__I__nstead of waiting six months for a six-cylinder Volkswagen Passat, fans of Fahrvergnügen take their four-cylinder versions to chip tuners like Garrett Lim for a digital lobotomy. Garrett Integrated Automotive reprograms the electronic control module, aka the car's brain. Lim says most of his customers are amateur racers, but that doesn't stop the chips from being used on the street.
Even from the passenger's seat, the luxo-sedan felt nothing like the squishy-soft cruiser I'd test driven a few months earlier. Speedometer and tachometer needles jumped as though drawn by magnets once Lim removed factory-programmed limits on rpms and fuel injection. We reached 60 mph before using up second gear.
A dynamometer test showed a gain of nearly 25 horsepower. However, the real benefits are quicker throttle response, smoother acceleration, and more fun. A digital tune-up can yield better highway gas mileage, but it consigns the owner to a lifetime of pricey higher-octane fuel.
"There are 64,000 numbers, and you have to figure out which ones control what," Lim says. "The diagnostics will tell you when you've exceeded the factory speed limits. But torque is better for the street than just horsepower."
For DIY types, Lim sells a US$5,000 programming package called Super HexWin. Chip-based modules can be removed with little more than a screwdriver and mailed to Lim for alterations that cost a few hundred dollars. Changing the chip's factory settings can void a manufacturer's warranty, but that hasn't affected Lim's thriving business.
Because of Europe's warp-speed highways and lenient air-quality regs, autos coming into the US have been detuned, which leaves as much as 30 percent of their performance untapped. Tuners and customers often meet via Usenet, where one poor soul wanted to tone down the performance of a 1990 Ford Mustang that accelerated too fast because it had been a police car.
It's not all about power, though. Sometimes control is the ticket.
Lim says he once set a car's chipset with a 55-mph limit for a worried parent.
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