Shock! Aussie OEM chance

Australian suspension developer and manufacturer Supashock has entered negotiations with a British sports car manufacturer to supply its automatic nose-lifting technology as original equipment.

Supashock founder and owner Oscar Fiorinotto would not name the prospective client, but gaining an OEM deal would be a big win for the small South Australian company that has 25 employees.

“We are currently in discussion with a low volume sports car supplier in the UK and there has been some interest,” Fiorinotto confirmed to motoring.com.au.

“The biggest problem for them is they are used to dealing with multi-nationals so we have to prove ourselves to them because we are a small company.”

“It’s not unlike any other market we have entered.”

Supashock is best known as a damper supplier for local motorsport. The Falcon FG Xs of the 2015 V8 Supercar champion Mark Winterbottom and his Prodrive Racing Australia team-mates run on Supashock, as do the factory Holden Racing Team Commodores of James Courtney and Garth Tander.

Supashock dampers are also found in various forms of international motorsport including the all-electric Formula E championship and the burgeoning GT3 sports cars category.

The company is also establishing itself in the road vehicle aftermarket arena, with its new 4x4 damper expected to be retailed through a major national parts chain within three months.

The mining and defence industries are also targets for Supashock, which has developed active suspension technology for heavy vehicles that is currently under test.

But considering Supashock’s motorsport background, Fiorinotto said performance cars are also an important target market and the new nose-lift technology reflected that.

“For us the performance vehicle is a huge attraction and one of the big issues sports cars have is the ability to park them in your driveway,” he explained.

“So we have developed a system we would love to be able to introduce to a major manufacturer.

“The system we have developed automatically senses a large deviation in the road and therefore would raise the ride height automatically.

“So rather than having to press a button and go up the hill, it will sense that and automatically it goes up for you so there is no risk of damaging the $10,000 front-end of your $500,000 car.”

The passive 4x4 damper was first shown publicly late in 2015 but has since gone through further development and revision.

“We have locked in that development,” Fiorinotto confirmed. “I believe you will see Supashock on the shelves in about three months time.

“The damper hasn’t been retailed, but it has been tested. We launched the shock late last year as a platform that Supashock was entering into. We wanted to get that up and running, prove we weren’t pie in the sky, that we were more into the serious side of it, so the serious off-roader could buy a quality shock built in Australia not only knowing that it was going to last but that it was genuinely going to perform.

“There has been many damper manufacturers that have tried to do that but the majority of them are very similar products made overseas and re-labelled with their own stickers and branding,” the Supashock founder stated.