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N L ESS YOU ’ R E a professional chassis engineer, there’s a strong argument for leaving your car’s suspension well alone: a large team of experts spent tens of thousands of hours fine-tuning the ride and handling to be just-so, therefore the chances of you improving upon all their hard work are, well, slim.

However, the big names in aftermarket dampers – Koni, Bilstein, KW, Öhlins, etc – create products that are developed by professional chassis engineers who have honed their skills in motorsport and have strong ties to the types of car makers that find favour in evo (KW, for instance, supplied the coilovers for BMW’s extreme M4 GTS). This is why, despite the evermore sophisticated nature of dampers fitted to cars by their makers, the aftermarket continues to thrive, with customers