The carburetor was the main way to get fuel into the engine back in the day. Modern-day car manufacturers use fuel injection to feed the engine the required gas it needs. That is the general idea of what a carburetor and fuel injection do to an engine. In the late 90s, carburetors had been mostly phased out, and by the 2000s, they were unheard of in any new production model. 

A lot of people joke that carburetor in French means “don’t touch,” but in reality it means “carburer” or to combine with carbon. The reason people used carburetors for so long is because that was all they had for decades, until throttle body injection came in the 80s. Although, most people say that it was a big failure at least for the hot rodders. Throttle body injection or TBI was similar to a carb. They still can get dirty easily and need maintenance; however, they are much harder to tune than a regular carb. On top of all that, they were a single injection. The fuel-air mixture stays in the chamber for different times and travels different distances before entering the cylinder; this reduces the quality of its combustion and increases the cost of gasoline.

Then after the failure of TBI, a new way of  fuel injection had reached the mainstream. Port injection injects fuel into the intake port close to the intake valve. This means it is a direct injection that delivers fuel directly to the combustion chamber. This system was far more efficient and you could tune your engine exactly how you wanted to, and perfect the way it runs. But on the other hand, it is more expensive and difficult to do this. You need a laptop with the correct software, a dyno and in most cases an aftermarket engine control module or ECM, which can get quite costly and requires a lot of work and knowledge to accomplish a successful tune.

So why would you want a carburetor over port injection? A carburetor is really good at doing one thing, so if you want to drag race your car, you can specially tune it to run really well doing that one thing. However, the carburetor lacks for multiple types of driving at once. 

Today, carburetors are still used for drag racers, truck pullers, circle track racers, dirt track racers, mudding trucks, and even offshore boat racers. Not to say that carburetors are bad for the average commuter car, they just aren’t as efficient as port injection; however, it is much easier to adjust your car’s tuning whenever you want. Finally, carburetors are a cost effective way of making power. A good setup for a carb could cost you around $1,200-$2000, while a port injection setup costs upward of $10,000.

Now that we have gone over the basics of carburetors and port injection and everything in between, in my opinion, carburetors are better for making cost-effective power and they are much easier to tune.