AUSTRALIA’S biggest automotive suspension manufacturer, Lovells, has invested $1 million in a state-of-the-art research and development facility in South Australia to do what it says it has always done – push the technical boundaries.

“That’s the way that we ensure our products are either unobtainable by our opposition or very, very difficult to copy,” said Lovells Automotive Systems owner Simon Crane.In one of the biggest ever corporate pushes of the 95-year-old company, Mr Crane has set a path to expand the business product range, spread the market with more emphasis on export, begin building a new headquarters and manufacturing and test complex in Newcastle, a retail and manufacturing centre in Edwardstown in South Australia, and move R&D to a new facility in that state’s motorsport hub at Tailem Bend.

He said the new Edwardstown facility “becomes a key asset in our ability to design, test and manufacture right here in Australia for our global customer base” and will boost company employment by 20 staff.

The facility will underpin the company’s vehicle dynamic stability testing capabilities and simulate the most extreme road and climatic conditions encountered by its worldwide customers and focus on developing next generation suspension and towing products in the automotive, rail, mining, industrial and specialist engineering sectors.

Lovells staff: Mike Davison, Simon Crane, Tony Pasin and Phil Degenhard

“Together with our testing facility at Tailem Bend and manufacturing capability in the Hunter region of New South Wales, Lovells is well-positioned to develop next generation suspension and towing products for a wide range of clients.”

The new R&D facility follows on from earlier investment by Lovells to relocate all vehicle dynamic stability testing from the National Test Grounds in Anglesea, Victoria, to the world-class facility at The Bend Motorsport Park in Tailem Bend.

Mr Crane said South Australian customers would also benefit from greater investment in the region, which also includes two major retail branches in Adelaide: one in Edwardstown (Deloraine Street) and the other in Greenfields, both offering bespoke services supporting suspension, GVM and towing upgrades, alongside fitment of a range of electrical and general accessories.

Australian Automotive Aftermarket Association (AAAA) director of government relations and advocacy, Lesley Yates, commented on the company’s move by saying that Lovells’ R&D investment “reflects the broader confidence and commitment within our industry to turn great ideas into global impact.”

AAAA director of government relations and advocacy, Lesley Yates

Parallel to this is a key driver for Lovells in the development and production of suspension and chassis systems to upgrade a vehicle’s gross combination mass (GCM) – a pursuit generally ignored in favour of GVM upgrades because of the difficulty in achieving GCM improvements given the complexity of the parameters and numerous variables.

“It is the ultimate expression in the phenomenon of the GCM upgrade kit, where the GCM of your vehicle and your towed load is upgraded over and above the standard vehicle,” Mr Crane said.

“GCM is a very strange parameter for a vehicle because it’s actually not enshrined in any legislation or regulation. There is no ADR concerning GCM or its method of determination. There has historically been no legislated method of testing whether a vehicle is actually safe to tow some other towed vehicle or not.

“Ten years ago, we formed the view that there was a market for allowing people to upgrade the total mass of their tow vehicle plus trailer as a combination, with whatever necessary technical modifications are required. And we set out to prove that. To do that, we borrowed a comprehensive suite of international towing standards. “We borrowed these standards from the US and Europe and we started testing vehicles and trailers to those standards.”

The standards to create a vehicle with high GCM capabilities revolve around components covering emergency braking, payload, cooling systems, transmission and drivetrain, power and torque, and even tyres and handbrakes. We found we just couldn’t do it with the existing facilities available in Australia,” Mr Crane said.

“So, firstly, we like South Australia because of its low rainfall, and its seasonal predictability. Testing of this nature must be done in dry conditions because they involve somewhat extreme manoeuvres with large trailers behind the vehicle, with repeated heavy and emergency braking.

“The most technically difficult tests are required to perform hot climate prolonged climbing with heavy trailer loads, strict minimum sustained speeds and full air-conditioning load, with no drivetrain overheating anywhere or warning lights showing during the climb.

Lovells staff

“We then took our test data and with the great assistance of the AAAA GVM/GCM Technical Working Group persuaded the federal government’s Department of Transport that these tests are sufficient to indicate that a particular vehicle is safe to tow a trailer which is larger than that specified in the owner’s manual.“Our customers may well be confronted with a 1000 vertical metre climb, because Australia has quite a number of them, with many hairpin bends on a brutally hot summer’s day, and your vehicle had better be ready to tow your caravan or your horse float without wilting.

“It’s got to be able to get up that hill without overheating or destroying the transmission or all the other things that can go wrong, or the vehicle just shutting down in protective mode. This testing proves that it will meet that challenge.”

It is too easy to assume that Mr Crane sees the suspension system as the core of the business, which was certainly once the case. However today, Lovells makes and distributes a wide range of non-suspension products, like tow couplings and, soon, load-levelling and sway-control systems for trailers and caravans.

Consisting of three divisions, Lovells’ new South Australian facilities will support the creation of products for Lovells Springs and Lovells Special Products divisions, which are then sold and distributed through Lovells Automotive Systems. The entire Lovells operation is supported by corporate and manufacturing operations located in Newcastle, New South Wales.

Lovells Automotive Systems Pty Ltd is headquartered in Newcastle, New South Wales, and is a global leader in premium suspension components, with products exported to such diverse markets as the US, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Greece, Kazakhstan and Thailand. 

Founded in 1930, Lovells has become a major player in Australian manufacturing, employing over 120 professionals across the nation. 

The company supplies top-tier Australian-engineered suspension and vibration absorption products to industries such as mining, emergency services, military, power generation, agriculture and the nation’s vehicle fleets with its products renowned for exceptional durability in extreme conditions.