Mine was not a custom map, it was a generic one by Angel Tuning, but that's why it was cheap - about Ł275 if memory serves me.

My car was making 140 bhp and about 240 lbs / ft before the map. Afterwards it was making 172 bhp and 292 lbs / ft torque - this was a standard car bar the fact it had a Green panel filter and a Seat Ibiza Cupra intake hose on it - tell them to look on the www.briskoda.net forum for details on these mods. The ibiza cupra strut brace is a momo part, straight fit on the fabia, and only about Ł45 - worth fitting while you're ordering the intake pipe! The other thing I did after the remap was fit a Blueflame exhaust system (including sports cat) which made the car feel quicker & more responsive and nearly doubled the size of the usable power band, well worth doing.

The most recognised tuners are AMD and Revo - they will be able to get up to about 190 bhp and around 300 lbs / ft via a custom remap for Ł500 - Ł600. This is with everything else standard - if you fit a front mounted cooler and uprated injectors, you can get more, but the clutch won't take more than 300 lbs / ft so you have to upgrade that too. Also, unless you've got ESP, don't bother going over 300 lbs / ft anyway, you'll wheelspin everywhere and never get the power down.

AMD would be good for anyone who still has their car under warranty as they do a device called the OneClick for about Ł150 on top of the remap price - it's a device that stores the standard map and the remap and lets you switch between them by plugging it into the diagnostic port in about 5 minutes. Very handy if yours is a company car, or still under warranty, and you don't want the garage to know you've been fiddling with it.

Tell your mate to PM me if he needs more details - I'm on briskoda as JUT

Should also say, with the standard map, the car was not particularly laggy, and had a usable power band between 2,000 and 4,000 rpm. With the remap, bigger intake, air filter and the free flow exhaust, it still didn't lag (although it smoked like a bitch if you planted your foot with the revs too low) but the power band was extended from about 1,400 revs to around 5,200 - much more usable. If you go for max power and torque, I'm told you can get quite nasty lag followed by a complete loss of traction when you come on boost (unless you've got the cost-option ESP / traction control fitted - hence my earlier point)

Fuel economy dropped from around 36 mpg in town to around 31 after the map, motorway economy slightly improved unless you're ragging it (sustained 100mph plus)