The History of Street Racing

Several muffler sellers in the Philippines offer technologically advanced yet affordable mufflers that provide maximum noise reduction for their cars without compromising the vehicle’s performance. Street racers wouldn’t really want that – them, the noisier the better.

How did it start?

Street racing has been around since 1930’s.  Sometime after WWII, G.I.s who had worked on plane and jeep engines began implementing modifications on their own vehicles. This was the start of illegal street racing, which eventually blew up into the current underground phenomenon that it has become today.

As for modern street racing, this began in the 1960’s at Woodward Avenue in Michigan when the three main American car companies based in Detroit began producing high-powered vehicles.

What are the Types of Street Racing?

Touge or Toge is a type of street racing originated in Japan. Toge means “pass” in Japanese. This type of street racing happens in the mountain roads, where drivers had to expertly maneuver through the curves and turns of the mountains. A touge racer will be declared winner if he or she achieves to pull away from the trailing one. Compared to the other types of street racing, touge racing does not require racers to run at their highest speed as the drifting takes place in cliffs.

The second type is drag racing. This is highly considered to be the most popular form of car racing. Unlike touge, drag racing most often occur in the streets of cities. Each racer lines up, and start drifting as soon as the go signal comes on. The racer who reaches the final point or finish line first is declared winner. It’s important to note that some of these races don’t even offer any prizes – their only reward the satisfaction of beating the other racers and being the best racer. At least for that certain drag racing event. The winner can also gain popularity because of their exceptional driving skills and high-powered performance cars. The common length for a drag racing is a quarter mile or 1320 feet.

Another type is sprint or cannonball. This is the illegal point-to-point rally that involves more than two drivers. For many, this makes cannonball the most appealing exciting type of street racing. As with the other types, the winner is whoever reaches point A from point B in the shortest amount of time.

Those scenes of jumping behind the wheel and pushing the throttle as hard as they can are scenarios we often see in car racing movies such as Need for Speed. To some they may seem like things that are simply made by Hollywood to look exciting, but they actually do happen in real life. It has become so popular that various fast, tough, and high-powered car models have been produced specifically for such kind of events.

If you had the chance to try car racing, would you do it? Or do you think it’s far too dangerous? Let us know in the comments below!