For a guy that has worked in the automotive field for close to 50 years as an engineer, with well over 2.5 million miles under his belt, wasn't very nice to be labeled as a Driver's Ed. The cure for this is to post a lot.
Tuning depends on the type of fuel you can put into your vehicle, with my old Model A Ford, basically a 20 mpg vehicle, would run on a variety of fuels, although I never tried kerosene nor fuel oil in it. CR was 4.5:1, maximum engine speed was 2,100 rpm, but still capable of doing 80 mph.
Since its conception, our public roads have decreased the speed limits, not increased them. This now 86 year old automobile is still capable of taking your driver's license away for a year and skyrocketing your insurance rates. But yet we have more 500 HP vehicles on the market never before in our history. But none of these is eligible to run in NASCAR or the Indy 500!
Tuning late model 30's to 60's vehicles required taking the engine apart, higher CR's, cam grinds, polishing, but only for a narrow torque range, to get more at the high end, sucker wouldn't idle worth a darn, but that was considered as being cool.
With the switch from leaded to unleaded fuels, detuning was required if you even wanted to drive the darn thing. CR had to be reduced, and performance decreasing ERG valve had to be added. Another choice was to make your own engine out of ceramics, but if you did this, EPA would be all over your butt.
With my 80's type vehicles, conventional, I can tune them for better economy and performance to run on 91 octane fuel, but forget about using 87, would ping like crazy.
Cruze can run on a range of octane fuel, 87 to 93, has computer controlled spark advance, variable valve timing, and continuously variable metered fuel. Can't do this with fixed carburetor jets. But don't try putting diesel fuel in this thing, okay for the Model A Ford, but people half asleep at self service gas stations learned very quickly their vehicles do not run very well on this fuel.
I tried ethanol free 89 octane fuel in my MT Cruze, didn't have to do a thing to it, it detuned itself, didn't like it, went back to 91 octane to get my fuel and performance back.
And speaking about a manual transmission, married and brought a beautiful woman to this country that has driven a MT all of her life. She couldn't even pass her driver's test in this thing, have a country loaded with a$$holes, lost points every time she took her right hand off the wheel to shift gears. Also lost points in a car that only had two turns from lock to lock, because she didn't use hand over hand steering, when it only took a 20* turn of the wheel to do any corner.
Had to borrow an older AT car so she could finally pass her test, and this was the forth time. Not the only law, also have an EPA that if caught, granted not enforced like illegal immigration, could be fined $40,000.00, talk about inflation, use to be a mere $25,000.00.
Brought up immigration, because when we were dating, if she overstayed her I-94 just by one day, would have been banned from entering this country for ten years. But if you don't apply for citizenship, can stay here for years. Really live in a screwed up country, and the more you learn, the more you realize how screwed up it is.
Ha, that Model A was only a 40 HP engine, with our present speed laws, this is all you need.
