XYZ Racing Tarmac Rally Coilovers — Subaru FORESTER SH 4WD 2007-2012

The Forester SH carries Subaru’s rally heritage in its symmetrical all-wheel-drive layout and boxer-engine low centre of gravity, but the factory suspension is set up for ride height and comfort, not for holding a line through a fast tarmac stage. XYZ Racing’s Tarmac Rally coilover for the Subaru Forester SH 4WD (2007-2012) replaces that factory-soft setup with a damper built specifically for sealed-stage pace rather than gravel-track cruising.

This is not a fast-road compromise. It is built around the jolt of stage-note-pace direction changes and the mid-corner load transfer an AWD platform sends through the diff and driveline, where the SH’s raised crossover stance can work against you if the dampers underneath it are left standing.

What this coilover does for your 2007-2012 Subaru Forester SH 4WD

Ride height adjustment lets you bring the SH’s factory-tall stance down to something that keeps the AWD geometry working as intended once you’re loading the chassis hard into a tarmac hairpin, rather than fighting the extra roll that stock ride height invites. The damper is set up to soak up the crests, compressions and mid-corner surface changes typical of a closed tarmac stage without kicking the body around, which keeps the boxer engine’s low centre of gravity actually doing its job through transitions. Controlling that body movement also keeps all four contact patches loaded more evenly, which is where the traction gain on tarmac comes from – not from bigger tyres, but from a chassis that stops pitching and rolling under stage-pace inputs. For a Forester SH that’s being pushed into rally use rather than left as a soft-road crossover, that’s the difference between a car that reacts to the road and one that responds to the driver.

About the Tarmac Rally coilover

The Tarmac Rally is XYZ Racing’s damper for closed-road stage work on sealed surfaces, built to deal with the uneven, patched and cambered pavement that tarmac rally roads throw up rather than the smoother surface of a circuit. It’s tuned to absorb the impact of a hard-hit ridge or pothole without transmitting that shock straight into the body, which is what keeps the tyre loaded and gripping through the moment it would otherwise skip. The damping settings come directly out of XYZ’s own tarmac rally programme, carried over from what the team found worked when chasing stability rather than outright stiffness. That stability focus is deliberate: a Forester SH running this spec should feel planted and predictable stage after stage, with the chassis settling quickly rather than continuing to move after the input that caused it.

Fitment for the Subaru Forester SH 4WD (2007-2012)

Built for the Subaru Forester SH chassis (SU03), covering four-wheel-drive cars built between 2007 and 2012. Confirm your Forester is the SH generation and 4WD before ordering, as damper and mounting specification is matched to this chassis code only.

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Spec your Forester SH’s ride height and damping to suit your stage programme – configure yours below.