HKS is one of the biggest and most famous Japanese tuning brands. It makes performance parts for street cars, track cars, drift cars, drag cars and serious demo builds. The name comes from Hasegawa, Kitagawa and Sigma: Hiroyuki Hasegawa, Goichi Kitagawa, and Sigma Automotive, which helped provide the original backing. HKS was founded in 1973 near Mount Fuji.

HKS became famous early because it was one of the pioneers of Japanese turbo tuning. In 1974, HKS introduced a turbo kit for the Skyline GC100 L20 engine, which HKS describes as the world’s first turbocharger kit of its kind for a passenger car.