> Oh, that's really cute. Is there also a black market in devices to "crack" 
> the limiter and get all the available power from the engine?

Yes there is, although obviously you'll be screwed if anything every happens 
to the car, it probably voids all warranties.  Official dealers will likely 
not service your car and hence you won't have a full-dealer-service history 
so the re-sale price will drop significantly.  Probably in recent times they 
are more "hacker proof", but certainly the older models can be done.

> (Back in my day, the less expensive car would have an engie with 
> physically smaller cylinders... Which is weird, really, because that way 
> it has more metal in it, and metal is presumably more expensive than 
> air...)

Huh?  If the cylinders are smaller then the engine is usually smaller too. 
The amount of metal in the engine only needs to be strong enough to stop it 
falling apart.  Bigger cylinders usually means higher internal forces, so 
you then need *thicker* metal around the cylinders, not thinner!  When you 
look at the specs of cars, the ones with bigger engine sizes are heavier...

> But then, Intel's low-end chips are actually high-end chips that didn't 
> quite pass QC, so they turned the clock speed down a bit. :-S
>
> As should be abundantly evident, I've never owned a BMW. (And it's 
> unlikely I ever will...)

I would imagine other manufacturers do the same, it's a no brainer that 
making 3 million 2.0 engines is cheaper than 1 million each of 1.6, 1.8 and 
2.0.

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