How different are facelifts vs. evolutions?

Every few years manufacturers refresh their models. Sort of a mid-production cycle refreshes to entice the appetite of their buyers. An LED here, a bit of a sleeker shape there, maybe some new lights or a bumper extension that looks 0.00001% different than last year. In theory these facelifts should be an opportunity for the manufacturers to revise and update their shortcomings from the pre-facelift model. Although this still happens and we have some outstanding examples of successful updates such as the M57 revisions for all cars, the incredible Porsche Cayenne 958.2, or ANY 911…

As a matter of fact, when discussing Porsches – this brings me neatly to the point I was trying to make when this idea popped up. Porsches, to me are just like Mitsubishi EVO 1 to the 9. In theory a facelift and an evolution are essentially the same thing – you take a platform and polish it. Unlike facelifts, though evolution is more than marketing and LED lights. Automotive evolution is the ability to take a sharp rock and polish it to perfection. A company we as enthusiasts lost is Mitsubishi, they were the kings of evolution. This is the reason why they are on the picture of the blog post. Basically EVO 1 to EVO 9 is the same car polished to perfection, evolved slowly. Slight, minimal, constant changes one after the other to achieve a great car. The Mitsubishi Lancer analogy is very helpful because it shows what happens when a company abandons the concept of evolution and leaves the car making to the Marketing team. Thanks to this the EVO X was a letdown and was the beginning of the downfall for Mitsubishi. The X was nothing more than a heavier and “not as good” facelift of the Lancer Evolution IX.

Why are you talking about old Mitsubishis, man?

Because of Volkswagen, of course, also the rest of the Abrites Diagnostic Software too. This is exactly what we want to differentiate – many companies would do nothing more than facelifts with changing the versions of their software but this exactly what we want to evolve. I have spoken about the idea of Kaizen before, and this is one of the philosophies we hold close to our hearts. For example, this week I got a chance to test the new version of the VN024 in Abrites Diagnostics for VAG IMMO 5C yesterday. I know the procedure well:

1. You open Abrites diagnostics for VAG, gather information from the car, working key using the protag programmer
2. Take the dashboard out, go to your bench, solder the ZN085, open a different software attack the dashboard to allow key programming, go back into the Abrites diagnostics for VAG.
3. Go back to Abrites diagnostics for VAG and finish the programming.

What is new, then?

We evolved this procedure to make it easier and quicker for you. We know that it is still not optimal, and we are continually working on improvements. For example, it is not optimal to remove the dashboard for a spare key job but IMMO 5C is just too complicated to do by OBD.

We are working towards developments there, but the current version is optimized even more, the evolution of the VN024 will allow us to transfer from one software to another automatically and follow the flow of the procedure much easier than before. Everything is much more guided, and we explain what needs to be done at every step of the process. Adding keys to IMMO 5C is now easier than ever before and although it isn’t perfect there is something for the next evolution which is certainly coming. I also need to mention that this evolution of the VN024 is free for all the people that have the software, and the optimization will be purchased by new customers without extra cost. This is based on our philosophy of constant improvement and evolution of our tools to make each iteration slightly better and easier to utilize.
 

This is everything we have time for this week, until next time, try to have fun at work,
Alek