A fond farewell to STaSIS

It’s with a heavy heart that I must share that STaSIS is no longer in business. Founded in 1999, STaSIS had a long history of producing and selling high performance parts for Audis, even when doing such a thing wasn’t very common. They’ve sponsored numerous race cars, showed the world how menacing an R8 can be with a supercharger, and really did a ton for the Audi community. I held off on writing this post with hopes they might restructure and rise from the dead, but after several months that seems less and less likely. I myself have happily owned many parts made by them including a front & rear BBKs, coilovers, and an exhaust, so it’s really disappointing to confirm this on a personal note too.

While details were scarce as the company never had an official statement confirming their closure, their website and Facebook Page have been taken down and their local newspaper confirms the closure. After speaking to multiple shops, many of whom were former STaSIS dealers, it sounds like the long-and-short of it is that STaSIS took a lot of loans when they moved to Summit Point, WV and weren’t able to pay them back. It sounds like there were also struggles as they grew very quickly but not necessarily profitably through their partnership with the Audi dealer network, as well as some confusion over Audi warrantying their parts or not. Ripoff Report has some more crazy and serious allegations, but I rarely take anything seriously on Ripoff report unless it can be substantiated elsewhere. In my humble opinion, it sounds like a case of growing too quickly and not being able to scale profits with expenses – something that seems to happen a lot in the aftermarket auto parts industry.

Regardless, those in the Audi community know that there aren’t a ton of brands out there making parts for our cars, yet alone sponsoring race programs and doing many of the awesome things STaSIS did. It sucks to lose a company like this, but hopefully others like JHM and APR will continue to grow and flourish and fill the vacuum where they left off. I’ve noticed that some of the STaSIS parts that were originally built through third party manufacturers and then repackaged/customized by STaSIS are being picked up already, such as their Alcon BBK kits that are now being sold by Steve Petty Motorsports (SPM), tunes by GIAC, and other similar arrangements.

The other bit of bad news is those STaSIS parts many of us own are now going to be harder to get repaired, such as the recommended service intervals for the STaSIS Ohlins coilovers I have – while other shops can perform this service, I’ve found many of them like PSI are charging 2-3x what STaSIS did for the basic service, which is quite frusterating.

Regardless, I bid a fond farewell to STaSIS and hope their employees all find good jobs somewhere else in the motorsport community, and maybe even some of them back in the Audi scene itself.