Already previewed late last fall, Öhlins Racing has been bought by Italian motorsports brake maker Brembo. It’s been a tumultuous few years for the premium Swedish suspension maker – and the cycling industry, as a whole. But Öhlins seems psyched to have been acquired by another premium brand steeped in two-wheel racing, and is optimistic that the innovative tech they’ve been working on will more quickly find its way into suspension components you and I can actually buy.
Does that mean electronically-controlled Öhlins XC & DH suspension is just around the corner? We’ll be in the race pits when the season starts to see if we can find out more…
Brembo buys Öhlins Racing, restokes MTB development
It’s been just 6 years since US automotive giant Tenneco bought out Öhlins, which then evolved into Driv. The Swedish racing suspension brand’s unique technologies were certainly appealing to the automotive parts conglomerate, and Öhlins benefited from some other motorsports suspension specialists under the same parent. But ultimately, an asset management company bought out Tenneco/Driv itself for restructuring in 2022. And maybe Öhlins didn’t fit well into the larger automotive group?
From 2023-mid 2024 Öhlins restructured its mountain bike suspension development to be more efficient, at the same time as launching an all-new XC suspension category.
Doubling down on refining their now wide XC to DH range and at the same time continuing to use elite MTB racing as a testing grounds, it seemed like it might be a while until we saw more Öhlins suspension innovations. It’s true that outside of XC, their release of all-new commercial products seemed to have slowed a bit in recent years. But still, we keep spotting cutting-edge mountain bike suspension prototypes raced on the World Cup circuit.
And now, under the auspices of Brembo – a more innovation-driven parent company, Öhlins suggests that their newly “reallocated resources and focus will increase the conversion of racetrack innovation into consumer products.“
“As of January 2nd, Öhlins Racing is part of the Brembo Group. The companies share the same passion for innovation, technology and performance; as well as the desire to be the best at what they do. There’s great excitement within the Öhlins organization to now join forces with Brembo, a brand and company that matches Öhlins’ ambition to be at the forefront of everything that they do.”
They call it “new beginnings for Öhlins Racing’s Mountain Bike segment under Brembo’s ownership“.
What should we expect?
Those statements from Öhlins sound to me like confirmation that they are excited to turn those new XC & DH suspension prototypes that we’ve spotted on the World Cup into real consumer products.
What we’ve seen has included Loic Bruni racing DH with a Specialized Demo built up with an electronically-actuated Öhlins TTX22 coil shock – possibly both automated and manually operated.
And then again a year later on a prototype Demo, again with Öhlins DH suspension and some sneaky electronic remote controls.
And just last year with Finn Iles racing a further developed Demo prototype, again with electronically controlled suspension prototypes, a DH38 with lightweight clamps, and that colorful video game-like remote controlled and 3 colored indicator LEDs on his top cap.
Then, even though we only spotted the first Öhlins XC race forks & shocks in early 2023, by the start of the 2024 racing season we already were spotting electronically-controlled XC suspension too. These had smaller remote switches, and no prominent indicator LEDs, but there’s undeniably some prototype Öhlins suspension control happening in that little black box.
My guess is that we’ll see a lot more of both of these when the 2025 World Cup comes around. Hopefully, we could even see commercial versions of both available to the public by the end of this year…
