Superchips iHawk Performance Monitor for iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch

I’m at a crossroads with my ’09 stang. At first the GT gave me grins, roasting tires while working all of the shiny doo-dads and knobs. A few years passed, and now I’m starting to get a little bored, so it’s time to start saddling up the horse with more ponies and maybe something bright and flashy to keep my attention.

I hit up a few sites and ended up on AutoAnything.com. I could see a ton of stuff that would fit my car but one thing stood out, the Superchips iHawk Performance Monitor. The reasons were simple: I’m curious what my car is thinking while I’m mashing the pedal. I want to know if the performance parts that I threw on the motor actually did something and the fact that my iPhone is practically surgically attached to my hand.

Reading into it, the iHawk (maybe the “i” got me) looked like a neat gadget, so I picked it up for under $200 with free shipping and in two days, the UPS guy delivered it to an excessively excited Mustang owner. I downloaded the SC iHawk app (yeah, there’s an app for that) from iTunes.

The first drive with the iHawk involved plugging the little magic box into the diagnostic port and setting up the Bluetooth connection to my phone. A quick trip onto the freeway yielded a 5.6 second 0-60 time. Kinda slow, but then again, I’m not a factory test driver. Every sensor reading, acceleration and diagnostic code is clearly and brightly displayed, playing to my affinity for bright and shiny lights.

Of course, it’s much easier to see what’s going on when it’s connected to your iPad but the iPhone works fine. I was really impressed with the data logging feature, since it’s sometimes hard to take your eyes off of the road to look at the screen while you’re full-on fast-n-furious. Issues like cylinder misfires are way easier to find in the log, then trying to pay close enough attention while driving. All in all, I like the iHawk and really want to test out this baby with some go-fast goodies like a Mangnaflow cat-back exhaust and a K&N intake. I had a good experience with AutoAnything so I will probably deal with them again.