Five best mods to make your car faster

Tires

You were probably hoping to hear “LS swap” or “turbo kit” to kick this list off, but those mods aren’t worth much if you can’t put the power down. Without grip, you can’t have speed, and stock all-season tires just don’t provide the traction you’ll need to go faster safely and get the most out of your mods. 

 

Tires are also one of the easiest car performance upgrades. Buy a set of summer tires that suits your needs, and most local shops can have them mounted and balanced in an afternoon for around $100.

Choosing tires is a process worthy of its own article, but the basic premise is simple. Look for a high-performance summer tire with a treadwear rating below about 350. Tires in this range will offer significantly higher grip than stock all-seasons but still be viable street tires. 

 

The downside to running stickier rubber is that you will need to change your tires more often and performance in colder temperatures will drop.

ECU TUNE

Once you have a set of grippier tires, it’s time to add horsepower. If you have a car built in the last two decades, getting an engine computer tune is one of the best-bang-for-your-buck mods out there. As far as easy mods for more horsepower go, ECU work is near the top of the list. 

 

ECU tuners work either by adding a microchip to your car’s engine computer, or by adding a second ECU — known as a “piggyback” — that works in conjunction with the stock computer. A chip or piggyback will allow you to control fuel and air mixture, fuel delivery timing, and spark timing over the car’s entire rev range to maximize horsepower.

From the factory, cars are generally tuned to favor maximum efficiency over maximum horsepower in the name of fuel economy, reducing emissions, and increasing longevity. An ECU tune will prioritize horsepower over the factory settings, and there are often huge gains to be found. You can buy plug-and-play ECU upgrades that will give you more power simply by plugging them in, but paying a professional to tune your car on a chassis dyno is the best way to see the benefit of an ECU tune.

The drawback to ECU work is, like most mods that increase horsepower, you jeopardize your factory warranty, and your car may no longer pass emissions in states that require testing.

Bigger brakes

It might seem counterintuitive at first, but stronger brakes are a key component of making your car faster. Increasing speed means increasing stopping distances, which means you will need a brake upgrade just to maintain stock stopping performance. But to truly make your car a high-performance machine, you’ll need to shorten stopping distances.

Let’s use autocross as an example. If you want to get faster around the autocross course, you want to use the brakes as little as possible. The stronger your brakes, the shorter your stopping distances, which means less time on the brakes and more time on the gas. More time on the gas means more speed, more speed means a quicker lap.

The story is similar on a drag strip. Lower ETs means faster trap speeds, which effectively shorten the runoff area. Without a good set of brakes, you’re in serious trouble.

 

The easiest way to get more stopping power is a set of more aggressive brake pads. Good street pads can be had for a little over $100 and will go a long way to improve your brakes. Better rotors are also relatively inexpensive and easy to install. But if you want the biggest improvement, we recommend a set of new brake calipers and braided stainless steel brake lines.

Turbo kit

Whether you drive a Miata, a Civic, a Camaro, or an F-150, there is no better way to make bolt-on horsepower than a turbo kit. Turbos effectively make your engine larger, by forcing more fuel and air into the cylinders than the stock induction system can manage. More air and fuel mean bigger explosions, and that means more horsepower.

Because turbos use exhaust gasses to spin a turbine that compresses air, you don’t need to open up your engine to install a turbo. You likely will need a new exhaust manifold, but many kits come with the correct manifold, and the internet is full of workarounds to use your stock manifolds. After that, it’s just a matter of finding the space for everything.

 

If you add a turbo, it is usually required that you at least chip your ECU, if not add a piggyback, so factor that into the cost. You might also need bigger fuel injectors to make the most of the turbo’s boost levels. But even with those mods included, the cost of a turbo setup is generally lower than that of an engine swap, and installation is many factors easier. 

Getting big horsepower is never going to be cheap, but bolting a turbo to your car might be the single best way to make your car go faster.

Coilover suspension

Coilovers replace your stock struts or shock-and-spring setup with a much more adjustable, stiffer suspension system in a compact and lightweight package. There are thousands of these kits available, and they range from dead-easy bolt-in stock replacement set ups to kits to retrofit modern suspension to old chassis that require fabrication. 

 

Good coilover kits will have stronger dampers to cope with stiffer springs, will lower your car’s ride height, and will allow you to adjust how stiff or supple the suspension is based on the roads or tracks you drive most often. Many kits also let you adjust the angle at which the front tires touch the ground, which helps increase both grip and steering feel.

Like tires and brakes, a suspension kit is a chassis mod that will make your car faster without ever touching the engine. And when you do add horsepower, you won’t have to worry about the chassis being able to keep up with the increased speed.