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| About Us |
 What is "Vorshlag", you ask? Well, a loose translation of this mis-spelled German word is "to hammer" - and we do try live up to that by offering better engineered suspension products that can "take a beating", with quality that "hammers" the competition. OK, so that's a little crazy, but that also fits.
"Vorshlag.com" has been around since 2002. After purchasing chassis set-up equipment, Data Acquisition systems, and alignment tools in 2004, Terry Fair and Brian Hanchey joined forces to make Vorshlag a dedicated suspension set-up organization in 2005. After offering an array of set-up services we had the opportunity in January 2006 to purchase the assets of Motor-Force Engineering - maker of the best camber plates available for BMWs. Also in 2006 we met with AST Suspensions in The Netherlands and soon began to distribute and develop their shock products for North America. We've since grown the Vorshlag and AST product ranges and our business considerably.
A little about the thinking behind the company:
- Customer service - Who do you want to talk to, someone in Texas or someone in Turkey? We stand behind everything we sell. Since we own most of our manufacturing processes, we can react to our customers needs quickly when needed. We want you to be a customer for life. We don't care if your initial purchase is one lug nut or triple adjustable shocks. We do care to make and keep you happy regardless of the sale amount. If you buy it from us, it is on our cars. It won't be the latest dubs or carbon fiber shift knob, but it will make you faster and it will last.
- Time to market - Overseas manufacturing means long lead times and BIG orders. We manufacture parts as we require and are able to fulfill our customer's orders quickly. How many times have you ordered springs to hear "well it might be six months". That's because they aren't made here. As costs rise in low cost countries (and they are rising), you'll see a shift back to domestic manufacturing. We're just ahead of the curve on Vorshlag products.
- Quality Control - We rarely get calls about parts not working. That's because we inspect everything before it leaves our facilities. We've never had a bearing failure on our camber plates. No lead paint, toxic toothpaste, or sub-standard materials here. We certify all our materials and personally inspect them during assembly.
- Pride in your work - We're in this business because we want to be here. We love cars and we love making them better. When we look at building a new product our first question isn't, "can we make a good margin?", it is "can we make something better than what's out there?" How can we sell you a product just to make money? That doesn't ever work when you want a customer for life. If you're buying our products, rest assured there's nothing out there that's better.
We may be a small company, but we do have a dedicated staff working with us to help keep customer service, sales, design and manufacturing going smoothly. What follows are more details on the two Vorshlag principles.
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Fair
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 Terry Fair brings two decades of racing and engineering experience to the Vorshlag team. Terry's been behind the wheel of just about anything you can imagine and likes to drive just about anything with 4 wheels. Fair graduated from Texas A&M University with an engineering degree and has worked in several engineering disciplines including metallurgy, mechanical design, control systems, as well as electronics design. He has actively participated in motorsports events such as autocrossing, open track, time trials, drag racing, and instructing in solo events since the late 1980's, with flair for displaying over-the-top sideways antics (before this whole "drifting" thing became a sport). He currently campaigns the Vorshlag BMWs in 25+ local and national competition events a year, along with his wife (two time SCCA National Champion Amy Fair) racing along side. She's our PR representative, resident test driver, and accountant.
His racing cars over the years have ranged from the V8 powered (6 Camaros, 6 Mustangs and 2 Corvettes) to the "not-so-tire-shredding" (Miata, RX8, RX7, and a 240Z) but now is almost exclusively BMW. He's been seen behind the wheel of a few AWD turbo cars, but he is hesitant to admit that. An obsession with low chassis weight that started many years ago and has always had an affect on car and component choices, and in some ways Vorshlag's direction. Fair is always busy: fabricating something he probably should have just bought, building a race car, weighing something car related, rewiring someone's house, whipping up drawings in CAD, or buying a new but completely unnecessary power tool. Fair trophied twice in the Vorshlag STU-classed M3 at the SCCA Solo Nationals, but these days its hard for him to race in anything other than our LS1 V8 powered BMW... that car ruins you.
Vorshlag Duties: new product development, track and street test driver, dealer and customer support, shipping and receiving, fabrication, sleep deprivation experimentation, forum and message board novelist extraordinaire.
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Hanchey
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 Brian Hanchey has been racing for almost two decades as well, ever since falling in love with cars in high school. His earliest experiences rest with inline sixes and single cylinder karts. Having fallen in love with Datsuns in the late '80's, a newer model needed to replace the gasoline soaked smell for a daily driver - enter the BMW 3 series. He has since owned multiple E36 M3s and Z3 based M Coupes (the ugly ones with the 315hp engine) as well as turbo Subarus. Brian also campaigns the various Vorshlag cars at local and national events. Work experience includes automotive job shop, pit crewing for a support series in IndyCar, working for a formerly famous turbocharging tuner, manufacturing and scheduling, process improvement, software development, sales engineering, and marketing. Hanchey and Fair met at Texas A&M where Brian got his first engineering degree, later to be followed by an MBA.
Brian is the one that says "buy first and ask questions later!" when it comes to new equipment for Vorshlag. We now have so much new equipment that Fair has had to fabricate racks and tables just to hold it all. He is also an accomplished racer and is regularly offered drives in competitive cars across the country, and is falling in love with Time Trials.
Vorshlag Duties: manufacturing management, new product development, operations, dealer relations, data acquisition, shock valving/rebuilds/repair/dyno tuning, track and street test driver, customer support, technical article writing, international relations, marketing and sales.
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