KW's Export Sales Director Oliver Scherbaum shares with Burnpavement.com the company's exciting new range of products that will take suspension tuning to the next level.
Photos: Joel Tam & KW Suspension
Oliver Scherbaum is passionate about suspension systems. You can tell by the way he explains the company's line of products to you. It's not just sales-talk. He knows his stuff. As does the company he represents.
KW Suspension is no stranger to car enthusiasts. For more than 15 years, they have been offering one of the largest suspension programmes world-wide. From springs to sports coilover suspensions in three damping versions – their variety and technology are proven on the street and on the track through the sponsorship and participation in international motor sports. KW is an official suspension supplier for the World Turing Car Championship (WTCC).
We're here to find out about the latest offerings from the company, and Oliver is as eager to share as we are to find out...
"We are very excited about this new product we have, the KW DDC (Dynamic Damping Control) coilover kit, available for Volkswagen cars with OE damper control. With this new product, owners will be able to control the suspension damping via the OE switch on the car." explains Oliver.
"Through our experience with our current products like the Variant 3 and Clubsport systems, we know what is the most ideal setting for the three damping modes - Comfort, Normal and Sport. It's a full plug and play system with similar installation steps, only now we have an additional connection to the car's damping control." he adds.
Cars like the Golf GTi, Golf R, Passat CC and Scirocco for example will have the benefit of opting for this system when looking for a suspension upgrade. But what about those of us who don't have a Volkswagen? Are there any new goodies we can look forward to? "Yes of course! We have the KW DDC coilover kit with ECU (Electronic Control Unit) which was developed for individual lowering and installation of an electronic damping control system. It consists of a KW inox-line coilover kit with electronically controlled dampers, a high-performance control unit, the car specific cable set with a control switch which has a colour code to tell you which mode you're in."
"The KW DDC coilover kit has three car specific developed damper settings. By the push of a button the driver can choose between the Sport basic setup, a very Sporty and performance-oriented Sport + setup and the Comfort mode for un-even/poor road surfaces. But that's not all. We even have an iPhone app for this! In the advance settings, you can individually change the settings for the front and rear instantly - on the fly!"
"So let's say you belong to a track group or a club, and you have friends on the same system. You can go to Sepang circuit and customize your settings while you are driving. You can then save the settings, give it a name, and then via the software, email it directly to your friends to download and try it instantly!" he explains. "This is not an online gimmick, there are actual physical changes to each setting - so you are now effectively your own suspension engineer and tuner!" Amazing.
Our casual but very insightful chat concluded with Oliver sharing with us how this is the truly the future for KW Suspension, "We have ready systems for the Mercedes SLS AMG and much more, and are constantly developing new systems as we go. We have added more resource into our R&D department to ensure we take this to a new level.". He went on to add that the on-the-fly tuning apps will be made available to other mobile platforms in the coming months.
