COBB Tuning

COBB Tuning

Basic information
Founded	1999
Type	Private
Industry	Automotive aftermarket part manufacturer
Official website	https://www.cobbtuning.com/

COBB tuning is an automotive engineering company based out of Austin, Texas that designs and engineers various aftermarket performance parts for motor vehicles. They were originally founded in 1999 and have a fairly large pedigree and are a well known brand in the motorsports and performance car enthusiast markets.

Incidents

This is a list of all consumer protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the COBB Tuning category.

AccessTuner Paywall and Shutdown (2016)

In 2016, COBB had announced a free update in May for AccessTuner that would be released in June of the same year. After missing their release window, COBB announced at the beginning of July that they were removing AccessTuner "Race" from their website for download. This meant that customers were required to pay for the $130 licensed class in order to use the software they previously had access to for free to tune their car.

"An updated version of Accesstuner will return in the near future, be fully featured, and will continue to be offered for free to COBB Accessport customers. Because this is a powerful piece of software, we have decided that in order to fulfill our mission of delivering responsible and safe tuning solutions, we will require that end users attend a paid online training course and pass an evaluation through a third party educator in order to have access to download this free software (Accesstuner)."

In 2022, As a part of their "Green Speed" initiative, COBB officially discontinued AccessTuner for any independent use. Customers are no longer able to download the tune management software, and those who completed COBB's official class are barred from downloading either tier of software from their website. The current website that originally hosted vehicle-make specific versions is still blank as of 3/5/2025. This leaves only retail dealers of COBB equipment the only people able to create and upload tunes to customers' vehicles.

EPA Clean Air Act settlement (September 16th, 2024)

On September 16th, 2024, COBB Tuning was taken to civil court by the United States Environmental Protection Agency due to their production and sale of "numerous aftermarket delete devices." On the same day, the EPA had announced that COBB Tuning had reached a settlement. COBB Tuning was required to pay a civil penalty of $2,914,000 as well as several other rules. This mainly includes:

• Remove any delete features from its custom tuning software and, to the extent possible, force updates to end-users to remove the delete features
• Cease providing technical support for any defeat device products
• Deny all warranty claims for any defeat device products
• Instruct authorized dealers to no longer provide technical support or honor warranty claims pertaining to any defeat device products
• Require COBB Tuning to offer to buy back any defeat devices possessed by COBB Tuning’s employees, which COBB Tuning must then destroy

COBB Tuning had given very little information on the time between this settlement and their discontinuance of the Flex-Fuel system they sold. Both consumers and dealers were mostly left out of the loop.

"Cobb gave tuners just 30 days between the flex-fuel system stop-sale and the end of support for it. If you’re a reputable shop with plenty of customers, you have people waiting for installs beyond that short period of time. “We’re backed up months. Some people are backed up half a year,” Pincura said. “That’s where it’s messed up. There should’ve been better communication.”