The language of import performance can be strange. Sometimes it's a verbal stew of numbers and letters--RX-8, NSX, and MR2, for example--that seem randomly tossed together. At other times it adopts ...

Last month's "How It Works" story gave you the basics of the four-stroke cycle, describing the motion of the intake and exhaust valves in relation to the piston moving up and down in the cylinder.

Decades ago (OK, half a century or more), there was a product advertised in many of the performance magazines called the Varicam. The idea was a set of springs attached to a centrifugal device that ...