Sometimes as car enthusiast and KW employee it is quite hard to sit directly at the source and contain my excitement when it comes to suspensions and motor sport cooperation. In our KW development department we are constantly getting a glimpse of different “disguised” prototype cars, which are more or less disguised, and I would love to publish everything right away on our KW blog or on Facebook. Unfortunately it doesn´t work like that. Everything needs to be kept under wraps until a production version of the vehicles is ever released, if they prototype makes it that far.
A much bigger obstacle is when the respective car is already on the road or race tracks and there is still not a permission to tell those from magazines like “auto, motor und sport”, “auto bild sportscars”, “Autozeitung”,”Top Gear” and Co., that they should take a closer look at the suspension. Such is the dilemma. In January 2017, the Autosports International took place in Birmingham. We officially received the green light from Austria to tell you about the new K:FORCE KIA Cee’d TCR.
The race car developed by STARD (Stohl Advanced Research and Development) and manufactured for KIA, will start at the TCR International Series (Touring Car Series with vehicles of the TCR class) in 2017 and complies with the new TCR-regulations.
The KIA Cee’d has a body kit that is made of lightweight carbon fiber and an empty weight of around 1.145 kg. With all of these features as well as the car’s 350 hp engine from a two-liter turbo, this car is fast and not only on straight tracks.
The aerodynamics have been taken into account and the race car “sucks“ onto the road surface with wide wheel arches, spoiler blades, rear diffusor and wing. Under the wide-spreading wheel arches, 10 x 18-inch OZ Racing WTCC-rims are mounted. The racing car is brought to a hault by a six-piston and two-piston braking system with 378 mm and 280 mm discs.
The ground force is supported by a KW Competition racing suspension kit with independently adjustable rebound and compression damping forces.
Do you know what our Competition suspension kits achieve? If not, I recommend to you watch the VLN long distance Championship on the Nürburgring Nordschleife or just watch the numerous races featuring the Porsche 911 GT3 R, the Cayman GT4 or BMW M235i Racing. You can also watch other races on the circuit or even at different Rally Championships.
The K:FORCE KIA cee’d Race car, equipped with our racing suspension, is offered in three versions for the professional motor sport use – the specifications can be found directly here – and STARD also offers different Customer-Service-Programs for race teams.
Now it gets even better! We are now leaving the motor sport world and going on the street. STARD currently develops different accessory components for the KIA cee´d based on their race sport expertise.
Soon, an extensive accessory program will be available under the KIA Performance Program (K:FORCE) and different K:FORCE coilover kits from KW are already in development; but are we actually allowed to tell you yet?
Photo KW, STARD
