Like Hoover, Thermos and iPod, the name of Buckingham-based Superchips has become a generic term. Superchips, a pioneer of remapping, has been in the turning game for 30 years and really become well known during the heyday of the Sierra Cosworth. But these days its customers are as likely to be middle-aged businessmen with premium German turbodiesels than boy racers wanting maxiumum power from an Impreza.
In the old days, chipping meant exactly that – soldering a new microchip into the ECU board with the new map installed. But most current cars are remapped using the diagnostic port, which is where Superchips’ Bluefin comes in. The idea was developed in the US, where it wasn’t always practical for customers to travel to a dealer to have their ECUs recoded. What was needed was a way for the customer to perform the upgrade themselves.
Order on the Superchips website and you’ll receive something through the post that looks like a TV remote. Plug it into the OBD port under the dash and the new programme containing revised fuel and ignition settings is uploaded in just a couple of minutes. You can also return it to standard just as quickly – not that you’d want to. It transforms a Passat 2.0 TDi 140 into an overtaking machine.
For an £880 premium VW will sell you a 170 2.0 TDi with 168bhp – but you can remap your 140 to produce even more power for half that. The Bluefin boosts the standard car to 184bhp and lifts torque from 245lbft to 284lbft. Drive it like a nun and you’ll never notice the difference. It’s as smooth and well-mannered as the standard car. But start to explore the performance and the difference is dramatic. Boost comes in fractionally sooner than standard and by 2000rpm the Superchips car feels like an entirely different animal and hot hatch quick through the gears: 1.5sec quicker than stock to 60mph and more than 6 sec to 100mph. In the wet you can feel that there’s more of a struggle for traction, but the ESP can mop it up subtly.
Now overtaking becomes a cinch – it even tugs hard in the tall sixth gear, which feels so flat in the stock car. And rather than dying out at 4000rpm, the remapped engine swings happily round to the 5k redline. Superchips can also upgrade a 170bhp car to around 200bhp, but that doesn’t detract from the chipped 140. If you’re driving any VW Group car with this engine, it’s a no-brainer.
Verdict: Amazing result for the money.
