Get ready for a new series of American Tuned

American Tuned is back. We've scoured the 50 states, and even (legally) breached the Canadian border. As it has been for three series, our aim is to survey the landscape of American tuning and tell the stories of the builders and owners who make it such a diverse and, only partly in performance terms, hyperactive scene.

YouTube’s Wankel-engine superuser Rob Dahm returns as host, as we chart a course through the Pacific Northwest, North Texas, Connecticut’s legendary Lime Rock Park and, naturally, Southern California. We found unique builds and stories of creative vision, technical know-how, and boundless enthusiasm for modifying motor cars, whether by baby steps or eons from stock.

Series three kicks off on 14 December with the NASROD, Jessie Jewart's Texas-by-way-of-Wyoming, 1932 Ford pickup truck. It combines motorsport tech elements with rat rod design. “Half 11” explores a Porsche 911 cross-fertilised with an IndyCar, a bit of creative madness from the Oil Stain Lab design studio. It’s a “dream car” inspiration for the next phase in the team’s efforts to redefine small-batch carbuilding.

Dahm’s interest in (he’d call it an obsession with) extended-length drag racing reflects in the world’s fastest Acura Integra, a 1,500-horsepower 1994 GSR owned and built by Myles Kerr that’s run a quarter-mile run at 213 mph. Texas tuning legend Tony Palo’s 2,500-horsepower Audi R8, along with Rob’s innards, also gets a flat-out workout, and a surprising Trailblazer SS lays an epic, smokey burnout that lasts - with a little video editing help - an entire episode.

Each show brings a new story that merges ingenuity with personal storytelling, like the transformation of a clapped-out Volvo 850 estate into one fan’s BTCC-tribute racing car (using half a BMW V10’s throttle bodies), a Canadian Mini Cooper with an interior inspired by browsing furniture shops - and a Honda engine shoehorned into the rear - and a Southern California tuning shop’s Honda S2000R, an alternate-universe model Hondaheads clamoured for the company to build, but it never did.

Tapping into a devoted VW community, we also eyeballed an eighth-gen GTI that’s had every sort of bolt-on part, er, bolted onto it, as one tuning shop’s test bed for modifying the latest version of the perennial favourite hot hatch. Practicality isn’t lost on us.

Indeed, American Tuned continues its journey into automotive creativity, technology and the potential for car tuners to tell a good story in sheetmetal.