Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
For over one hundred years now, Automotive performance enthusiasts and establishments have found a way to make a stock vehicle quick, fast, faster, and so on. The marketing department and clever entrepreneurs came up with a great idea for classifying the ever improving technology and horsepower it brought with them to factory built vehicles.
Picture a board of directors meeting,
“We will make a hierarchical order or list of performance packages to simplify the shopping experience for the brainless customer, and to increase sales by creating a sense of inadequacy for those who cannot afford the best service and products we offer!”
So? you get the idea. This idea worked for a while and was commendable and made sense. However, one side effect that this brought was now customers and owners of these vehicles referred to how expensive and fast their car was in “Stages” This social change in the automotive culture prompted great confusion to those who had identical cars, but brought them to different companies to have a “similar” service performed on them.
A prime example of referring to a cars ability in “Stages” is with one of my favorite vehicles, the “B5″ Audi S4. In the S4, a twin turbo V6 engine brought a whole new meaning to performance and startling acceleration. A simple computer chip could yield 40-70 horsepower to the wheels with no other changes and thus, a Stage was born. Known as “Stage 1″ by most chip/computer tuners. Stage 1 for almost all companies out there refers to the service of updating the vehicles engine computer for more power, and little if-not anything else. These cars were so fast with just a boost-increasing computer update, that a new breed of tuners and car enthusiasts came to light. Within days of those who could afford these cars started tinkering with them, it was well documented that the larger and more reliable turbos equipped on the euro-only RS4 would bolt up and run with a proper computer on the U.S and Canada sold S4’s with near and often surpassed RS4 power levels. We now refer to S4’s equipped with K04’s (over K03’s) “Stage 3″ Audi S4’s. This leaves Stage 2, which as it would makes sense refers to an S4 with everything BUT K04’s. Marketing teams LOVE “stage 2″, regardless of what product it is.
More than a decade later, and we have a completely new generation of S4 owners working with the knowledge of 10+ years experience and research behind them in the community. S4’s are 100% tweakable now and nearly every kind of forced induction combination has been tried. So why is it that after a decade of improving this vehicle, the new generation is still referring to the vehicle in stages? Hell, we might be at Stage 9 by now…
In a quick attempt to combat confusion with what stage your car is, and regardless of whether you think Stages should exist or not, lets ignore every companies technique out there and base it on a modern and more fitting quarter-mile and/or standing-mile based time chart to document sheer acceleration and top speed.
Please comment with any suggestions or changes that should be made.
Stage 1 = Chip =
<13.5s 1/4 mile
Stage 2 = add downpipe and update tune =
<12.5s 1/4 mile
Stage 3 = K03 sports/K04’s or bigger. Aka OEM swapped turbos & a maybe a built motor. + updated fuel/tune support mods, etc…
<12.0s 1/4 miles
Stage 3 – = Lack of budget for proper fueling/scared of being faster.
Stage 3 + = Lack of imagination for bigger turbo choices.
Stage 4 = Biggest pair of turbos you can fit under the hood
<11.0s 1/4 miles
Stage 4+ = Cut turbo count in half, roughly double size of remaining turbo.
<10.75s 1/4 mile
Stage 5 = Whatever comes next….
(First revision: 7/19/13)Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
