations in 2011. Losses, lack of support from manufacturers and a strong aversion to tuned cars in the general public (due to the negative image of street racing) forced the longest running Japanese tuning firm to stop its operation in the region.
Every year HKS Premium Day at Fuji International Speedway invites the best tuned cars from across Japan to one place for a day of turbocharged track fun. HKS is still running strong, developing parts for newer Japanese sports cars like the Toyota GT86 and Nissan R35 GTR.
We might not have proper HKS parts available locally (other than spark plugs, air intakes, lubricants, etc), mostly due to the cost involved, but if you have the dough and the technical know how, you can have them shipped in.
( The Green Stig )