No Boundaries
Martin Musial
President, AMS Performance
Unwilling to be responsible for engineering tooling for his family’s tool and die shop, Martin Musial politely left the operation and took residence at a friend’s house where he spent the next six months applying his engineering knowledge to a different field; automotive performance. The two took a Merkur XR4Ti from completely stock to fully-built and seemingly indestructible, generating over 350 streetable-horsepower from the 8-valve Pinto-based engine. Shortly after, AMS Performance was born.
A decade ago, AMS was just over a year into operations. The company focused primarily on retail products and performed installation and tuning services, but Musial was already beginning to feel the restrictions of being a tuning-only service shop. It was at that time he started investing in the equipment and support staff to shift the AMS focus from reselling and tuning to testing and manufacturing.
Today, AMS Performance is known for its research, development and engineered products for a limited number of performance vehicles and supercars. Musial’s endeavors are supplemented with two full-time engineers, all of whom spend their days continuously developing and refining AMS- branded products and performance packages. “I really think it started with the shop Lancer EVO VIII. It was around 2006 that we broke the Holy Grail 1,000 whp mark and eventually campaigned the EVO to a 8.42-second, 172 mph pass on the drag strip,” Musial notes.
Perhaps the greatest contribution to date lies in the shop’s R35 GT-R. “We started tuning GT-R’s in ‘09. We hit the 1,000 whp mark rather quickly and have continued to develop all aspects of the vehicle’s performance dynamic, pushing it to 1,600 whp and beyond,” Musial comments. “We only put down about 1,400 whp when we set our record for the R35 GT-R quarter-mile. The most impressive part is that it’s still a real street car!”
There’s no denying some of Musial’s obvious successes, but he is quick to counter when asked of some of his regrets. “I don’t like using the word ‘regret.’ I always look at it as an education or learning experience. We’ve learned that we’re a specialized shop that puts quality and performance as the number one and two priorities. [pullquote]ECU TUNING WILL ALWAYS BE THE ROAD- BLOCK TO UNLEASHING A CAR’S POTENTIAL[/pullquote]We extract every last ounce of performance, fitment and reliability out of our products and when you go that far, you simply have to price them accordingly to cover costs.” Musial continues, “We’ve also learned what product lines and what car platforms support the level of our product. The Hyundai Genesis was a platform we quickly backed out of based on what the competition and the Genesis market was willing to support.”
Of the future of AMS and the aftermarket performance industry, Musial suggests, “ECU tuning will always be the road-block to unleashing a car’s full potential. The software encryption that OEM’s are using these days are pretty high level. The challenge is deciphering what’s going on inside the ECU. This is our Mount Everest.” If the past and present are any indications, it seems that Musial and AMS Performance are not bound to simply reach the peak but to continue on beyond and above it, as well.
