Shock absorbers - very general question about brands

[Richard Gee]

Long question - what are the key brands here, how good are they, is there any NZ manufactured?

Short question - is there room for one more company forcussing on VERY high performance and premium end shocks for bikes and exotic-ish cars?

Sorry the short question is longer then the long one...

Ta for any input,

Richard

[Kiwi XTR2]

Before he bought Greenhithe Automotive, Phil custom built Bilstein's so he'd have a view on this. I'll see if I can wake him up

[v8sag]

Id go in this order

Ohlins at Hawera motorcycles,Rob is the man.

Bilsteins at Autolign,Mt Wellington

Koni's at Stocks,Mt Wellington

[Richard Gee]

So would you describe the market as 'bitty' or 'dominated by one brand' - I am wondering what the opportunities are in NZ and Oz for a very high performance brand that has ranges for bikes and exotic-ish cars and premium end racing stuff.

[Esprit]

Richard.... my next shocks will be either Ohlins (most likely) or the brand you're most likely looking at supplying.

I'd say it'll be a little bit "bits and pieces", although it depends on a great many things. I can put you in touch of a mate of mine who's a motorsports engineer for some of NZ's most successful tin-top race teams, might have a better idea of the marketplace than I.

[Kiwi XTR2]

Richard Gee said:

So would you describe the market as 'bitty' or 'dominated by one brand' - I am wondering what the opportunities are in NZ and Oz for a very high performance brand that has ranges for bikes and exotic-ish cars and premium end racing stuff.

At the Volume/Performance end of the market I'd describe it as heavily dominated by aftermarket suppliers to the various Japanese car brands.

[Esprit]

Agreed... you'd want to make sure that if you were selling a brand, that it would support most models of Evo, WRX, Skyline, Honda, RX7 etc. In NZ this is the "money" market... young guys with lots of money (whodon't buy Lotuses)

[RENN68]

A lot of class racing uses spec shocks to contain costs or their are predominant ones for reasons of cost/ performance/ support; BMW E30's, RX7's have prescribed Konis. For GT3's, Minis, Toyota etc they are all control items. For C Class Porsche/ Bridgestone for example, you will generally find predominantly Leda single adjustables followed by custom built Koni adjustables. This is the result of what the rules end up dictating (single adjustables) and what the race car builders support. This includes tuning/ set up. There are guys who use (have used) double and tripe adj Ohlins, Motons and the like without a measureable advantage (they are not consistent class winners). There are also many cars running multi adjustables that never get adjusted - 'Fred runs them at 2 and 4 so all his mates do also', so the challenge would be defining the market and who the customers are (not necessarily who has the money) and deciding who the competing products are.

As far as the exotic road car market is concerned, a lot would appear to be driven by whats pushed in the international marque magazines. Those upgrading late model Porsche shocks appear to be using the Bilstein PSS9 package - guess what is heavily promoted and reviewed in Porsche mags - and what brand is used in the race cars.



my $0.02