XYZ Racing Tarmac Rally Coilovers — Audi S3 SPORTBACK 8V φ55 (Cancellation Kit for Electronic Damping) 2013-2020

The 8V S3 Sportback left the factory with adaptive dampers wired into the ECU, and that’s exactly the problem for anyone building a stage car: electronic damping doesn’t like being told what to do by a fixed set of rally-derived valving. This cancellation kit strips that variable out entirely, so the Tarmac Rally coilover controls the wheel, not the car’s software. On a quattro hatchback that’s already asking a lot of its front axle under power, that matters more than most owners expect.

XYZ Racing built this Tarmac Rally spec specifically for sealed-stage work, where the surface changes character corner to corner but stays broadly grippy. It’s not the long-travel gravel setup and it’s not a track-day road-course spring rate – it sits in between, tuned for a car that has to survive compressions, crests and mid-corner bumps at rally pace without the driver backing off.

What this coilover does for your 2013-2020 Audi S3 Sportback

Fit this kit and the S3’s quattro chassis stops fighting broken tarmac. The damper is built to absorb the impact of uneven surfaces and soak up the jolt from bigger hits, so the body stays settled instead of getting knocked off line mid-corner. That control translates directly into tyre traction – a damper that’s still working after a compression keeps the contact patch loaded, which on all-wheel drive is the difference between the front axle pulling cleanly out of a hairpin and understeering wide. The result is stability you can feel through the wheel: the car holds its attitude on turn-in and through transitions instead of wallowing, which is what lets you actually use the S3’s power on a tarmac stage rather than just surviving it. Because the cancellation kit removes the factory adaptive system from the equation, the ride characteristic you get is the one XYZ Racing tuned in, consistently, run after run.

About the Tarmac Rally coilover

This is a damper built around one job: absorbing what sealed-stage tarmac throws at a car without letting the chassis lose composure. XYZ Racing’s Tarmac Rally valving is set to soak up big hits – kerbs, compressions, camber changes – while suppressing the secondary shock that would otherwise unsettle the body and break traction at the tyre. That’s a different priority to a circuit coilover, where the surface is smooth and consistent lap after lap; a rally stage is neither, so the damping curve has to cope with the unexpected as much as the expected. The settings XYZ Racing ships in this kit come directly from their own Tarmac Rally programme, not a generic road-going baseline adapted for competition. On the 8V platform specifically, the cancellation kit variant exists because the S3’s factory adaptive damping hardware has to be physically and electronically bypassed before a fixed-rate coilover can do its job properly – this kit handles that conversion as part of the fitment.

Fitment for the Audi S3 Sportback 8V φ55 (2013-2020)

This kit is specified for the 8V-generation Audi S3 Sportback built between 2013 and 2020, using the φ55 strut diameter and including the cancellation hardware needed to disable the factory electronic damping system. Confirm your car uses the 8V chassis code and carries the adaptive damper option before ordering, since the cancellation kit only applies to cars fitted with electronic dampers from the factory.

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Spec this kit to your exact 8V S3 Sportback and build yours below.