I recently moved to California from the east coast. Although I love the climate change and abundance of beautiful beach babes, I’m not too thrilled about California’s unique freeway system. It can be down right dangerous if you are not familiar with it. I can still remember my first experience like it was yesterday; probably because it was a few weeks ago. I had just gotten to California and was headed to the beach to go surfing. I’m cruising on the 8, about to get onto the 15. I look down at my map to check what exit I want to get off at. I glance back up to see red; the brake lights of cars stopped in front of me. Thank god for ABS. I slammed my brakes and stopped just in time to avoid crashing into a Ford F150. “Great, now I’m going to sit in traffic all day,” I thought. As the line of cars slowly crept forward I could see a light in the distance. Is that a police car? Maybe, it’s an ambulance? When I got closer I could see that it was actually a traffic light. This was the first time I have ever seen a traffic light on a freeway. I’m used to gunning it to get my car up to speed as I merge into speeding traffic. California has a different agenda. I finally reached the light, which turned green for two seconds, and hit the gas. I was giving my Corolla full throttle, but it wasn’t speeding up quick enough. Looking in my rear view mirror, I could see the driver of the BMW behind me mouthing curses. The lane started to approach the highway and I wasn’t going nearly as fast as the flow of traffic. Apparently, California drivers have lead-foot syndrome. My lane was merging and truck next to me was going at least 30mphs faster, so he had to slam on his brakes. The driver thought it wouldn’t be enough to just curse, so I had a great view of his middle finger when he switched lanes and blew past me. Now I’m not a slow driver, but let’s face it, a Corolla isn’t a race car. I ended up making it to the beach in one piece, but I was going to have to deal with the freeway every day on my commute to work. So I consulted my brother-in-law, who is a mechanic, about my problem. Basically, he gave me two options. I could either buy a new car or make my car faster. I definitely was not ready to buy a new car, especially with all my moving bills. And the last thing I wanted was to drive around a “rice rocket” that looked like it’s straight out of the Fast and the Furious. He suggested adding a performance chip. He had installed a few recently and informed me on their benefits. The result is a boost in horsepower, which means some lickety-split acceleration for me. I deciced to put one in and I actually can see a difference. I’m no speed racer, but at least merging onto the freeway isn’t a near death experience any more. Plus I’ve been getting a few more mpgs. My brother-in-law suggested Bully dog performance chips or Quadzilla performance chips. I ending up going with the Quadzilla and have seen a big improvement in my car’s pick up. Eat my dust trucks…Or at least don’t run me over. -Mike Rosania Tags: performance chip, quadzilla Related PostsPost a comment
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