Osaka Auto Messe 2014 (175) HKS RACING PERFORMER 86

is a publicly traded company headquartered in

Fujinomiya is a city located in central Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 132,507 in 56,655 households, and a population density of 340 persons per km². The total area of the city is . History The city name comes from ...

Shizuoka Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Shizuoka Prefecture has a population of 3,637,998 and has a geographic area of . Shizuoka Prefecture borders Kanagawa Prefecture to the east, Yamanashi Prefecture to the northea ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

specializing in the production and sales of aftermarket and accessory automotive parts and components.

History

HKS was formed in 1973 by Hiroyuki Hasegawa, a former engineer for

Yamaha Motor Company is a Japanese multinational manufacturer of motorcycles, marine products such as boats and outboard motors, and other motorized products. The company was established in 1955 upon separation from Yamaha Corporation (however, Yamaha Corporatio ...

, and his partner Goichi Kitagawa, while the start up capital was supplied by Sigma Automotive (hence the name HKS). The company began operations by tuning gasoline-powered engines in a dairy-farming shed at the foot of

Mount Fuji , or Fugaku, located on the island of Honshū, is the highest mountain in Japan, with a summit elevation of . It is the second-highest volcano located on an island in Asia (after Mount Kerinci on the island of Sumatra), and seventh-highest ...

in Japan. Their goal was to design and build high performance engines and components that major original equipment manufacturers could not, or would not, produce. In July 1974, Hasegawa engineered and built the first commercialized

turbocharger In an internal combustion engine, a turbocharger (often called a turbo) is a forced induction device that is powered by the flow of exhaust gases. It uses this energy to compress the intake gas, forcing more air into the engine in order to pro ...

kit for passenger automobiles, since then developing turbocharger upgrades and bolt-on turbocharger kits that subsequently became the core business of HKS. Hasegawa also created the first commercially available electronic turbo timer and boost controller. HKS is a publicly traded company with an international sales and distribution network spanning Asia, Europe, Australia and the Americas to support its customer base. The company remains near Mt. Fuji with its main manufacturing and R&D facility in Fujinomiya City, Shizuoka Prefecture. Subsidiary companies have been established in

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to t ...

, England (HKS Europe),

Bangkok Bangkok, officially known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estimated populati ...

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

(HKS Thailand). HKS USA was established in 1982 but shut down operations in 2011 with HKS electing instead to use wholesale distributors to handle their supply chain in the USA instead. Motovicity Distribution was selected as the North American warehouse and in May 2020, Motovicity Distribution's assets were acquired by Turn 14 Distribution who currently handles authorized distribution of HKS's products in the United States. HKS SILVIA S12

Products

HKS offers Japanese domestic model cars a wide variety of aftermarket parts ranging from engine internals such as connecting rods and camshafts to external parts such as blow off valves, intercooler kits, full exhaust systems, turbo kits, engine management systems and other performance electronics. The company also produced the

HKS 700E The HKS 700E is a twin-cylinder, horizontally opposed, four stroke, carburetted aircraft engine, designed for use on ultralight aircraft, powered parachutes and ultralight trikes. The engine is manufactured by HKS, a Japanese company noted for ...

aircraft engine, under its subsidiary, ''HKS Aviation'',Cliche, Andre: ''Ultralight Aircraft Shopper's Guide'' 8th Edition, page G-9 Cybair Limited Publishing, 2001. but the subsidiary has since ceased operations.

Motorsport

In 1984, HKS supported the FJ20ET engined 'HKS WORLD TRADE SILVIA S12' competing in the JSS (Japan supersports) championship with driver

Seiichi Sodeyama Seiichi Sodeyama (袖山誠一 - Sodeyama Seiichi; born March 23, 1950) is a Japanese professional racing driver. Complete JGTC results (key Key or The Key may refer to: Common meanings * Key (cryptography), a piece of information that cont ...

. Since the late 1980s, HKS then competed in many forms of motorsports including

drag racing Drag racing is a type of motor racing in which automobiles or motorcycles compete, usually two at a time, to be first to cross a set finish line. The race follows a short, straight course from a standing start over a measured distance, most ...

, JTCC, JGTC, F3, D1 Grand Prix,

Superbikes Superbike racing is a category of motorcycle racing that employs highly modified production motorcycles, as opposed to MotoGP in which purpose-built motorcycles are used. The Superbike World Championship is the official world championship series, t ...

, plus many others. They also sponsor many racers to carry the HKS name and to become part of the HKS team. In the past, they notably used the likes of

Anthony Reid Anthony Reid is a British auto racing driver, born on 17 May 1957 in Glasgow, Scotland. He was educated at Loretto School in Edinburgh. He lives in England. Formula cars He spent many years in Formula Three and other junior single-seater cham ...

(

Supertouring Super Touring, Class 2 or Class II was a motor racing Touring Cars category defined by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) for national touring car racing in 1993. It was based on the "2 litre Touring Car Formula" created ...

/JTCC), Tetsuya Kawasaki (drag racing), Nobuteru Taniguchi (D1 Grand Prix and Time Attack),

Akira Iida is a Japanese racing driver currently competing in the Super GT series in GT300 class with , one of the teams under Toyota Motorsport's GAZOO racing arm. Iida won the 2002 All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship GT500 class with Esso Toyota Te ...

(Time Attack) to drive for their in-house team.

In popular culture

HKS-tuned cars have been featured in video game series such as

Need for Speed ''Need for Speed'' (''NFS'') is a racing game franchise published by Electronic Arts and currently developed by Criterion Games, the developers of ''Burnout''. The series generally centers around illicit street racing and tasks players to c ...

and Gran Turismo.

References

External links