Interview: Vehicle dynamics and suspension tech deep-dive
This is the definitive vehicle dynamics deep-dive with industry expert Graeme Gambold. Ever wondered why local, Australian suspension tuning is so important? Here’s why…
Local suspension tuning is an important part of integrating new cars into the Australian market, at least for brands that care about their customers.
Hyundai and Kia perform that crucial engineering development work here on our roads, in our weather, in our traffic - and you’re about to learn why they go to such lengths.
Meet Graeme Gambold, a mechanical engineer whose job is to not only crunch the numbers, but turn them into meaningful driving performance on Australia’s terrible roads.
Graeme Gambold talks candidly about tuning a ‘global’ car into an Australian one.
Australia has a very unique road network that kills vehicle suspension and punishes components like very few places on earth. It’s Graeme’s experience and genius that turns an ordinary global vehicle from Kia into a comfortable, safe and stable product for Australians to drive in the city or to the outback.
Graeme has been a professional rally driver, competing in the Asia-Pacific, Australia, and Victorian rally championships.
But some of his most career-defining aspects have been a long suspension R&D pedigree, including suspension testing and development for Nissan in the 1980s (back when Phil Collins was recording ‘Sussudio’), then Graeme went on to do essentially the same thing for Toyota Australia before he became the senior test driver for the Lexus Advanced Vehicle Dynamics Group.
This is a big deal. Every year in our winter, Toyota Motor Company would fly a 747 freighter full of prototypes into New Zealand (South Island) for counter-seasonal R&D in what’s now known as the Southern Hemisphere Proving Ground. No pressure, except for making cars like the V8 and V10 Lexus LFA test mules perfect. (Yes, there was a V8 LFA.)
Today, Graeme is the chief engineer at the Southern Hemisphere Proving Ground, which basically hosts every vehicle manufacturer and tier-one supplier on earth, plus tyre manufacturers, for winter testing, during the northern hemisphere’s summer.
This facility makes year-round winter testing possible. The SHPG has 16 different test facilities and 500 engineers onsite on any given winter’s day. Having been there once, with Pirelli, it’s an incredible place.
And happily, there is a country nearby which is really flat and dry and hot where such a smart entrepreneurial Graeme can also do hot weather testing during the northern hemisphere’s winter.
When he’s not chief engineering in New Zealand, Graeme Gambold takes virgin Kia vehicles from South Korea and tunes the suspensions for our uniquely poor Australian roads. He’s been doing that for more than a decade.
If you remember what Peter Schreyer did for Kia several years ago: he’s the bold Bavarian former Audi designer responsible for the TT, whom Kia poached in 2006 to make Kia stylish - most people in the automotive game know of Peter Schreyer; he’s a bit of a design legend.
Well, Graeme Gambold is the dude who makes those Kia vehicles drive the way they look now, in Australia. And that’s no small achievement in my book.
If you own a Stinger or a Cerato GT and you’ve tipped it in hard once or twice - and enjoyed doing it - you’ve got Graeme to thank for that. He’s forgotten more than you and I will ever know about vehicle dynamics, and it’s a dead-set pleasure to have him in the Fat Cave. I can’t think of a better first studio guest.
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