- What's going on guys?
Alex with Fitment industries,
and today we're talking about KW coilovers.
- So, when this video was actually originally recorded.
It's like butter, just.
- [Camera Operator] Right.
- So you gotta keep it smooth,
like fileting a fish with a good knife.
Mario completely screwed up the entire audio.
I had a really cool intro.
I talked about coffee, 'cause coffee's
like the best thing in the world,
and I talked about it being the morning
and then I made fun of him for looking like an intern,
and now we can't use any of that
because Mario forgot to turn the microphone on.
But we are gonna bring it back just a couple years.
You know when you take it back to 1992,
it was a pretty good year.
You know, we had the Vice President of America
trying to correct a child for spelling
the word potato wrong in a spelling bee.
Apparently there was an E.
- [Quayle] You write it phonetically, but what else?
There you go.
- So we're gonna take it to a
more grammatically-correct country.
We're gonna take it to Murrhardt, Germany,
where KW Tuning, or KW Suspension as we know it,
or KW Automotive as we know today, was founded.
And in 1992, they weren't actually involved
in anything suspension related.
They just did generic automotive products and services.
They started in a square-foot building, 225 feet.
225 square feet.
(crickets chirping)
- 90% of the time, I have no idea
what the (bleep) I'm talkin' about.
- 75 square meters, 225 square foot apartment,
which is pretty much a closet space.
But it was three employees and they had a dream.
- Have you ever had a dream
that you had him to do you
so much you could do anything?
- And their dream was to create one of the best
automotive companies that you could buy
aftermarket components for in the world.
So, within those three employees,
there was one person that really started it all,
and that was Klaus Wohlfarth.
He's still the lead operations manager
for the KW Automotive company,
and he still is at every single trade show,
usually on the side of the track watching cars rip around
and doing everything in between to make sure
that the KW brand is still one
of the best currently in the market.
Klaus and his other two engineers decided
that they really wanted to get involved
in something specific, so by the time 1995 came around,
they introduced a new product created
specifically for KW, the KW coilover,
and it worked very well.
KW coilover was the first of its kind,
and considering the market that they were in in Germany,
and the fact that there weren't a lot
of other companies at the time providing
an exact solution to what KW was making.
The only thing was, is that Germany couldn't
really figure out how to classify this company,
and they're like, you cannot do the German name
of just tuning if you do not tune cars.
- What?
- I can't, I'm not even gonna do the German accent anymore.
You get the point.
The point was the German TUV Board really didn't want
them using the name KW tuning
as much as they currently were,
because they weren't really gonna get into tuning anymore,
so in 1995 and 1996, KW Tuning turned their name
over to KW Coilover Suspension System.
From there, they continued to just delve
into the one thing that they wanted to make, suspension.
1996 came around, and KW Coilovers just began
to market what they knew, and it became very
apparent that they were really good
at making coilover systems for cars,
and they spend the next three to four years
just capitalizing on that.
They were gonna become the coilover gods,
and they were going to do it the right way.
Their focus was all about how they could make
a superior product with no sacrifice
to pretty much anything, and that's why
KW carries the brand and image that it knows
and everybody seems to love today.
So, from 1996 to 2000, they just made
more applications for the coilover systems
that they were creating for the market.
At the time, KW just really wanted
to get involved in high-end stuff,
so they focused on racing,
they focused on higher-end vehicles,
because that was what they really wanted
to tune these products for.
And on top of that, from 1996 to 2000,
they moved from a very small broom closet
to a slightly larger broom closet,
about 75 square feet larger.
But it really wasn't until the early 2000's
that KW Automotive really began to explode.
From the 2000's to now, they've never slowed down.
Oh, and just so you know,
they made wheels from 1997 to 1999,
but we're not gonna talk about it,
because the wheels were...
Eh.
And on top of that, they entered
the United States of America,
so you know that they're on the right track
when they come to the Lovely Liberty's front door,
and they decide they wanna
start making products for Americans,
and from the beginning of the 2000's to 2018,
and they continue, they just began growing their brand,
and they realized that they needed to enter
into different markets to make sure
that they could solidify their portfolios.
So, what do they do?
