Hot-Rod Hackers

Hot rodding used to be a pretty straightforward hobby. Once you'd mastered manifolds and camshafts, all you had to worry about was how to get the money for your engine parts and the grease off your hands. Then in 1981, Detroit, pressed to reduce emissions and improve fuel efficiency, started putting something new in their cars: computers. Suddenly, anyone who wanted to fine- tune an engine had to have a degree in data processing.

No problem. A lively market has now developed for so-called superchips, plug-in brains that replace factory-supplied engine chips and offer a variety of improvements, from better gas mileage to higher horsepower. Today half a dozen U.S. firms, led by Memphis-based Hypertech, sell some 40,000 high- performance chips a year for GM cars and Fords, as well as for imports made by Nissan, BMW and Porsche. Average price: about $130.

The superchips represent the merger of two quintessentially American pastimes: car customizing and computer hacking. When the first "engine management" chips debuted, some bright young computer types broke the coding and discovered that the tuning devices supplied by the manufacturers were designed for average drivers using low-octane fuel and left considerable room for improvement. With some minor adjustments, the processors that control engine timing and gear shifting could be reprogrammed for speed demons burning high-test to increase horsepower anywhere from 10% to 30%.

Of course, when you pop out your stock chip and replace it with a superchip, you break your warranty and you may violate the Clean Air Act, which was amended last year to require that high-performance parts meet the emissions standards of the car for which they are built. Today most superchip makers are scrambling to bring their products up to that code. Meanwhile, a California start-up called Adaptive Technologies has introduced a nifty gadget that lets you drive around in your superchipped wheels and then, when it's inspection time, switch back to the original chip with a twist of the wrist.