Dear red97 & others,

As the other responses have mentioned, any performance chip is going to require the use of premium gasoline, as tuning specifically for higher octane is what gets the majority of the raw engine power increase.

Now, to answer the important and relevant question of "why don't the automakers themselves do this?", it's simply a matter of priorities. These vehicles are tuned in terms of maximum gasoline compatibility across this entire continent. So they have to be able to run on the fuels in Mexico, etc.

What we do is to re-tune the vehicle specificlly for the use of premium gasoline, thus releasing substantial additional power. Not everybody wants to use premium fuel in the stock vehicle from the factory, that would have a rather large impact on sales of these vehicles. Seeing as how we're talking about the worlds best-selling vehicle of any kind, they aren't about to mess with that formula.

Now in terms of why don't the automakers program their automatic transmissions the way we do, the automakers have all implemented what they call a "soft-shift strategy", to accomodate the female buyer/passenger. The automakers have set up these powertrains so that you can't feel much in terms of transmission shifting, as that is their perception of what females want. So you end up with a vehicle that is highly compromised in terms of it powertrain tuning.

The Superchip assumes that you want to be able to hear and feel the things that most "enthusiasts" want to hear and feel, and that is power, and nice firm shifting on heavy throttle. This reduction in slippage also helps to increase the service life of these automatics, by the way.

If anyone wants further detailed info, please feel free to call, we're happy to go over all of this with you.

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Mike Troyer
Performance Products, Inc.
National Distributor of Superchips
(540) 862-9515
Email: mtroyer@compuserve.com
Performance Products F150Online Superchip ordering system: F150Online Superchip Ordering System