Every suspension modification is a trade. Most articles about them describe the upside and go quiet about the rest. This one is the other half of the conversation: what you actually give up, what it costs, and which changes have a genuinely favourable ratio.
Some of what follows is an argument for doing less than you were planning.
How much ride quality will I lose with lowering springs?
Less than most people fear, and more than nothing.
Progressive-rate lowering springs like the Eibach PRO-KIT are designed to work with factory dampers and keep the initial part of the rate close to stock, so small inputs — expansion joints, coarse tarmac — feel broadly similar. What changes is the big stuff. Lowering the car removes bump travel, so a large compression that the standard car absorbed now runs further into the remaining travel and into the bump stop. Sharp, deep hits get firmer.
The other half of the change is what you are buying: less squat under power, less dive under braking, less roll in corners, and a lower centre of gravity. The car feels tied down in a way a stock-height car does not.
What you are not getting is coilover harshness. That is a different class of part with a different ride penalty.
Will a lowered Porsche still get up my driveway?
This is the question people should ask first and usually ask after the springs are already on the car.
These cars start with limited front clearance, and lowering removes some of it. What matters is not the ride height figure, it is the specific obstacles you meet every week: your own driveway lip, the ramp into your parking garage, the speed bumps on your street, the kerbs you park against.
Go and look at them honestly before ordering. Approach-angle problems are the most common reason people regret lowering a car, and they are entirely predictable in advance. A front lip that scrapes once a week will cost more over time than the springs did.
Do sway bars make the ride harsher?
Essentially no, and this is the most useful thing in this article.
A sway bar only resists differences between the two sides of an axle. When both wheels rise together over a bump — which is what happens on most road impacts — the bar hardly twists and contributes almost nothing. What it resists is roll, which is exactly the movement you want resisted.
The practical result is that bars change how the car turns without changing how it rides, without changing ride height, and without requiring an alignment. On a single-wheel impact you may notice a little more of the hit passed across the car. That is the whole penalty.
If you want a meaningfully better-handling Porsche and you are unwilling to give up ride comfort or ground clearance, adjustable bars are the answer and springs are not.
Will lowering springs wear out my factory dampers?
A modest drop on a healthy damper is what these springs are engineered for — the PRO-KIT range is designed and tested to work with factory dampers, including PASM units on the applications that call for them.
What lowering does do is expose dampers that were already tired. A shorter spring puts the damper in a different part of its stroke with less bump travel available, so a damper that was marginally past its best on stock springs becomes obviously past its best on lower ones. If your car has high mileage and original dampers, budget for the possibility that lowering it turns a “probably fine” damper into one you can feel.
Should I replace the dampers at the same time?
If you already suspect them, yes — and the reason is labour, not performance. The suspension has to come apart either way, and the overlap between the two jobs is almost total. Fitting new springs onto dampers you will replace within a year means paying for the same teardown twice.
The reverse case is also worth stating plainly: if the dampers are tired and the ride height is fine, dampers alone are often the better purchase. A worn damper is the most common cause of a car that feels floaty over crests, crashy over sharp edges, or unsettled through a series of bumps — and no spring or bar fixes any of that. Performance dampers are listed for a range of Porsche applications; check the Compatible Vehicles list on the product page against your car before assuming yours is covered.
What is tramlining and what causes it?
Tramlining is the car following longitudinal ruts, road cambers and the grooves worn by truck tires, so the steering wanders and you correct constantly. On a fast road it is tiring; in the wet it is unsettling.
The main contributors are wide tires with square shoulders, front toe-out, additional negative camber, and low-profile sidewalls with less compliance to absorb the input. Alignment aimed at sharp turn-in tends to increase it — the same geometry that makes a car eager to change direction also makes it eager to follow whatever the road surface suggests.
Worth knowing that this is largely an alignment and tire consequence rather than a spring one. A lowered car on a conservative street alignment can tramline less than a stock-height car on an aggressive one.
What are the costs nobody mentions?
- Alignment. Mandatory after any ride-height change, and best done after the springs have settled — which sometimes means paying for it twice if you align immediately and again later.
- Tire wear. A lowered car usually picks up some negative camber, and camber wears inner edges. The extra wear is real even if you never track the car.
- Labour. Spring installation is significant work on these cars. Sway bars are usually far less.
- Consumables you were not planning on. Corroded hardware, tired bushings and dampers you had been ignoring tend to surface once the suspension is apart.
- Time off the road. Fitting, settling, aligning. Plan around it rather than starting on a Friday.
If I only change one thing, what should it be?
Adjustable sway bars, for most road-driven cars on healthy dampers.
They change the balance of the car — the trait most owners are actually unhappy with — while leaving ride height, ride quality, ground clearance and alignment alone. They are adjustable afterward, so if you do not like the result you move a hole rather than buying different parts. And they foreclose nothing: springs can follow later, and the manufacturer sells the two engineered together as matched kits for exactly that reason.
The case for springs first is different and it is mostly about stance and pitch control. If what bothers you is the fender gap and the car's tendency to squat and dive, springs address that and bars do not.
The case for dampers first is age. On a car that has covered serious mileage on its original units, dampers are not a modification at all — they are maintenance that happens to improve the car, and doing anything else first is building on a soft foundation.
Who should probably not lower their car?
Anyone with a steep driveway or a parking garage ramp they use daily. Anyone whose roads are genuinely bad, because broken surfaces punish reduced bump travel more than cornering rewards it. Anyone who drives the car through winter over frost heave and salt-damaged tarmac. Anyone who has not budgeted for the alignment. And anyone who mostly wants the car to look better but covers big motorway miles, because that owner meets all of the costs and few of the benefits.
Several of those owners would be better served by fresh dampers at stock height, which improves body control without touching clearance or geometry at all.
None of that is an argument against modifying the car. It is an argument for matching the modification to how the car is actually used, which is a different question from what makes the car quickest.
Common questions
Will lowering springs void my Porsche warranty?
A manufacturer can decline warranty coverage on a failure it attributes to a modification, which is not the same as voiding the whole warranty. In practice this is a conversation with your dealer, and it varies by dealer and by market. If the car is under warranty and that matters to you, ask before you fit rather than after.
Are sway bars or springs better for a car that sees occasional track days?
Bars give you adjustability you can use at the track and back off for the road, which suits a dual-purpose car well. Springs give a lower centre of gravity and better pitch control but are a fixed decision. Plenty of people end up with both, and the matched kits exist for that combination.
Do I need lowering springs to fit performance dampers?
No. Some dampers are designed to retain factory ride height and work with the standard springs, while others are intended for cars that are already lowered. The two are not interchangeable, and the product title and Compatible Vehicles list state which is which. Fitting a lowered-application damper to a stock-height car, or the reverse, gives you the worst of both.
Can I fit lowering springs to a car with PASM?
It depends entirely on the part. Some kits are designed and tested specifically for PASM dampers and will not work without them; at least one works with either. Every title in the lowering spring collection states the requirement, and the full application list is on each product page.
How long before the springs settle?
A few hundred miles of normal driving is the usual guidance before ride height is stable. Align after that, not before, if you want the alignment to reflect where the car actually sits.
Will any of this make my Porsche faster in a straight line?
No. Suspension changes how the car corners, brakes and puts power down, not how much power it makes. If straight-line speed is the goal, this is the wrong half of the catalog.
An alignment is required after any change in ride height. Every product page carries the full manufacturer application list under Compatible Vehicles.