A motocross rider, a garage and a suspension problem.

Öhlins starts with a rider. English Wikipedia describes Kenth Öhlin as a former motocross racer who founded the company in 1976, working out of his father’s engineering workshop. In those early years, it says, the business built exhaust pipes, engines and shock absorbers before narrowing its focus to suspension alone in the early 1980s. The company’s own history page tells the same origin in its own words: Öhlins Racing, it says, “came to life on the race track” and in the garage of Kenth Öhlin’s father, after he saw that the engines on motocross bikes had outgrown the suspension they were fitted to.

Racing was the shop window from the beginning. On its timeline, the company lists Gennady Moiseev’s world title in 1978, Neil Hudson’s 250cc motocross title on a Yamaha in 1981 and Carlos Lavado’s road-racing title on a 250cc Yamaha in 1983. Those results tied the young company closely to one manufacturer, and the business relationship followed.

In 1986, according to English Wikipedia, Yamaha Motor Company became a co-owner of Öhlins Racing AB, while Öhlins carried on as an independent company within the Yamaha group. The company’s timeline puts it plainly: Kenth Öhlin sold part of the business to Yamaha because there were synergies between the two firms and he wanted Öhlins to keep growing. The partnership ran for two decades.

The company moved to its present headquarters in Upplands Väsby, north of Stockholm, in 1990, Wikipedia says, and that town is still where Öhlins says it is based. Wikipedia describes the site as home to the main research and development departments as well as the production site. The company now says it runs three production facilities, and it lists sites beyond Sweden: Öhlins USA in Hendersonville, North Carolina, opened in 1997; a distribution and test centre at Meuspath, close to the Nürburgring in Germany; and Öhlins Asia in Chon Buri, Thailand, opened in 2013, which the company says houses production, research and development, and sales and marketing.

Yamaha, Kenth Öhlin again, Tenneco and Brembo.

The ownership story has an unusual loop in it. In 2007, according to both English Wikipedia and the company’s own timeline, Kenth Öhlin bought the company back from Yamaha. The company says he saw further potential in building Öhlins Racing as a free-standing business, and for the next decade the founder was again the controlling owner of the firm that carries his name.

That changed in November 2018, when Tenneco, the American automotive supplier, bought a majority stake in Öhlins, English Wikipedia says. The companies had worked together before: Wikipedia records that in 1998 Öhlins partnered with Tenneco Automotive on a continuously controlled electronic suspension system known as CES, and both Wikipedia and the company date mass production of the CES valve to 2003, on Volvo’s S60R.

The most recent owner is Italian. In October 2024, The Drive reported on 12 October that Brembo, the Italian brake maker, had signed an agreement to buy Öhlins Racing from Tenneco, which was itself managed by funds affiliated with Apollo Global Management. The magazine quoted Brembo Executive Chairman Matteo Tiraboschi calling Öhlins “a strong fit for Brembo”. Öhlins now says it has been part of Brembo Group since 2025, and its own announcement dates the acquisition to January 2025. Brembo has owned Öhlins since January 2025, and the legal name in the company’s footer is now Öhlins Group AB.

The product range reaches well beyond the motocross track where it began. Öhlins groups its products into motorcycle, automotive, mountain bike and powersports suspension. Its timeline records a TTX damper technology that it traces to the car that carried Nigel Mansell to the CART title in 1993, released to the aftermarket in 2006; a move into mountain bikes; and electronically controlled suspension for manufacturers including Ducati, BMW and Yamaha. In 2022, the company says, it announced itself as a technical partner of Scuderia Ferrari, having supplied the team since 2015.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group make the parts that sit between an engine, a wheel and the road: brake pads, discs and calipers, shock absorbers and suspension forks, and ignition and fuel-system components for engines. Aftermarket brands of this kind reach buyers through several routes at once, from parts counters and specialist workshops to motorsport paddocks, and many also supply vehicle makers directly as original equipment.

A component brand’s identity is usually carried by a short name, a colour and a decal rather than by a whole product, because the part itself is often hidden behind a wheel or under a body panel. The company behind that name may have changed hands, joined a larger group or moved production since it began, which makes the plain questions worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where its parts are designed and made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its marks have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A redesigned logo and a new “Ö”.

Öhlins has described its own visual identity in some detail. In an announcement on its website, Öhlins Group said it was launching a new visual identity made of two main elements: a redesigned logo and a new brand symbol. The company says the redesigned logo channels “the refined simplicity of Scandinavian design” with a tech-inspired edge, and that, while it sheds many of the embellishments of its predecessor, it keeps the “nostalgic angles of collegiate font” in its lettering.

Colour is named directly. The company calls yellow the brand’s signature yellow and says it is carried into the new visuals, complemented by shades of black, white, blue and light gray. The new symbol, it says, is a fresh take on the Öhlins “Ö”, made of two vertical arrows converging to form a diamond, and is meant to signal the next generation of the brand.

The announcement ties the redesign to the change of owner. Following its acquisition by Brembo Group in January 2025, the company says, Öhlins set out a new vision of “expanding beyond racing DNA to inspire enthusiasts”. Mark Spelthaen, managing director of Öhlins Group, is quoted saying that the visual representation of the brand “has not evolved at the same pace” as its products, and Brembo Group chief executive Daniele Schillaci is quoted saying the step aligns the two brands more closely. The company said the identity would make its public debut at EICMA, the motorcycle exhibition in Milan, on 4 November 2025.

The new identity arrives on top of a long motorsport record. The company’s timeline runs from motocross in the late 1970s to road racing, rallying, CART and Formula One, and more recently to NASCAR’s Next Gen cars and the MotoE series, which it says runs on Öhlins suspension. Racing is where most people have seen the name, on forks, shocks and decals.

For a design guide, Öhlins shows how a company named for its founder can keep a recognisable letter and colour through several changes of ownership, then redraw both under a new parent while saying out loud what it kept. Compare Brembo, the Italian brake maker that now owns it, and Koni, a Dutch shock absorber name with a much older origin. For this guide we use a signature-style yellow, a deep blue and a near-black with an angular collegiate sans-serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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