Brembo buys Ohlins

I wonder what Ktm/ Wp thinks about that. 

Wow that’s impressive. Tenneco bought Ohlins in 2018 from its founder for $160m, sells it now for $405m. Thats an awesome job with that flip.

My dream was for swedish ohlins to be sold on swedish huskys stock. If ktm has to sell husky it would be cool if they went back to sweden. Now that ohlins is sold tho it looks like that part of the equation cant happen. Either way Id love to see some bikes come stock with them maybe as a factory edition. My ducati 1098 had ohlins on it from the factory. Maybe ducati runs them? I remember reading ducati had wanted to use ohlins but couldnt make it work, maybe this changes things? Brembo is a larger company who should be able to get more units out there. Hopefully!

Unless they invested $350M after they purchased it, of course…..!

😎

BroLINs!

On a serious note, I always thought that Yamaha had purchased controlling interest in Ohlins. Did they at one time but sell it back, or did they only have working partnerships for a few decades?

I thought that as well. I seem to remember MXA talking about Yamaha owning a portion back in the 90s.

It made me do a few searches to see if I was imagining things and it looks like they sold their stake back around 2007 or so. It also looks like Tenneco purchased a ‘majority stake’ in Ohlins, with the founder retaining a minority stake. Can’t find anything that says what percentage Tenneco owned, but the sale to Brembo appears to be 100% so both Tenneco and the original owner are completely divesting. 

Their history is insane:
https://www.ohlins.com/en-us/about-us/history

Seems Kenth bought it back in 2007:

I kinda thought the price seemed low.  Lots of stuff being sold this week-bell/fox was also sold. 

My 96 sx250 came with an Ohlins shock from the factory.

 My Husky 125 XC came with a pair of Ohlins shocks and a 175 kit in the crate. I wish I still had that bike. 

A quick read up on the new owners…Strategic Value Partners…private equity specializing in distressed opportunities, usually financial. 

So they restructure debt to maximize margins, make the books look yummy and sell for a couple bill profit.

Rinse and repeat.

Meanwhile, quality and value keep going down for the consumer.

Pit might be entertaining a call from SVP soon. Or vice versa.

Seen this story plenty of times before. I hope they don’t go down the drain, I love my Ohlins Mtb stuff. 

Yea private equity destroys everything it touches so this is not good. 

I'm curious if this means that they are going to bring there MX/Outdoor material at the same level as MotoGP/Superbike... where they took a lot of clients of Showa.

Last time the Italians bought a major Swedish moto brand the result wasn't anything to write home about. 

I can't say I'm stoked on this Ohlins news.

 

Bremlins

....but look how cool that bike looks.         The Italians make some beautiful things.      Food, shoes, clothes, cars, motorcycles and women.

You could buy TM’s with Öhlins in the 90’s/2000’s and around 2008 or something gasgas made a nordic edition with Öhlins on.

But often when you buy a bike with Öhlins mounted on from the factory it’s an old generation of suspension and not the same you would get if you bought it over disc for your bike the same year.

And Öhlins often make a push and update their stuff and then it falls flat for a couple of years until the stock stuff is at the same level and then Öhlins bring out something new again. So it’s not a constant progression that you see from WP/KYB/Showa.

I have used Öhlins stuff for over 20 years now with the exception of 2008-10 where i were contracted to run Showa when i raced for Honda. But i have always thought that the stock Öhlins stuff that you get as a consumer is way to soft (softer than stock) and i understand why most of the riders here in Sweden goes for Showa, KYB or WP now days since it’s so much work to get the Öhlins to work properly on a high level.

I have one Öhlins ”factory” kit that is the same that the GP teams used around 2009-10 and that worked really good. It has different outer tubes than the regular forks, TI rear spring and had a extra external gas chamber on the shock. Had the consumer suspension worked as good as that, it would have had a better reputation here in Sweden to.

I would be surprised to see any positive come out of this Brembo deal. Just look at what happened to Husqvarna when Cagiva bought it or when KTM bought Husaberg. And give it a couple of years and we’ll see if either Husqvarna or Gasgas survive the Ktm ownership or if there will be two extra tombstones between Husabergs at the graveyard.