SOUTH AFRICAN ROOKIE; S.A. alpine developments Hyundai Tiburon.(News)

Byline: MARK VAUGHN

When you think of the hotbeds of hot rodding you may think of Thunder Alley, the dry lakes, The Valley or any number of well-documented power shops in Southern California and elsewhere. But a location that doesn't immediately pop into mind is South Africa.

S.A. Alpine Developments Inc. can be traced to club racer John Conchie, who owned a 1949 factory-supercharged MG TC in his native South Africa in the mid-1950s.

"I've been fiddling with cars all my life,'' he said on a recent visit to California.

Fascinated with superchargers, he conspired with his partner at the time, a chap with the delightful name of Puddles Alder, to supercharge a Renault for the track.

The pair raced the car for a while and then offered it to a then-unknown South African driver named Jody Scheckter, who used it to regularly beat factory Ford Escorts in local sports car races.

Conchie formed Alconi Developments (from Alder/Conchie) in 1964 and won contracts with Renault and Datsun to design and supply superchargers. In 1980, he founded Alpine Developments to make superchargers and turbochargers for carmakers in Europe, the Middle East and most of the Southern Hemisphere. Their original equipment client list includes Nissan, Fiat, Renault, Peugeot, Alfa Romeo, Hyundai and Toyota. Here in the United States, Alpine makes the intake manifold and supercharger case for Toyota Racing Development's 2.4- and 2.7-liter superchargers. Alpine says it has engineered more than 25,000 superchargers and turbochargers worldwide.