Well, in the early 2000's, they acquired Weistec Suspension,
and now that is under their umbrella.
In the early 2000's, 2004, they launched LSD Doors,
which is the Lamborghini doors.
They did that,
and in 2005, they acquired Belltech
and ST Suspensions, and from here on out,
they still have other companies that they've brought on.
They've never stopped acquiring things
that they know they're gonna absolutely destroy.
They have a huge stranglehold
on the aftermarket automotive community
in terms of coilover systems,
because they're so frickin' good at it.
They got ahold of all the other companies
in the early 2000's and mid 2000's
because it helped provide products
to a consumer that maybe they didn't want KW
because of the price point,
but they offered a mid-level coilover like ST.
Or maybe they just wanted something completely different
for their sport truck, so they bought Belltech.
At the end of the day, all of those products
funneled back to kW, and because KW had
such a big umbrella, it just continued
to help all the other companies.
Now, while they were going into America,
you would think that they would
diversify, maybe split up the sort
of product quality that KW had
grown over the past few years,
and that's not the case because KW decided
over the next few years of acquiring these companies,
a lot of them would actually go back to Germany
to get their production made,
meaning that a lot of ST components
are brought back to the same exact warehouse,
created in the same exact form and function
and credibility as the KW products,
because they're made in the same exact warehouse.
In 2001, they had developed their own Inox line,
which was something that was really unheard of at the time.
The Inox line just really made
a coilover really hard to rust,
and so from there, a lot of people enjoyed it,
because if you live up north like me,
you wanna run coilovers all year round,
good luck trying to raise those things up after a season,
because the entire thing would be rusted out.
So why does KW carry such a big name and brand behind them?
Why are they just the company that people know of
when it comes to coilovers?
I mean, it has nothing to do with the fact
that they trademarked their own
color scheme of purple and yellow, I mean.
It has nothing to do with the fact
that they probably own 1 of 15
7-post unit drives that helps create perfect coilover
systems using race applications without
actually having to put them in a car,
and it's not like KW is probably the reason
that Gran Turismo has all the realtime data
to make one of the best racing simulating,
driving video games in the world.
I mean, it's not like KW partnered
with AMG Black Series vehicles
or the GT3 RS to be the coin suspension
for nearly every single applicable series
of race car for that class.
It's not like KW is just the best.
It's just what they're bred for.
There's absolutely no sacrifice
in what they're trying to make.
What they're trying to make is an amazing product.
We could go into all the stuff
that KW does from a technical standpoint.
I'd be sitting here for like 60 minutes explaining
to you why they do what they do,
but we do not have time for that.
But what I can tell you, is that the V1
through the V3 gets more sophisticated as you go up,
and with that goes the price,
which is probably one of the biggest complaints
you can have with KW, is that they're expensive.
And some of their components have a tendency
to wear over time, but that is everything with coilovers.
What makes it so cool is that as you go up in price,
as you go up in the versions of KW coilovers,
you get so much capability that you really
wouldn't get anywhere else.
You can adjust rebound and dampening.
You can go into electronic versions
of their coilover systems.
You can dial it into an absolute T.
It's crazy how well KW has managed
to manifest such a good coilover.
Now, no, we're not getting paid
to talk about how good KW is,
but the fact that this company has an umbrella
of so many different products and services
that allow it to be so hugely successful,
is something that needs to be brought up,
because KW is a very good company,
and they continue to just destroy the market
in creating coilovers that are bomb.
All of what they do is just to grow
and to meet the market, and because they're still
an under 250 employee size, it allows them
to adjust to the needs of the automotive community.
And I think that's why KW's gonna continue
to provide super high-end stuff,
while they still allow the other companies
that they are partnered with, like ST,
Belltech, and everything in between,
to make the products for just other markets entirely.
That is the truth about KW Suspension.
We hope you guys enjoyed.
Be sure to drop a comment.
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and you were expecting it, but if you haven't,
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like KW, ST, Belltech, Eibach, Air Lift,
check out fitmentindustries.com.
We actually have all that good stuff.
It's pretty neat.
We also have a gallery in case you're bored
and you just wanna, what do they call it?
Window shop?
Got you dad.
I'm Alex from Fitment Industries.
We'll see you later, peace.