The situation with the V pro is very regretable indeed. Its a really great product and apparently the choices are very limited as to where you can go to get it tuned so it has not really taken a big following in our market.

In my fantasy world, HKS would allow every bona fide professional tuner the ability to have access to the license key. This would give customers a much greater selction and ability to work with local and familiar tuners. I think this would also enable them to overcome a lot of the resistance to the product and expand sales greatly. At the end of the day my opinion means nothing and HKS can do what ever they want.

The problem with the V PRO IMHO is that HKS seems to have limited interest in cultivating new tuners and expanding the network. This is regretable as the product is a very good one and has significant advantages over some of the choices out there.

It would be great to be able to offer my customer's HKS V pro services but it is not in the cards for me at this time.

The reason why I mentioned HKS V pro in the first place was to use it as an example that other tuning products are set up so that only authorized tuner / dealers can offer tuning support for the product. This kind of business / tuning model is the NORM in other markets like JDM and Europem ect. where most end users seem to reply on preofessional tuners to do the tuning and where the tuning is resptricted to authorized dealers.

Discussions about the merrits of HKS's apparent decision to limit the V PRO to a very limited amount of tuners are really off topic and irrelevant to the topic at hand.
AL

 

grapes.

Sean

 

I agree that discussing the HKS V PRO is off topic but you did bring it up. But like you said, it is very similar to the ecutek style of tuning. And your right, in other parts of the world and other countries there are different systems and infrastructures in place but since we live in the US, referring to those other markets is irrelevant. My gripe with Ecutek is the way things are run HERE in the US. And I think the US market is large enough to be worth things being offered differently.

-Steve

 

My theroy is that the X will be more like a Subaru market than a Evo 8 and IX market

Sadly, from what I have seen locally at least many of the Evo X that are being sold here are shipping overseas - any not many are being sold at all

It seems to me that sales are very flat at this point

Ditto for the '08 STI which also seems like its not selling so well

The general economy is very soft and I feel it is effecting sales of these ultra high performance cars in a very significant manner

On a more poistive note, the X is a car which really responds very well to a reflash and Stage II mods. Also, its a very interetsing ecu to work with.

Time will tell how mod happy the X owners are and if they are more like the Subaru market or more like the Evo 8 and IX gang

Main point I am making is that its a really totally new platform and car and price wpoint which should appeal to and be directed at a different type of customer.

Al

 

i think you need to give it some time. In 03 there was almost no domestic evo market. Even 04 didnt prove too much. AMS came out with there turbo kit which Not many people had and you didnt see the evo market Really take off til end of 04/early 05. Now its huge. Someone will go 10.9 or better with a X within 2 months and I bet by the end of the year you'll see the beginnings of X drag cars/TA cars. I dont think the x aftermarket will follow subie suit. Alot of people on here including myself came from evo 8's and 9's and we will perpetuate the same mind set with the X

 

Guys,

While I have been entertained, I would really like to see this thread go back to EcuFLASH details and updates..
Thanks!

 

I agree!

 

I don't think you can accurately judge the market after only four or five months of the vehicle's existance in the US market. Give it a couple years. The 8's been out for five years, the 9's been out for 2 years. The 10's been out since like January.

I tend to be more like the current 8/9 buyers, I just happened to buy a 10 because I wanted something new / different. However, I understand that many people buying 10's think they will think they can keep it as a combination daily driver / race car for a while. With more expereince they will learn if it's practical or impractical, and after that learning curve has progressed, that particular DD/RC 10 will either become one or the other, or get sold, etc. If that 10 stays as a race car, or gets sold to a guy coming from an 8/9, then maybe the future of the 10 is similar to the 8/9. If the 10 stays a DD and the guy goes and buys an 8/9 as a race car, then, oh well... I hope this doesn't happen though.

 

You guys are moving into proper tuning theory and straying far away from the actual tool(s).

 

There is ECUTek and there will be ECUFlash. We know the ECUTek is great for the X, we also hope the ECUFlash for the X will follow. This is all for the greater good of the Evo community, not ONLY in US but around the world.

I hope some body cleans up all the off-topic things (including my post), for which this thread has strayed far away from the point.

 

I would like to see some demographics of the Evo 8 and IX vs the Evo X

From my initial experience the median age of the X customer is at least 7 - 9 years higher than that of the 8 and IX customer.

Of course I have only tuned a small sampling of X's to date, but I do have a strong recolection of the intial customers when the IX first came out.

As you have suggested time will tell.

Given that oil is predicted by some to run out in 2035 I would imagine that in the future there will be radical changes in the tuning field.

 

I have seen a couple people mention that the advantage of Ecutek is that you have manufacturer support and "professional" tuners to provide you with a safe tune.

*Disclaimer* I think Ecutek is doing this in the best way possible, and that the possible glitches in the system are due to dishonest customers of theirs

Do you guys know what the actual qualifications are to purchase the Ecutek system and be able to tune customer cars for money? You inquire. They ask you what systems you have experience with, if you have a dyno, and what cars you have experience with. You keep prodding because they don't respond. They approve you or disapprove you based on your experience level, and they give you a price. Basically anyone that has the money to buy it and enough bull**** to convince them that you can handle it can be flashing customer cars. So throw "professional" out the window. Different people are going to have different approaches to tuning a car, some better than others. Please don't assume just because someone has the ability to obtain the software that they are some professional super tuner.

I would love to have the Ecutek software so that I can tune my own car, and I have ZERO interest in tuning other people's cars. I think they have a great product. It takes me months to fine tune my car. I will drive around town and log normal driving conditions, then make changes when I get home to optimize drivability and fuel consumption. At the track, I will adjust the tune based on track conditions. This is the problem with Ecutek and their dealers. Customers think they are getting a safe and optimal tune in a 1 hour dyno session of nothing but wide open throttle pulls? Get real. We all saw some of the flashes that "professional" tuners were mailing to customers after ecuflash advanced. They were unsafe and downright amateur and some of these were Ecutek dealers.

Ecutek...if you are listening. Please offer an option for those of us who don't want a ***tune for our car with 1 hour on the dyno and slapping us on the butt and sending us along our way.

 

thats cuz all the guys who bought 03's 5 years ago are finally upgrading

whoever said that probably also believes the earth is flat right? gas in venezuela is under 25 cents a gallon, The Arabs havent touched 1/2 of what they can AND theres enough oil in northern alaska to sustain the USA alone for the next 200 years WITH rate of increase considered.

Now is the planet going to be able to handle that? Probably not, we're probably going to either drown from the water rising due to the ice caps melting OR all get cancer from radiation from the sun when the atmosphere finally falls apart, but we Def wont have a problem getting gasoline.


I think you'll see other fuels being used such as sugar based ehtanol or Propane.

 

Man, you nailed it. A lot of kids can now afford $18,000 used VIIIs. When the VIIIs were new, the ownership base was a lot older than the median of current owners.

 

Al, you are probably correct about the current demographic, there can be lots of resons why it's true.

Regarding oil running out in 2035, well if it means I can get a 300hp nuclear fusion reactor Evo that runs on distilled water and banana peels, then hey, sign me up. I guess it could be the Evo NFR, the upgrade from the Evo GSR. Not sure how well this product would work into Ecutek's or Tactrix's market strategies though...