With vintage vehicles, you need a good set of wrenches to add horsepower and torque. Automobiles today, which are computer-controlled, only need a small box of what you call a performance chip to boost their vehicle's performance. The Pontiac Power Programmer (otherwise known as performance programmer) is a technological wonder by aftermarket companies primarily designed to raise the engine power. It operates on the idea of optimizing the ignition and fuel system of the vehicle to be able to bring out the best horsepower and torque possible. It works as a replacement for the Engine Control Unit or ECU which controls various aspects of an internal combustion engine's operation. While the simplest ECUs simply control the quantity of fuel injected in each cylinder, most advanced ECUs also control the ignition timing, variable valve timing, and control other peripherals. If there are significant aftermarket modifications made on a vehicle, a programmable ECU is required. Thus, aftermarket companies developed the Pontiac Power Programmer.

The ECU holds the engine's lookup tables and Pontiac Power Programmer has a new set of look up table which may contain values that translates to higher fuel rates during a different driving condition. The people who manufactured this power programmer are not centered on the vehicles reliability, emission controls and mileage like the car manufacturers are. And because of that, they can use more aggressive settings in the fuel maps of the power programmer. Example of this would be, supplying more fuel while at full throttle and at every engine speed. The power programmer is a self-contained tuning computer because it does all the rest of the work after you have answered the series of Yes/No questions it makes. When you connect the power programmer to your vehicle, into the underdash diagnostic plug, its intelligent program will read your Vehicle Identification Number or VIN and will instantly recognize your powertrain. The VIN contains particular information on the engine, transmission and drive train and the Pontiac Power Programmer will decode it in order to come up with a program that is precisely tailored to your vehicle. After the tuning program has been selected, the power programmer automatically installs the program and allows you to access and reprogram the vehicle's computer to function properly with aftermarket components such as non-stock tire sizes and rear-end gear ratios. It reprograms your truck's computer to optimize the air/fuel ratio, remap the transmission shift points and increase the top speed of the limiter. Vehicles using power programmer can experience a varying gain of up to 1.5 to 6 MPG. Each power programmer has specific features that can enhance your vehicle, and everything is based on the type of vehicle you have.

It is important to note that there are power programmers that can not be used in certain states like California, or power programmer that can only be legally used for racing and off-roading but not for the highway. Also, it should be noted that fueling with E85 is not recommended in conjunction with some power programmer. This is because burning E85 reduces efficiency and power compared to using gas, which nullifies the effect of the power programmer.