Looking to Boost Your Ride’s Horsepower? Here Are Seven Ways to Do It

You’re at home, in front of the TV, and you’re playing Forza or Gran Turismo. After a few hours of pushing the limits of your virtual car, you get back to reality.

Moments later, you climb into your real ride, drive away, and eventually find yourself on an empty, smooth, and straight backroad. The esports driver in you kicks in, but once you floor the gas, it takes an eternity to get up to speed.

If you often find yourself in a similar situation or your car is just too slow, even for normal, daily driving, here are the most common solutions for this frustrating problem.

High-flow air filter

One of the cheapest and easiest ways to gain a few ponies is to swap out the engine’s stock air filter with a high-flow performance one.

Just like your body, the engine needs air to function properly, and this component will allow it to "breathe" more easily.

While installing one may give your engine a bit of extra power, don’t expect anything dramatic. For that, you’ll need to couple it with some of the other upgrades on this list.

Cold air intake

Colder air has more density which means more air per volume. That will translate into a better air-fuel mixture in the combustion chamber, leading to more power.

Cold air intakes are designed to do exactly that by drawing air through a bigger, free-flowing air filter that is usually positioned as far from the engine's high-temperature areas as possible.

To optimize the assembly’s efficiency, the filter should be protected by a heat shield which, depending on the manufacturer, may be included in the kit or sold separately.

Performance exhaust system

To continue with the anatomical analogies, if a high-flow air filter or a cold air intake helps your engine breathe in better, a performance exhaust will help it exhale more efficiently.

The faster it exhales carbon monoxide, the quicker it can inhale fresh oxygen and produce more horsepower.

These systems come with optimized, free-flowing, larger diameter piping that will also improve the way your vehicle’s engine sounds.

ECU remapping

The most cost-effective way to add noticeable power to a modern car engine is ECU (engine control unit) remapping. What it does is swap the factory software with an aftermarket version programmed to maximize its output.

If your vehicle is fitted with a turbocharger, ECU tuning will produce more boost pressure, leading to a hefty improvement in horsepower.

If you’re serious about this upgrade, make sure you take the car to a reputable tuner. If it isn’t done right, an ECU remap can destroy your engine. You can find more details on this subject in this article.

Forced induction

If your vehicle’s engine is naturally aspirated, a turbocharger or a supercharger will provide some significant power gains.

A turbo produces power by "recycling" exhaust gases. It uses them to spin a turbine wheel, which forces more air into the engine, enabling it to produce more horsepower.

While a supercharger also increases the amount of air drawn into the engine, it doesn’t use exhaust gasses and gets its power directly from the crankshaft.

Turbos are easier to install and can be fitted to a wide variety of naturally aspirated engines. On the other hand, superchargers provide an instant response which means you don’t have to worry about turbo lag.

Engine upgrades

If the engine is worth it and you're hellbent on drastically improving horsepower, you can do so by upgrading its components.

Mind you, this requires a complete engine rebuild and involves high-performance parts like forged pistons and conrods, beefed-up camshafts, crankshafts, or cylinder heads.

Basically, everything down to the smallest nuts and bolts can be enhanced, and depending on the extent of the upgrades and the engine design, the power gains can be mid-blowing.

Engine conversion

If the engine is not worth upgrading or you ran out of internals to enhance and for some reason want even more power, then a complete engine swap is the next logical step.

You can find many crate engines and swap kits for this job but if you intend to use the vehicle on public roads, make sure you do so safely and legally. This means having qualified mechanics doing the actual swap only if it’s legal in your state or country.