Why import tuners?

I've often wonder about how and why the fascination with import cars have with enthusiasts over the last ten to fifteen(maybe longer) years. In my youth American cars with big V8's ruled the streets. If you had anything less than a V8 it was a commuter or economy car. It puzzled me it as I saw more and more automotive enthusiasts turning to Honda's, Nissan's, Toyota's and more for high performance cars. Most of them hot rodding out 4 cylinder cars. Why the majority of them were Japanese imports to boot. I didn't understand it because American automakers had small cars with 4 cylinders also.

Part of how this came about was partly by accident. Apparently Japanese automakers in the 1970's and early 1980's had invested billions of dollars in engine plants. Banking on the continued climb of gasoline prices they assumed that the demand for small engines would increase. The gasoline prices eased and demand for bigger cars continued. Now faced with the dilemma of what to do. They couldn't very well retool the plants as that would be too cost prohibitive they had to come up with a solution to compete as far as engines would go. Product development teams turned to engineering to see if they had any solutions. They suggested something that was to simply to turn to ideas that themselves were not new. They would turn to fuel injection rather than carburetors, overhead cams, 4 valves per cylinder(instead of two), turbochargers and superchargers. Essentially what you got was a factory hot rodded out engine. With all the bugs worked out.

What happened afterwards was that public perception was that these were high-tech ideas when in reality these were not really new. They just refined it. Most American cars at that point were carbureted and were seen as low-tech. Domestic automakers were slow to react and often fumbled to catch up. Further adding to the perception that domestics were falling behind.

I believe this was the birth of tuner cars.

Source: The machine that changed the world by Womack,Jones and Roos