Recent research commissioned by suspension company Eibach has revealed some good news for credit-crunched car tuners and modifiers. In a recent series of tests undertaken by Testpilots, an independent testing facility in the US, cars fitted with Eibach suspension were found to have returned better fuel consumption than their standard counterparts - by up to 16%!

Under controlled conditions, a multitude of different cars were driven in stock form across a measured route, before having Eibach lowering springs fitted and aligned and then being driven around the same course by the same driver. All tests were done back to back to eliminate any ambient variables such as air temperature or wind speed.

It’s no real surprise, of course. The reduced turbulence under the car - and improved airflow over it - created by a lower ride height have been known to race teams for decades. Manufacturers haven’t been slow to cotton on either, with all of the current crop of low CO2 ‘specials’ like VWs ‘Bluemotion’ range sitting considerably closer to terra-firma than their standard brethren.

In Eibach’s US test, a standard Honda Accord’s MPG figure was taken from 16.5 MPG to 19.16 MPG, simply by the fitment of the firm’s lowering spring kit. Interestingly, the cars top speed was also raised from 119 mph to hitting the cars limiter at 130 mph, also due to the reduced level of wind resistance. Naturally, the cars cornering ability was also considerably enhanced, but this will come as little surprise to Eibach aficionados. Over a measured course that took the standard car 1m 27s to complete, the Eibach-equipped car shaved an addition 7.7 seconds from this time, despite returning a 16% improvement in economy in the process. Braking distances from 80 mph were also decreased from 182 feet to 171 feet, due to the car’s more stable attitude under retardation.

With an average enthusiast seeing their Eibach springs paying for themselves in well under 12,000 miles, in addition to the numerous dynamic benefits and class leading 100,000 mile warranty, this is one modification that you can buy with the heart and the head!

For more details on the Eibach range, please visit www.eibach.co.uk or call the team on 01455 285851

The new car business in this country is now in such sharp decline that some forecasts suggest that there will be less than 1.7 million cars sold in the UK next year, with somewhere around 20% of this potentially being pre-registered.

If the car manufacturers who serve the UK network do not change the way their profit structures are arranged the reality is that there will be many more dealer groups closing down a lot more branches. There is a suggestion, with the growing expense on which the car makers are insisting their dealers take on with showroom modernisation and an insistence to carry more primary stock that dealers will increasingly look towards developing their internet sites to retail cars in the future.

It has long been argued that the customer would never abandon the showroom experience, in favour of buying a used car on-line which they haven’t touched let alone driven, however if the dealer can no longer viably offer that experience profitably then surely he will need to look for an alternative.

The average customer looking to purchase a new car in this country would without a doubt believe that he could and should be able to negotiate at least £1,000 off the list price of a new car and when they get down to business maybe a whole lot more. The reality is that the profit centres many dealers sign up to mean that selling volume and hitting manufacturer standards is the only place they make any profit. The percentage profit from just purely selling a new car is so low that once a sales manager encourages his staff to distress sell the value in the product or the service offered by the dealer is rendered worthless.

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Ed.