Spoilers, Foxtails & Mullets

Capturing an era when braggadocio was the underdog’s domain 

Even after having spent almost two years researching and writing a book on German Tuning, I’m not pretending that each and every automobile’s appearance can be improved by the addition of Breitbau wheel arch extensions and Testarossa strakes.

And yet, three decades after ‘peak Tuning’, I can’t help but look at that period and some (although by no means all) of its four-wheeled offspring with fondness. 

Back then, adding flamboyantly aggressive style to the - almost austere, at the time - automobile was the domain of a few dozen underdog entrepreneurs, engineers and designers. The aesthetic they established has since been adopted by the car industry itself - just in less playful, and more technically accomplished a manner. The martial expression sported by many a stock automobile in 2025 certainly makes the excesses of that motley crew of Breitbau Tuners appear endearingly small in scale - and more naïvely uninhibited than cynical.

To try and put the Tuning microcosm into context, I included brief interludes on what the rest of ‘80s West Germany was about in Spoilers, Foxtails & Mullets’ narrative. Hence the appearance of tv heartthrob, Sascha Hehn, or the favourite party snack of the decade, Spargel-Schinken-Röllchen. Hopefully, these brief insights into very average middle-class Germany, three-to-four decades ago, help understanding what the Tuners were up against - and how and why they succeeded in the end, pop-culturally speaking.

Generally speaking, there was a rebellious streak to ‘80s Tuning. Some years before the yuppie became that decade’s defining stereotype, the Tuners were flicking the bird at neo-conservative decency, courtesy of the symbols of boundlessly conspicuous consumption and braggadocio they created. This brazen rejection of good taste - then a fringe phenomenon - has since been adapted by parts of the car design mainstream, just without the underdog charm. 

I remain most thankful to my publishers, restlessly creative Bart Lenaerts and relentlessly conscientious Lies De Mol, for having thought of me in the context of Tuning at a point in time when I myself most certainly would not have done the same.

If I succeeded at what I set out to achieve with this book, readers will view it as a time capsule: a tribute to a brief, extraordinary period that was defined by just a handful of people who did things their way. 

Spoilers, Foxtails & Mullets is available in standard and Special Edition versions and can be purchased online here. 

Photos © WAFT(1)

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